And on today’s menu . . .

Meatball and Tomato Sauce with Fresh Orecchiette

When we had some friends to stay recently, we cooked for them and we talked about food. We were surprised when they said they were keen subscribers to Gousto, one of the companies who deliver meals ready to cook, with every ingredient all measured out. We had always thought that this would be expensive and anyway it would be highly unlikely that they would deliver to us (Ocado doesn’t).

We were sceptical, but they were so enthusiastic about it and, when I found that there was no problem with delivery and we would get 50% off our first order, how could I not give it a try. We are going away at the weekend and planned to just about empty the fridge, so I went all out and ordered five meals, thinking - no planning, no shopping, no leftovers.

The box arrived on Tuesday and we are now on our third meal. And I have to say we are impressed. Every ingredient is there in the right quantity, the instructions are detailed and the meals are very tasty indeed. It’s exciting looking at the pictures and deciding what to make each day, without a thought to whether we have everything we need.

Whether we will continue with this is questionable, maybe a couple of meals a week. Or maybe we will decide it’s not for us (there are questions of packaging, which need thinking about). But, as an experiment at the moment it’s great fun.