I became a slave to ready meals – here's why I broke the habit of a lifetime

As food manufacturers have become cleverer and more experimental, many of us have remained permanently trapped on the culinary nursery slopes

Learning to cook is vital; it frees your family from a diet of cheap rubbish (Getty)

Speaking at the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival last week, Prue Leith (she of the glorious glasses and statement necklace combos) passed comment on the nation’s lack of culinary prowess. She maintained that we haven’t learnt to cook for three generations and that while this is no real biggie for the middle classes, who can buy as many ready meals as they like, it puts poorer families who can’t cook at a disadvantage.

She’s right, the middle classes don’t need to cook to survive, those who can afford it can eat around the globe on a nightly basis, without dirtying anything more than the microwaveable trays their dinner comes in.

This kind of fast food needn’t be unhealthy either. The posh food shops (the ones with the telly ads that leave you salivating on the sofa) cater for those with sophisticated palates that neither want to get fat or get their own pans out.

There are Thai curries for under 400 calories, exotic yet healthy noodle dishes and tasty pasta meals that might stretch your bank balance but not the waistband on your jeans.

These meals aren’t cheap, but they are easy and they aren’t rubbish. Many of them include recipes that are way beyond your own kitchen skills and come ready prepared with all those herbs and spices that you can’t be bothered to stock your cupboards with.

Because how many of us have bought great bunches of flat-leaf parsley only to see it wither into compost before we’ve got round to doing anything with it?

Ready meals might be pricey but there’s precious little waste, no dirty hobs to scrub, oh and no leftovers either. Everything is portion-controlled to the last porcini mushroom, meaning there’s no going back for seconds – which as we all know, is every would-be dieter’s downfall.

Convenience foods have come a long way since the Sixties. Once upon a time ready meals meant pot noodles and baked beans, packet Vesta curries and terrible instant mash, now they’re more likely to involve chicken wrapped in prosciutto served in a delicious cheese sauce with green beans.

Inevitably, as food manufacturers have become cleverer and more experimental, many of us have remained permanently trapped on the culinary nursery slopes, unable to advance much beyond sticking a fork into a plastic container. What’s the point in doing it yourself when “you know who” does it better?

Personally, I think Leith’s suggestion that three generations have let themselves go in the kitchen is a bit over the top. My mother, who is 90 next week, still cooks from scratch at least five times a week and views a ready-made butternut squash risotto as cheating, even though, as we all know, chopping up a butternut squash requires more physical strength than sailing single-handedly across the Channel.

That she hasn’t managed to pass her skills on to me is not her fault. I wasn’t interested. I had records to listen to and Jackie magazines to read – and in any case, telly was starting to get really good.

By the time I left home, a combination of an eating disorder and a job which required going out at night meant that suppers for 25 years consisted of sandwiches. Even when I had a night off, I’d make really elaborate sandwiches for me and the old man. It’s only thanks to her nanny that my daughter went to school able to eat food that wasn’t squashed between two slices of bread.

As a result of not cooking myself, I had no skills to pass on to my daughter who at 30 has never ever seen me bake a cake or make pastry. As a result, until recently, she was pretty cack-handed in the kitchen too.

Once upon a time, feminism to me meant not buying a cooker and I was pleased my daughter’s academically pushy school was a domestic science free zone.

Since then, though, I’ve changed my mind. Being able to feed yourself, well, healthily and cheaply is one of life’s most important skills, we can fritter our cash on as many ready meals as we like but alternatively you can learn to do it yourself, save some money and go on holiday instead.

I’ve come to cooking very late in life for several reasons. 1) I realise that my earnings are likely to plummet as I get older. 2) I’m sick of being incompetent; and 3) I’m greedy. I like leftovers. I like to make enough for tomorrow’s lunch.

For those on low incomes, learning to cook is vital, it frees your family from a diet of cheap rubbish and it’s never too late to start. People like the inspirational Jack Monroe, AKA the Bootstrap Cook, are on hand to help and for someone like me, Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients has been a total godsend.

The supermodel Kate Moss once said that nothing tasted “better than thin”, but she is wrong, because I swear “nothing tastes better than a hot meal made from raw ingredients that will feed a family of four for under a fiver”.