Most fast food is extremely processed, with a high proportion of salt, sugar, fat, preservatives and additives; low in fibre and nutrients. A natural, healthy diet, in comparison, contains a wide variety of unprocessed or raw foods, prepared as freshly as possible. But if you are a busy householder pressed for time, it may seem that there is just not enough time to prepare a spectacular feast from scratch every night. Here are some ideas to help you bridge the gap, and serve up some healthy meals for your family:

1. Obtain a slow cooker. These wonderful devices can cook your meat or chicken while you’re at work, then all you have to do is steam accompanying vegetables when you get home.

2. Keep that barbeque on the verandah operational over winter. This is a fast way to cook chicken or fish, then serve with some salad or steamed vegetables. If you do not have a barbeque, then a stove top char grill will do.

3. If you own a wok, meals can be created in just a few minutes using meat, vegetables and a spicy sauce.

4. When you create a labour intensive dish for dinner like tuna mornay or lasagne, make double. Serve half, and freeze the other half to reheat on a busy night.

5. Preparing a simple home made soup from scratch only takes 30 minutes. You could serve it with wholemeal bread on a cold winter’s night.

Taking a few minutes to prepare home cooked meals will give you and your family a better standard of nutrition. It will be easier on your wallet too!

Cooking has always been one of my favorite things to do. Besides the line of work I’m in, it’s something else I’m good at. I’ve grown up in my mom’s kitchen, looking at her cookbooks and listening to the sizzling sounds of saut?ing food and being familiar with the small accidents that sometimes happen.

A few days ago, I met up with an old officemate of mine who have since made a living as an entrepreneur. He had remembered how I once cooked the food for an office gathering and he wanted to ask a favor. Basically, he pitched an idea to me about me adding in some food to complement a booth he was going to set up at a fair. His idea was selling cold fruitshakes, which was pretty fun. I was on leave, so I decided I’d give it a try.

But what do you pair with fruitshakes? Most foods will work with them, but what would go well with them in particular? I cracked open the cookbooks in my kitchen, and after a while got to thinking that maybe I bit off a bit more than I could manage. Most of the food ideas dancing around in my head were a bit too unwieldy to be prepared in a fair booth properly. Burgers are easy to work with, but aren’t nothing special, really.

The answer to my dilemma is something spicy! Something to complement my friend’s fruitshakes. The original fallback plan was burgers and instead of going with that I decided to search for mom’s old chili recipes. I found one and started preparing it. After that, I pushed the idea a bit more and developed the chiliburger!

But it would’ve been weird to have chiliburgers and fruitshakes within the same one stall, so I met up with my friend again and proposed an idea of my own. Set me up with my own booth in close proximity to his. He took to the idea and pretty soon, we were in contact with the event organizers to get my very own stall.