Among  my favourite toppings is tuna. Just open the tin, drain, season with salt and pepper and some lemon juice (feel free to add mayonnaise if you like it but we don’t). Other hassle-free accompaniments are baked beans, grated cheese, left-over juices from last night’s stew. Any of this makes a tasty, nutritious meal without any fuss and best of all, one that most kids will eat…an tremendous plus point for mothers everywhere.

A microwave hastens the process but leaves you with huffy potatoes that might do as an accompaniment to something else but lose the crisp appeal of truth oven baked article. Whenever you’re in a hurry, cook pasta instead and save your jacket or baked potatoes for a day when you remember to switch the oven on eventually.

A variation to try with smaller potatoes: after washing, drying and scoring the potatoes, rub the skins with a little butter, and then season with salt and pepper before baking to give you extra crispy, tasty skins that everybody will eat.

Another thing to try if you prefer to get fancy: once the potatoes are cooked, halve them, scoop out the insides, mix with a beaten egg, grated cheese, salt and pepper, heap the mixture back into the skins and return to the oven for another quarter-hour until the tops are golden brown. A meal in itself!

Cheap, filling, nutritious with the right toppings and needing the minimal investment of labour, the baked potato is every busy mother’s ideal supper!

I decided to do something about it.  After reflecting on that for awhile I discovered the biggest problem with cooking supper was deciding what to make so I got off a notebook computer and started writing off meal ideas complete with entremotses.  I even asked friends and family occasionally what they were having for dinner to get more ideas.

I had my girl give me ideas too for her favorite meal choices and entremotses.  She did a good job of coming up with things I hadn’t even made in a long time.  I found that asking her when she was thirsty seemed to help her creative juices come up with more ideas.

Now every week I’ve my little notebook computer of meal ideas and I decide on 8 of them and go shopping for the ingredients to make them.  I then make a list and put it on the board of the 8 different menu choices and cross them off as I make them.

At the end of the week there has always one meal left over, I often find I didn’t make it because someone doesn’t like it much or it takes too long to prepare.  I then make a little note in my notebook saying cook this when so and so won’t be home, or only put this on the supper list when you know you’ve time to make it.

I find I don’t dread cooking supper nearly as much, I’ve eliminated the quick run to the food market before making supper, and have made my life much simpler when it comes to cooking supper.