Cook Now, Eat Later

The evening, when time and patience are at their shortest, can be the worst part of the day to throw a meal together. And then there are the unexpected mouths to feed: a friend with a new baby, an elderly family member, a couple of uninvited ravenous teenagers.Enter the Dinner Ladies, the fearsomely organised duo bringing delicious peace to busy households. They are the mistresses of stocked-up fridges and freezers thanks to a wide-ranging repertoire of nourishing, reliable make-ahead meals.Family-friendly favourites dominate: there are spiced slow-cooked lamb shanks; warming curries; veggie-focused 'thinner dinners'; and easy desserts that may not make it as far as the table, such as apricot, raspberry and coconut crumble or chocolate mint honey pots.Welcome the Dinner Ladies to your kitchen and reclaim your evenings.

The Dinner Ladies are Sophie Gilliatt and Katherine Westwood. They got together at the school gate in 2007 and came up with the idea of preparing dinners for time-poor friends so that they would always have good homemade food in their fridges and freezers. What started as a back shed project has now grown to a fleet of delivery trucks dropping off many hundreds of delicious home-cooked meals to hungry households every day. Between them, the Dinner Ladies have seven children and two husbands of varying sizes, appetites and degrees of fussiness. There's not much they don't know about pleasing a tricky crowd.

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