I like good food and want to feed Boo the best, home cooked meals, however if I’m being completely honest I neither have the time nor inclination to stand and cook a meal from scratch everyday – c’mon I’m the woman who gets up before 5am to sit and work so you can guess what my energy levels are like at dinner time! So imagine my intrigue when Tefal invited me to an afternoon of cooking and filming with their Cook4Me, with the promise of home cooked meals ready in a matter of minutes not hours.

The Tefal Cook4Me is an intelligent pressure cooker coming with 50 pre-programmed recipes; it guides you easily thought the ingredients required and recipe with step by step instructions and automatic cooking times and temperatures. Plus each dish can be adjusted to serve 2, 4 or 6 people – perfect for me and Boo as many cooking gadgets are designed for a family of four which doesn’t suit us at all.

We had a great afternoon getting to try out different recipes, my two favourites being tuna puttanesca and the leek and butternut squash risotto. Yes I’d read the claims at just how easy the Tefal Cook4Me was but until I tried it for myself I chalked it down to just another gadget… I was wrong.

It’s like my new little black bowl of kitchen tricks – it’s sleek design means it sits really well on the counter top and doesn’t look too bulky and we’ve used it so much. I love how Boo can be really involved with helping to cook a dish in a safe and fun way. Recently we’ve been cooking risotto a lot which is great as it’s one of my favourite dishes of all time (and is fast becoming one of Boo’s too!) but it’s not something I would ordinarily cook as a) it’s a lot of work for the two of us and b) the whole stirring a pan for the entire time kind of puts me off (are you sensing a theme with my reluctance to commit to cooking?), thanks to the Cook4Me the risotto is ready from opening the fridge for the ingredients to dishing it up in less than 20 minutes – amazing!

The Tefal Cook4Me isn’t just a one course trick pony, it can make soups (the Italian vegetable soup is super tasty), cook meat joints (imagine a roast chicken in less than an hour!) and even rustle up a crème brulee – that’s our Sunday dessert sorted!

Thanks to the Tefal Cook4Me I’m able to up my culinary game and retain my title amongst friends as the lazy Nigella!

Disclosure: We were kindly sent a Tefal Cook4Me

The summer holidays are coming to an end and whilst it is the mother of all juggling acts to balance spending the most time possible with Boo and making precious memories and that funny thing called work. For me that means getting up at 5am to get a head start on the day and pulling very late nights to make sure I meet deadlines. I’m more than happy to do this though as when I’m old and grey I want Boo to have wonderful memories of her childhood and all the time we got to spend together.

Getting old is something that none of us can escape and for one of the first times in history we are about to see the number of our senior generation surpass that of the youth, with those 65 and up making up 15.6% of the global population by 2050. That’s my generation as I will be 62 in 2050 and whilst that may seem forever it’s not; and as we get older our mobility and ability to do seemingly everyday tasks can reduce. Bathing Solutions provide mobility bathrooms across the UK and have just launched a brand new campaign which aims to help break social barriers for elderly people. They want to see elderly people continue to learn ne skills and feel a greater sense of belonging within their local and wider community.

Yes not all memories Boo has of her childhood will be Kodak moments but even the ones where we’re sat on a park bench looking up at the sky guessing where the planes are going are ones that will hopefully bring a smile to her face and remind her of fun times and who know what skills I’ll decide to learn when I’m elderly – as long as it’s not embarrassing mum dancing I think Boo will be happy with whatever I choose.

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