Summer family meal plan

✅ Pre-prepared shopping list to save you time

Whether its family meals in the garden or around a campfire we’ve got you covered this summer. A healthy, balanced diet includes a variety of foods including fruit, vegetables and grains as well as meat, fish, beans and pulses.

Summer is the time to make the most of fresh, seasonal ingredients including the tomatoes and courgettes in our summer veg tostadas. These vegetables are at their nutritional best now and being so plentiful makes them cost effective, too. But that doesn’t mean there’s no place for canned or frozen produce – these save you time, minimise wastage and are good value for money, which is why we’ve used both in our summer roast chicken traybake. Roasting a whole chicken at the start of the week is a great time-saver – leftovers can provide ready meals for hungry mouths or be repurposed, like the chicken breast in our BBQ chicken pizza.

Eggs are not only nutrient-dense but provide some of the harder to get nutrients such as vitamins D and B12 as well as the mineral iodine. They are a cheap source of complete protein, which means they provide all of the essential amino acids we need in our diet. We’ve made them the hero ingredient in our summer herb frittata and our vegetarian carbonara.

UK guidelines suggest we eat two portions of fish per week, with at least one being a fatty variety, such as salmon – fatty fish are a valuable source of the omega-3 essential fats but, while fish isn’t top of everyone’s list of favourite foods, you’ll be getting no complaints with our prawn and salmon burgers with spicy mayo.

They may be a firm family favourite, but sausages aren’t always the healthiest of ingredients – aim to buy the best you can afford and check they have a high meat content. Our one-pan smoky beans and sausage meatballs provide two of your five-a-day and makes the perfect campfire supper.