The Foodies Books

Do you wish you were a batch cook and freeze kind of parent, but you're really just not?

In today's episode with Kate Hall, we explore instead how to use your freezer to store random individual ingredients to build up a library of components to cook from, rather than having to make whole batch cooked meals.

Kate was a batch cooker before she had her second child, but found herself buying food to cook for the freezer and then failing to find time and wasting food while also buying convenience foods to make up the difference. Kate's solution was to find ways to freeze ingredients that might be about to go to waste, as well as leftover bits and pieces, to provide building blocks for meals later down the line.

Kate Hall is the Founder of The Full Freezer™ and author of the e-book ‘The Full Freezer (Save Food, Save Time, Save Money)’ and two children's books about reducing food waste. Kate helps busy parents reduce their food waste and cook from scratch more often by using their home freezers more effectively. Kate has been featured by BBC Radio, Prima Magazine and Channel 5 News and has collaborated with many creators and organisations within health & well-being, parenting, and sustainability. With over 100,000 followers from around the world, Kate is transforming attitudes towards food waste and empowering parents to cut down on convenience foods and embrace home cooking.

This interview goes over the principles of her method and is a great listen if you are often beating yourself up for letting good ingredients - and good intentions - go to waste. Learn how to hit a "pause button" on a half tin of tomatoes or a few spoons of pesto and stop feeling guilty about wasting food.

Go to https://www.thefoodies.org/freeze-ingredients/?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=The+Foodies+Books&utm_campaign=publer for the episode page where you can listen or find all Kate's links, or search for Food For Kids in your podcast player to find the show.

Today’s episode is for the parents who have sporty kids in their house and want to know if they should be doing something special with their food to help them.

You can’t scroll for more than a minute on social media now without seeing someone telling you to eat more protein, eat more fibre, eat your way to your exercise goals. Some of it is based in some nutritional science, lots of it is taken out of context and only really intended for professional athletes or serious weight trainers. And some of it is just plain inaccurate. But even if you manage to navigate which advice to listen to as an adult who does a lot of sport, how does any of it apply to child or teen athletes? Do you need to do anything different with food if your child is just sporty but not unusually so? If they’re in a serious team? If they train every day? Or if they perform at a high level? It’s easy to worry about whether you could be helping them more with their sport if you just knew what to do with their food.

Because there is so much inappropriate information out there, I wanted some one properly qualified to answer this, with expertise in both sport nutrition and children’s nutrition. I invited Ellie King on to answer your questions.

Ellie is a HCPC Registered Paediatric Dietitian, SENr Accredited Sports Nutritionist, and the founder of Fuel + Thrive Nutrition. Drawing from her background as a competitive swimmer, she helps adolescent athletes and sports families build practical, performance-focused nutrition habits that support health, wellbeing, and sporting success. Ellie has a three-tier coaching programme designed to help adolescent athletes and their parents build strong sports nutrition foundations - a self-paced online course, interactive group coaching, or intensive 1:1 specialist support, allowing families to choose the level of guidance that best fits their needs.

Ellie's posts are really helpful and practical so go and give her a follow at

To listen to this very helpful and practical episode go to https://www.thefoodies.org/ffk102/?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=The+Foodies+Books&utm_campaign=publer for the episode page to listen or find all of Ellie's links.



Music "Happy Days" by Simon Folwar via Uppbeat

On today’s show we are talking about how to support other people’s children who have allergies. We have had a couple of episodes about what to do if your child invites a friend home who has a special diet, we looked at coeliac disease in episode 10 and plant based or vegan diets in episode 41.

But today I wanted to look not only at inviting a child home for tea who has an allergy but also at the more specific topic of how to include a child with an allergy in a birthday party or event. It can be pretty nerve wracking entertaining other people’s children and especially if any of them have medical issues or allergies and you always want to do things safely and kindly.

