Thanks for making this post possible Naked Locals, your soups are incredible!  Check out their full range of 13 flavours here.

I spent a lot of time with both of my grandmothers when I was young and for this, I feel so grateful.  There were week-long school holiday sleep-overs, quick overnights and just simply days when pick-up time came all too soon.  Though both sets of Grandy’s lived in Auckland as we always have, their respective homes were poles apart from The Suburban North Shore Life my brother and I found ourselves navigating.

One Nana lived on a farm in what was then rural Auckland while the other had raised her kids the Westie Way – before there was a ‘Peninsula’ to bring the million dollar price tags to Te Atatu.

I spent those childhood years convinced that both of my Nana’s freaking LOVED to cook, they were always in the kitchen and I just couldn’t wait to get in the kitchen with them ie always underfoot, making another mess for them to clean up, insisting on cooking every single day I was with them, hiding Nan’s ciggies because the smoke irritated my eyes………..poor Nan.  She didn’t even have her stress-relief to deal with my exuberant self lol.

30 years on and a mother myself, perspective and hindsight have made me realise my childhood view may have been a little skewed.  My Grandmother’s had seven and five children respectively – they weren’t in the kitchen perfecting their choux pastry for the next ‘Ladies, a Plate’ function at the Golf Club,  they were just trying to feed their large families – over and over again, day in and day out.

One of my late-Nan’s go-to recipes in winter and one that has been loved by all for years is her pumpkin soup.  Hot, nourishing, seasonal, cheap, quick and easy…………….soup of any kind is a family mainstay but Nan’s Pumpkin Soup has a special place in our hearts.

Reminiscing made me think about culinary traditions and the memories that can be invoked by a mere taste or smell.  Food is important to family’s and to society as a whole, but what happens in our time-poor modern lives when we just can’t make a pot of soup to save ourselves?  Or, you just hate cutting pumpkin? (#GuiltyasCharged #PumpkinsSuck)

What happens is, we look for alternatives and fingers crossed, those alternatives provide nutrition and emotional sustenance in much the same way our heritage recipes do.

Case in point; we’ve been travelling a lot, I’ve been very stressed and overworking.  Our family returned from a magical trip to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers last week and I was firmly under the weather with a non-sinister, but still formidable head cold.  There was no food in the house yet all I wanted was my own bed and some of Nan’s pumpkin soup.

Dave was dispatched to the grocery store and returned with the next best option; with my NEW favourite soup.  Not ‘a’ pumpkin to make soup, but a sick-wife-needs-comfort-food-asap version that is much more convenient.

Dave had not purchased packet soup, but rather fresh East Coast Sunshine Pumpkin Soup from Naked Locals.  This was the 2017 version of my Nan’s famed Pumpkin soup.  The curry powder has been switched for the good-for-you aromatics and flavour combos of ginger, turmeric, paprika and cumin as well as coriander, cinnamon, cardamom and cayenne.  Basically, all the good stuff beginning with C except for chocolate! 

And that was it.  Veges, sunflower oil, coconut cream, salt, yeast and herbs and spices.

Nothing else but NZ made goodness.  Preservatives and artificial stuff – not there.  Soup made the same way my Nan made it, and the same way we make it (when Dave is home to cut the freaking pumpkin!).

Naked Locals soup is what happens we are time poor when we just don’t have it in us to cook from scratch.  As parents and partners, we search out brands and products that can deliver on that hearty, home-made promise of our grandparent’s cooking, without delivering the guilt that consuming ‘fast-food’ so often renders.  Perhaps this is a ‘new’ tradition?  A new way of enjoying a meal with minimal prep, harking back to those legacies that helped build my love of cooking meals for my family.

Have you tried the Naked Locals range yet? Which is your favourite soup?

Dave and I love cooking.  We are constantly looking for meal inspo, experimenting with different techniques or twists on old faves and frequently testing and re-testing our own recipes to share with you guys here or on FB or IG.  But let’s be clear, this ‘fun in the kitchen’ does NOT happen Mon-Fri at 5pm.  At that time of day, as in most households with children present, dinner time (or the ‘Witching Hour’ as it’s more commonly known), is when we parents enter survival mode.  Kids are tired after busy days, hungry, often ‘hangry’, being rushed around to sports practices or after-school activities and with zero patience.  “FEED THE KIDS” becomes priority Number 1 but often at the expense of our lofty (or even just basic!) aims in the nutritional department!

We’ve all seen the proliferation of food delivery services over the past few years; magical meal kits that arrive with recipes, ready to cook and assemble, or simply reheat if you’re really time poor.  Our family has tried and enjoyed most of these offerings and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a massive fan, but………there is obviously a significant cost involved, a lack of choice around products, brands and ingredients used and an inability to cater for multiple, different dietary requirements in each meal.

Until now that is.

Over the past 10 days, we’ve been in the kitchen, getting to know How2Food – an online platform dedicated to providing completely customisable meal plans that work with your family’s nutritional needs and give you back the power to shop when and how you want.

The beauty of How2Food is in it’s simplicity;

• Create a How2Food account, takes 25 seconds max!
• Fill out your profile including how many people you need to feed, the number of meal recipes you need per week, & which day you’d like to receive them
• Select which kitchen appliances you have available for meal prep
• Specify any allergies, foods you don’t eat and dietary requirements

That’s it!  Done.  Your weekly recipes and shopping list will be generated on your chosen delivery day and then making magic in the kitchen is all up to you and your family.  

We generally shop at Pak ‘n Save but as we’ve been away in Queenstown all week, having our weekly meal plan completed by How2Food meant we were able to shop online at Countdown and have a food delivery set-up for Saturday afternoon – organisational convenience at its finest right?!

So what’s on our menu for next week?  Two Mexican dishes (our family fave!) and shrimp pasta.  The recipes sound amazing and perfectly suited to our family’s tastes and time available to spend in the kitchen on meal prep.

So what do you guys think?  I’m in love with this concept; it’s completely different to anything on the market right now, provides the benefits of meal delivery services with the freedom to shop how and when you choose, ultimately saving you money.

To celebrate their launch, How2Food are offering a one-month free trial as well as a referral incentive which could see your monthly subscription reduced from $19.95 to just .50c if you refer up to 5 friends!

Let’s get cooking guys and get our families back in the kitchen and back to our dining room tables in 2017.