{M Kitchen}

The kids and I were invited along to the pop-up M Kitchen in St Enoch Square at the weekend - not sure if anyone of you spotted the high-tech truck or tried any of the meals?

{M Kitchen Roadshow at St Enoch Square}

Well, I was mighty impressed!

I took along Becky from The Olive Dragonfly and between us and the kids we demolished 12 pots!! They all were delicious.

If you haven't heard of M Kitchen, then let me fill you in... It's basically a development kitchen at Morrisons HQ and it was set up in October 2011. It's a real, working kitchen where eight M Kitchen chefs develop tasty recipes for all the meals that you see in the Morrisons aisles. Hundreds of recipes are tasted each month and can be tweaked as many as 13 times. The development recipe is transferred out for scale-up but then it comes back to the M Kitchen where the chefs make sure that it still tastes the same as their original meal. The scientist in me loves that part!

{The M Kitchen}

There are 400 lines in the M Kitchen range and I've now tried a good handful of them.

First up was the Taste of Home range and we tried the sausage and mash. I've had other sausage and mash ready meals and the quality of the sausage in this one was top notch. I'd certainly be happy giving this to my children for dinner. This meal contains two British pork sausages with mashed potato and onion gravy, for just £2.20.






























Here's the littlest enjoying the sausage and mash!

From the Taste of Italy range we sampled the Sausage Pasta Bake and it was really good too - again, you could taste that it was a good quality sausage.

The Sizzlin' BBQ Pork and Spicy Wedges from the Tex Mex meals was also excellent. Then lastly we tried a few curries from the Takeaway range. The chicken breast pieces were again good quality. Sometimes I find it can be a hit or a miss with ready meals.

My only comment would be that the meals we tried were cooked in the oven at the pop-up M Kitchen, and I'm not sure if they will be as good in the microwave, but other than that I'm amazed!

The next day I headed to my local Morrisons and picked up a selection from their Indian Takeaway range to have for dinner. The curries were thrown in the oven and about an hour later I had a beautiful meal in front of me. Just as good as a takeaway too, but probably healthier. The only negative was the naan, but I've never found a shop bought naan that tastes as good as naan from a restaurant. Portion wise the curries are supposed to serve 2, but I ate a whole one to myself. So I'm reckoning that if you've got two hungry adults, then the one pot won't be enough. There was an offer on in my local Morrisons for two Takeaway mains and two Takeaway side dishes for £6 - so we had two currys with a side of rice and naan (and we got some onion bhajis for good measure, 6 for just £1). Fatties ;-)

Please excuse the bubble wrap in the background... I'm still unpacking!!!

At the event at the weekend we were able to speak with one of the chefs from the M Kitchen. I had prepped my son with a few questions... First up is the obvious 'what's your favourite food?' and my son suggested beforehand to me that it would be pizza, and he was right! We also asked what his favourite kitchen tool was. The prediction was that it would be a fork or a spoon. I reckoned it would be a knife. But the kids were right... a spoon it was, a caviar spoon in fact that has little holes in the bottom of it making it ideal for straining food. Who knew!

It was recommended that we try the Morrisons Bistro pizza, which we did and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Becky and I were each given a goodie bag of some more meals to try and home and some vouchers for Morrisons (which I spent on the curry & pizza above!). The kids loved the Tastes of Home Fisherman's Pie (my son did find a considerable sized bone in it which I guess is to be expected, but other than that it was yum!). I had the Beef Casserole, although I'm not a fan of beer and I found the gravy to be a bit too strong with the beer flavour.

All in all I'd give the range a big thumbs up and I definitely recommend you give it a try. All the meals are very well priced and taste great. Excellent value for money. I think I'll be shopping in Morrisons more often now.

I received a goody bag with some M Kitchen meals to try at home and some gift vouchers for Morrisons in exchange for this review. Opinions, as always, are my own.

{Money Saving Sarah}

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to get a better handle on my finances. I'm trying to be more savvy with my spending and I'm hopefully making small changes that will make a difference to my bank balance!

My work colleagues have been great at giving me some tips. First up was to sign up for Money Saving Expert emails (and then actually take the time to read them).

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I also had accounts with Virgin, BT, Sky & Orange for internet, landline, TV and mobile... silly when you think about it! I've ditched the Sky TV and invested in a Freeview box instead. I managed to get a little one that you plug into the scart at the back of the TV and so there is no ugly box on view. I also cancelled Virgin and now have internet & landline with BT. Makes sense I think (and hopefully saving some pennies!).

A big spend each week is food. On the advice of a colleague I've tried Money Saving Expert's Downshift Challenge. Items in the supermarket fit into four levels - premium (finest, extra special); branded (e.g. Kelloggs, McVities); own brand; and value (basic, savers). The theory is that you drop one brand level on everything then see if you can tell the difference of not. If not, stick with the cheaper one.

{image source}

There are certain things that I'm not willing to compromise on, such as cold meat, meat & fish, bin bags (I hate the cheap ones that rip easily), baby wipes (Huggies all the way - the others I've tried are rubbish in comparison), washing powder (it's Persil non-bio for us!), Heinz low-salt baked beans, free range eggs, Tetley Extra Strong tea and extra virgin olive oil.

However, for the majority of the usual items I've gone down a brand level and am happy enough. I'm no longer buying 'Taste the Difference' bread, and instead am buying branded bread (I really should just make my own artisan bread!!); I'm buying own brand milk, yoghurts, raisins, crisps, breadsticks, smoothies etc for the kids snacks (I do still buy Mini Cheddars - not spotted an alternative yet but I'm maybe not looking hard enough); I now buy own brand nappies instead of Pampers; and even Onion the cat has been down-graded from specialist cat food to Whiskas.

Another thing I'm trying to do is shop online rather than in store. I always get distracted by the clothes, toiletries, DVDs, magazines and other things that aren't necessary. If I shop online then I'm likely to just buy what I actually need. I've also had a look at mysupermarket for the first time... to be investigated!!

Which is where meal planning comes in. I now do weekly meal planning hosted over at Mrs M 's blog. This means that I know in advance what I'm eating for dinner eat night and I avoid wasting food. It's made a big difference.

One final thing that I've just started doing is running to and from work. I'm not going to do this every day, but I used to spend £7 per day on parking and on top of that I'd have the expense of diesel too. By running I'm getting exercise & fresh air which is great for my soul and I'm saving money at the same time! Ideal!!

What are your money saving tips? I'd love to hear from you :-)