Yummy & healthy home cooked meals that don’t require hours in the kitchen. That in a nutshell is what Anna’s Family Kitchen is all about. I love one pots and one trays and share recipes and tips for simplifying family meal times.

I am Anna Stanford and am Mum to Mia, Thomas and Finn. I am a self taught home cook and am madly passionate about food but the reality is most of us don’t have hours spare each day to prepare fancy food for our families. Yet we have a desire and a responsibility to feed them home cooked and wholesome meals.

I haven’t always worked with food. I started my career in media over 20 years ago and have worked for Sky TV, Star TV, CIA Medianetwork, BBC Worldwide and Fox. A year ago I decided to fulfil a longstanding ambition to blog about food. Inspired with a friend to share our home cooked recipes and tips with other busy mums, dads and professional, we set up a food blog. 2 months ago I launched Anna’s Family Kitchen which can be followed on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

I have always been passionate about the food I prepare and eat and enjoy sharing my recipes, food photography and meal plans with anybody who lacks inspiration. It can become monotonous and frustrating trying to come up with new exciting meals that everyone enjoys on a daily basis.

I am not about faddy eating, omitting food groups and dieting. There’s a very good reason why people do not stick to diets. They’re boring, time consuming, restrictive and actually many of them are not healthy! I hope I help empower busy Mums and Dads to cook meals that work for all the family and can be easily tweaked and adapted if required for maybe a family member who is intolerant to a food group or like me, has a Vegetarian to cook for. I believe in the philosophy “everything in moderation” but my focus is on using fresh, additive free ingredients, local suppliers where possible and I like to minimise the use of processed ingredients and refined sugars. The key to a healthy diet is variety. I use as many different types of fruits, vegetables, grains, meats and fish as is seasonally available.

My one pots are always greatly received on my blog as they can be thrown together quickly, create minimal washing up and can often be left in a slow cooker or low oven until you’re ready to eat. But we do appreciate that every now and then we might want to create something a little more sophisticated or (heaven forbid) have friends over for dinner. Gone are the days when we can spend all day prepping a three course meal in the kitchen. It just doesn’t work when you have a rugby match, a ballet run, a dog to walk and a lawn to mow! Amongst my posts and recipes you will see slightly more sophisticated dishes that are still simple and easy yet look more refined than those handy family one pots.

Look out for future blogs when I will cover all those foodie dilemmas that crop up in normal busy households.

Thank you for following me. I always love to hear your feedback, see your foodie photos and discuss your family food hurdles so please feel free to get in touch.

Anna xxx