AD| My Favourite Easy Veggie Meal for the Whole Family

This is a sponsored post with the supermarket, Jacks. But all words and opinions are my own. 

When it comes to deciding on weekly meals, I always try to find at least a few dishes that we can all have together – partially because it’s nice to all have the same thing, and it encourages Steven and I to eat better, but also because it’s so much less faff – and I am all about that no-faff life.

Jack’s (the supermarket owned by Tesco but super cheap) wanted to know my favourite meal for feeding a veggie family of 3 – my husband being a HUGE eater, me needing food to take to work, and re-heat, and something nutritious but delicious for a toddler. I popped off to the local Jacks, in Liverpool for the first time, and got to work with finding the ingredients for A Cupful of Kale’s Red Lentil Cottage Pie with Cheesy Sweet Potato Mash.

Obviously I’m not going to post the recipe because it’s not mine, but I would 1000% recommend going over and checking it out!

I first tried this recipe a few weeks into lockdown when the monotony of life and the monotony of my weekly menus all started to get too much, and I went on a hunt for new things to make. Since then, we have it regularly and Steven has even descried it as my “Signature dish” – before this, the closest I had to a signature dish was the fact that I ordered a chips and cheese wrap so often at our local takeaway, they finally added it to the menu…!

We’d never visited Jack’s before, but I was really impressed by the range of food on offer, and the prices – especially of fresh fruit and vegetables. It has the same quality as Tesco, but just focuses on things at a lower price point. For example, whereas in Tesco you might get 10 different varieties/brands etc of one thing, in Jacks you get one or two, which keeps the prices affordable. I also loved that 8/10 of the Jacks branded products are grown/reared/made in Britain, which is obviously better for the environment – Yay!

We found everything we needed (and more – we came out with a huge tray bake for dessert too!), and were really impressed at how much we got for £30.

The Lentil Shepherds Pie with Sweet Potato Mash makes a HUGE portion, so we always end up with lunch the next day, which makes it even better value for money. Ruben will eat a pretty big portion (we fill up his bamboo plate and sometimes he’ll even ask for more!) and I tend to cook it before I head to work in the evening and sit at my desk eating it. It’s really filling but without feeling too processed and is a really fab comfort food. 

I personally don’t add in the soy sauce or marmite, simply because we don’t use those things in the house usually so they’d be wasted if they were only used for this one recipe – but as we’ve never had it with them, I can’t say we’ve missed them or noticed anything missing. We also use vegan butter and vegan milk, because that’s our usual, but we do use dairy cheese because we’ve not made the switch here yet. I also sometimes bulk out the sweet potato mash with some smaller white potatoes, mostly because I tend to get quite big sweet potatoes and they don’t quite make 1.25kg and I don’t want to cut one up, so I use the others to make it up to the amount, and it makes a delicious mash. 

Oh the mash. I cannot tell you how much of it I eat as I make it. So much. I’m almost too full to eat the actual dish when it’s cooked because I’ve filled up on cheesy sweet potato mash! 

I would hugely recommend this recipe, even for the meat-eaters in your life as it’s a really wholesome dish, full of veggies. And I also loved my visit to Jacks and will absolutely pop in again!

What’s your favourite veggie meal that the whole family can enjoy? Let me know in the comments!