All posts tagged: easy

Mary Berry’s best stress-free cooking tips and easy one-pot recipes

Mary Berry’s best stress-free cooking tips and easy one-pot recipes

Published by Daniella Wilson

Dame Mary Berry has been a fixture on our screens since her first TV appearance in the early Seventies and she’s seen the face of home cooking change a lot in that time. The TV cook married antiques dealer Paul Hunnings – famously after he proposed three times – 60 years ago this year. “Things have changed,” says 91-year-old Berry. “When I got married in 1966, the chaps – or partners – didn’t cook very much. Now everybody’s enjoying cooking.” Her first TV series was Afternoon Plus with Judith Chalmers in the early Seventies, and by 2010 Berry was a judge on The Great British Bake Off, with many of her own BBC cooking shows between and since, along with publishing over 80 cookery books. “I absolutely love what I do, I’ve got a lovely team and that makes all the difference. We have a good laugh and we take it quite seriously,” says the food writer and presenter. At home the couple try to focus on lighter, plant-packed meals. “We eat less meat – …

The Easy Money Fairy Tale Is About To End…Violently

The Easy Money Fairy Tale Is About To End…Violently

Published by Jenni Sidey

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance For the better part of the last couple years, I have wondered whether financial markets are permanently broken. Not simply overvalued or temporarily irrational, but actually broken at the mechanical level and permanently distorted. I’ve written about it. The basic process that is supposed to make capitalism work goes like this. Capital flows toward good ole’ fashioned productive uses (like the George Foreman Grill™) and away from flashy hot-shit stupid ones (like the Apple Vision Pro). Good businesses eventually outperform bad ones. Fraud eventually gets exposed. Making money is the point of a business. Price is a rationing mechanism and is determined by free markets. This system appears to have been dead for the last 10 years, at least. Nowadays, we function under a derivative of capitalism (hereinafter referred to as “crony capitalism snorting bath salts, operating under policies so disorganized they’d make a Jackson Pollock painting look like the blueprints for a nuclear reactor”) where trillions of dollars can be created overnight, governments and central banks focus obsessively on a handful of …

With turbulence all around, Armani plays it safe and easy in Milan

With turbulence all around, Armani plays it safe and easy in Milan

Published by Sam Flores

A year after the death of Giorgio Armani, the Italian fashion house he founded in 1975 is facing increasing uncertainty about its future ownership. In his will, Armani, who ruled over the business for 50 years, instructed his heirs to sell an initial 15% stake of the company within 18 months of his death. If a private sale does not materialise, an IPO is mandated to take place. Now there are reports the group is readying itself for formal talks with the French conglomerate LVMH, the beauty giant L’Oréal and the eyewear group EssilorLuxottica – three of Armani’s preferred acquirers – over the possible sale of a minority stake. Against this backdrop, pressure is mounting for the company to prove to potential buyers the continued allure of Armani. In 2025, its revenue fell for a second consecutive year, dropping 2.8% to €2.19bn. In a turbulent luxury market, the question now is if Armani can remain a powerhouse without its founder – who turned it into an empire – at the helm. So far during this …

5 easy autumn dinner recipes with a healthy green twist

5 easy autumn dinner recipes with a healthy green twist

Published by Daniella Wilson

By September, dinner starts asking a little more of us. Salads lose some of their appeal, the oven suddenly seems useful again and comfort food begins its annual return to the table. The good news is that comfort food does not have to mean abandoning anything green until spring. These five recipes take some of the dishes most of us already want to eat at this time of year – bubbling mac’n’cheese, lasagne, fish pie, chilli and a golden-topped pie – and work kale or cavolo nero into them without making dinner feel remotely worthy. Both greens are well suited to the job. Kale holds its texture in rich sauces and bakes, while cavolo nero has an earthier flavour that can stand up to cheese, beans, chilli and buttery pastry. Folded through familiar dishes, they bring colour, texture and a useful extra helping of veg without demanding an entirely different dinner. They are practical, too. Most rely on supermarket staples, several come together in well under an hour and all are designed to feed a …

Five intimidating houseplants that are surprisingly easy to care for

Five intimidating houseplants that are surprisingly easy to care for

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Humans have an innate connection to nature – a concept known called biophilia. Studies have shown the biophilic connection we experience being surrounded by plants improves our mental state and may even slightly shorten hospital recovery rates. This connection has driven the desire for greenery throughout history, with the Victorians even renting rare houseplants to adorn their homes. However, just because we love houseplants does not mean we’re good at looking after them. Many people struggle to keep their houseplants alive. While some may put the demise of their beloved plants down to not having “green fingers”, houseplants are much easier to care for than we realise. In fact, the most common reason houseplants die is because we love them too much. While you may religiously follow a plant label’s advice to water weekly, your home is in fact its own micro-climate. Where you put your houseplant has a huge impact on how much water it needs. You also need to consider where your houseplant comes from. Understanding houseplant adaptions in their natural environments is …