Sara is a highly specialist allergy dietitian who has worked at two NHS UK allergy centres of excellence: St Thomas’ Hospital in London and Southampton. She helped establish the first adult allergy dietitian service in Southampton and now specialises in supporting children with allergies, both within the NHS and privately through her company, YNRD Ltd. She has taught and marked on the Southampton Allergy MSc and taught allergy on the Dietetics MSc at King’s College London as well as carrying out allergy research. She has also worked in CAMHS with children and with eating disorders, and is passionate about children’s nutrition, accurate allergy diagnosis, safe avoidance and reintroduction where possible, and providing realistic nutrition advice that supports a healthy relationship with food. She also specialises in allergy and eczema, and in 2024 set up the first paediatric dietitian role within the dermatology dept at Southampton Children's Hospital.

Sara posts helpful, no nonsense information over on her feed at so go and give her a follow.

To listen to this very helpful and practical episode go to the link in my bio and click on the image for this post to get to the episode page to listen or find all of Sara's links.



Music - Happy Days by Simon Folwar via Uppbeat

If you have a child in sixth form and they're looking at universities where the accommodation is in shared self catering flats, this episode is for you.

Today is the second of our two parter about preparing a child to feed themselves if they go to university or another post 18 route that requires living in dorms or shared accommodation. The first episode covered the catered route where you pay in your accommodation fees to include some or all of your food,now this episode is looking at the self catering route where some cooking facilities are provided and you make your own meals.

For these episodes I have been talking to my two grown up children, Jacob and Anna, who both finished university in the last couple of years. In this second episode it's an interview with Anna about her first two years at uni when she lived in flats with her own room and bathroom but a shared kitchen with total strangers. Anna had quite strong ambitions about what she would cook for herself when she left home, but the reality of a shared kitchen and a uni timetable made her adjust her expectations and we talk through that here.

To listen to this episode go to https://www.thefoodies.org/ffk97?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=The+Foodies+Books&utm_campaign=publer for the episode page to listen.



Music: Happy Days by Simon Folwar via Uppbeat

Is your child planning to go to uni in the next couple of years and considering a uni with fully catered halls of residence, at least in the first year?

Today is the first of a two parter about preparing a child to feed themselves if they go to university or another post 18 route that requires living in dorms or shared accommodation. Each episode covers one of two different aspects, the catered route where you pay in your accommodation fees to include some or all of your food, and then the self catering route where some cooking facilities are provided and you make your own meals.

For these episodes I am talking to my two grown up children, Jacob and Anna, who both finished university in the last couple of years. In this first episode it's an interview with Jacob about his first year at uni when he lived on campus, in a university where everyone who is on campus is fully catered. The brochure and the open days looked like a great set up, but for a bunch of reasons, he found the reality of it pretty tricky.

To listen to this episode go to https://www.thefoodies.org/ffk96/?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=The+Foodies+Books&utm_campaign=publer for the episode page to listen.



Music: Happy Days by Simon Folwar via Uppbeat

If you have a teen or pr***en, do you worry whether they are getting the nutrition they need?

On today’s episode we are focusing on food for teenagers, with dietitian Jo Scott.
We all have a general idea that when kids reach puberty and through their teens their eating might change, we know they will probably eat a lot more, they might be more independent and bolshy about their food choices, they might eat more socially and they might worry about their appearance and fitting in more and this might lead to them making different food choices.

But when your eldest child slides into this stage, life is so busy that it can be hard to take a minute and figure out what you need to do to support them, they might become a teenager on their thirteenth birthday but unlike the Harry Enfield sketch with Kevin the teenager, there isn’t a specific day where they suddenly become an adolescent and need adolescent things. So how do we know what they need as they go through this incredibly demanding time and how do we help them sift through all the misinformation on social media and find a good relationship with food for the future as they get ready to look after themselves?

Joanne Scott is a paediatric dietitian with over 13 years of experience. She works in one of the largest children’s hospitals in UK and also has a busy private clinic. Outside of this she is a mother to 2 children and so understands first hand the complexities and practicalities of feeding a child. Although she works with lots of age groups, she posts primarily about teenage nutrition on social media, as she feels this area can be overlooked.

To listen to this very helpful and reassuring episode go to the link in my bio and click on the image for this post for the episode page to listen or find all of Jo's links.



Music Happy Days by Simon Folwar via Uppbeat