How to make quick & delicious gluten-free dinners

See if this is a familiar scenario...

You're rushing around all day. You're famished, open the fridge and sigh.

I used to do this all the time. I'm not sure what was worse: the thought of having to cook or the difficulty in coming up with an idea on the spot.

More often than not, we all ended up with a baked potato with cheese and beans. And maybe some garden peas. It wasn't exactly inspiring or inventive.

Great as potatoes are, it's important to get variety elsewhere

Thankfully, that's now changed. I've now got a much better system in place. It involves a quick plan on Sunday, helped along by Mindful Chef.

I order 2 meals a week from them, which means they get delivered to me on a Monday and have the exact ingredients for a delicious and tasty gluten-free meal.

To make things even better, they tell you how to plate the food so it ends up looking pretty close to the image they've given you in the recipe booklet.

Intrigued? See what you think of my efforts below:

Given the fact I've not staged a photoshoot but just taken an image of my dinner in low light with a camera phone, I don't think it's too bad!

What about the rest of the week's meals?

Since I haven't got so much planning to do, those 2 meals I order really take the edge off.

And where does the inspiration for the rest of the week come from? Often, it'll be a meal from one of the recipe books that comes each week with the food (where everything's gluten-free so I don't even have to sub an ingredient).

To make things easier, there are just a few items you'll need to ensure you can whip up something amazing in a short space of time.

10 things to have in your cupboard at all times (which also happen to be vegan)

As long as you have these, you can pretty much make anything with meat/fish/tofu and veg:

1. Creamed coconut

2. Tamari sauce

3. Curry powder

4. Curry paste

5. Garlic

6. Fresh ginger

7. Chilli peppers

8. Sweet syrup (or honey if you're not vegan)

9. Coconut milk

10. White wine vinegar

With this in your armoury, you can make a sauce to go on chicken, a stir-fry for yummy veg and add carbs of your choosing (like wild black rice or crushed sweet potatoes).

For the Mindful Chef meals, the cost is roughly £7 per person, which isn't bad considering you don't have to make the supermarket trip, there's no wastage and you know you've got everything you need. (Don't you just hate it when you're making something and realise you've run out of an essential ingredient?)

But what about the other meals I've made?

Just head over to Instagram and look at my post with the above cover. The last image was the tastiest meal of them all (and totally worth the effort!).

(N.B. This might look like an ad for Mindful Chef but I promise it isn't!)