It's been a while since the last post! And it may be a while till the next one. But it's time to start pulling the recipe drafts out of the drafts and into the light of day, because there's some gold here. Detailed posts are no longer – from now on it's just about the actual recipes!

Since having kids, the slow cooker has become thoroughly indispensable. The flexibility to prep gradually through the morning in amongst whatever else is going on, then to have dinner take care of itself when the witching hour comes around, is truly priceless. Almost every meal I make these days is either prepped in advance or takes less than half an hour to throw together.

Here's my fave slow cooker meal, which packs in tonnes of vegetables and has a gorgeous rich flavour, but from a kid's perspective is still pretty much just pasta with tomato sauce.

• Leave out the chilli for the kids' benefit and just sprinkle in some chilli powder or sriracha after the fact.
• Leave out the feta and parmesan to make it vegan.
• Switch out the pasta to make it gluten-free.
• Switch out whatever vegetables you like. I haven't experimented much because I love it so much as it is, but I bet sweet potato and carrot would be beautiful.
• Freeze to your heart's content; it tastes just as good defrosted.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!