Easy Caribbean recipes and cooking tips from Original Flava

Easy Caribbean recipes and cooking tips from Original Flava

Published by Daniella Wilson

Caribbean food may be known for its deep flavours, comforting dishes and generous use of seasoning, but that does not mean it has to take hours to prepare. Brothers Craig and Shaun McAnuff, the duo behind food platform Original Flava, have spent the past decade sharing accessible Caribbean recipes with their online community. The pair, from South London, began filming basic cooking videos in their grandmother’s kitchen in 2016 and have since amassed close to one million followers, released cookbooks and appeared on the BBC, Sunday Brunch, Buzzfeed, BET Network, London Live and Reprezent Radio. Their fourth cookbook, Easy Caribbean, features 80 traditional and modern recipes designed to deliver authentic Caribbean flavours with less fuss. “As fathers, we’ve had to adapt,” explains Craig McAnuff, 37. “Oftentimes, we’re in a rush to do something, we’re tired from a long day or we’re cooking for the family and doing a long meal prep for the week. “We wanted to maintain that authentic Caribbean flavour and those authentic Caribbean recipes, but make them in shorter times and with …

How to support gut health: 7-day reset and 4 easy recipes

How to support gut health: 7-day reset and 4 easy recipes

Published by Daniella Wilson

Gut health has become one of wellness’s favourite obsessions. There are probiotic shots, powders, supplements, fermented everything and, for anyone with enough curiosity and disposable income, tests promising an increasingly intimate portrait of the bacteria living inside you. Yet the most useful advice is considerably less exotic. Eat enough fibre. Vary the plants on your plate. Drink water. Move your body. Get some sleep. Above all, keep doing those things rather than attempting to transform your diet overnight. That is the thinking behind this year’s Love Your Gut Week, which runs from 14-20 September and focuses on the relationship between the digestive system and wider everyday wellbeing. Central to it is the gut microbiome – the vast community of microorganisms, including bacteria, that live in the digestive tract. No two are exactly alike: diet, lifestyle, sleep, stress, age and environment can all influence their makeup. For most of us, of course, interest in the gut starts somewhere rather more tangible: bloating, an unhappy stomach or a digestive system that suddenly seems to have developed opinions …

How to eat more protein without protein powder: 6 easy rules

How to eat more protein without protein powder: 6 easy rules

Published by Daniella Wilson

When life gets busy, cookbook author Emma Petersen knows how hard it can be to get a healthy balance with food. After studying history at Leeds, where she started a food blog, Petersen, now 29, took a law conversion course and won a two-year training contract with a city law firm. “Those sort of courses are like gold dust, and it was always my plan to be a lawyer, earn loads of money and retire early,” she says. But achieving that six-figure salary required sacrifices. Fitness fan Petersen, who has completed Ironman Triathlons, says: “Suddenly I had no time to cook, was living off Deliveroo, and didn’t have time to train. I started to get depressed.” The job itself was manageable, but the truth was Petersen couldn’t let her “social media baby” go. “I burnt out because I was juggling being a lawyer with a social media influencer and ended up doing both badly. So I quit the day I qualified.” Now, Petersen has 813,000 followers on her Instagram account, and she’s following up her …

3 easy dinner recipes with simple homemade dressings

3 easy dinner recipes with simple homemade dressings

Published by Daniella Wilson

A good dressing is one of the cheapest ways to make dinner taste far more interesting. A squeeze of citrus, a spoonful of mustard, a handful of herbs or a few salty anchovies can transform simple ingredients, adding brightness, richness and punch without requiring a trolley full of extras. That is the thinking behind this week’s Budget Bites, our series created in collaboration with Sorted Food in response to the cost of living crisis. The idea is simple: easy, accessible recipes that make the most of affordable ingredients, with plenty of crossover between dishes to keep food waste, washing up and the weekly shop to a minimum. This time, the focus is on dressings and sauces – small additions that do a disproportionate amount of work. Lamb leg steaks are paired with an orange salsa verde sharpened with anchovies and olives, then served with courgettes and new potatoes. Salmon gets a crunchy peanut and seed crust with a vivid coriander and yoghurt dressing, while a quick pasta salad combines charred courgette and broccoli with tomatoes …

5 easy rice recipes for National Rice Week

5 easy rice recipes for National Rice Week

Published by Daniella Wilson

Rice does not generally need much help making its case. It is cheap, filling, keeps for months in the cupboard and can turn up at breakfast, lunch, dinner and, as it happens, pudding without seeming remotely out of place. That versatility is the point of National Rice Week, which returns from 7-13 September. Rather than treating rice as the anonymous bit underneath a curry or alongside a stir-fry, this collection puts it firmly in the foreground, using different grains for very different jobs. There is Arborio rice simmered with coconut milk, Thai curry paste and prawns for a one-pan dinner that sits somewhere between risotto and fakeaway; long grain rice topped with crisp chicken and a creamy curry sauce; and Carnaroli folded through sweetcorn, spinach and plenty of cheese before being baked until bubbling. Rice for breakfast may sound less familiar, though much of the world would disagree. Here, Basmati is paired with golden mushrooms, jammy eggs and lemony herb yoghurt for something considerably more interesting than another bowl of cereal. And because there is …