Articles

Camping Cupboard: Lightweight Wholefoods for Tent Cooking

What’s the best food to take camping? Lightweight dry wholefoods that cook fast in one pan: oats, couscous, red lentils, pasta and dried fruit. They need no fridge, weigh little, and turn into proper hot meals with nothing but a camp stove and boiling water.

Here’s how to build a camping cupboard that feeds you well for a weekend — or a fortnight — with recipes from our own kitchen adapted for life under canvas.

Suitcase Snacks: Healthy Eating on Planes, Trains and Road Trips

What are the best healthy snacks for travelling? In short: nuts, seeds, dried fruit, oat-based bars and rice cakes — foods that need no fridge, survive heat, pass airport security and actually keep you full.

Below, we break down exactly what to pack for every kind of journey, what survives a hot car (and what doesn’t), and the make-ahead recipes we rely on ourselves — all from ingredients you can stock up on in one order.

Game, Set, Snack: A Healthier Wimbledon Spread You Can Make at Home

Strawberries, cream and a centre-court spread — all made at home.

For two weeks each summer, the nation rearranges its schedule around grass-court tennis. The radio commentary drifts through open windows, the strawberries appear by the punnet, and somewhere between the first serve and the final tie-break, the inevitable question lands: what are we going to eat? Wimbledon and food are old doubles partners. An estimated couple of million strawberries disappear at the Championships every year, drowned in cream and chased down with something fizzy. It is a glorious tradition, and the good news is you can recreate the best of it at home for a fraction of Centre Court prices.

Here is our take on a few Wimbledon-inspired dishes: a spread of recipes that capture the strawberries-and-cream spirit of the fortnight, made at home with ingredients you can keep in the cupboard. Some happen to be lighter or plant-based, others are simply our favourite way to enjoy the classics. Below you will find our favourite warm-weather recipes from the Healthy Supplies kitchen, plus the store-cupboard staples that make each one work. Pull up a deckchair.

Whole, Flaked, Ground or Blitzed: A Cook’s Guide to Every Form of Almond

One nut, six ingredients — and how to use each one well.

Walk down any health food aisle and you’ll find the almond wearing half a dozen different disguises: whole and skin-on, blanched, flaked, ground into flour, blitzed into butter, even pressed into milk. They’re all the same nut — but each form behaves completely differently in the kitchen, and choosing the right one is the difference between a recipe that works and one that disappoints.

This guide walks through every form of almond, what it’s best at, and the recipes from our own kitchen that show each one at its finest.

The Nut-Free Hero: Why Pumpkin Seeds Deserve a Permanent Place in Your Kitchen

Everything a nut can do — welcome where nuts are banned.

Every nut-free household knows the frustration: so many of the “healthy snack” staples — trail mixes, nut butters, pestos, energy bars — are built on nuts. School lunchbox policies make it harder still, with most UK schools now operating strict no-nut rules.

Enter the pumpkin seed. These flat green kernels (also called pepitas) do almost everything a nut can do — crunch, richness, protein, healthy fats — while being a seed, and therefore welcome where nuts are banned. Better yet, they’re one of the most mineral-dense foods you can buy at any price. Here’s how to make them the hardest-working ingredient in your kitchen, with recipes from our own collection for every job.

The Dairy-Free Kitchen Starts with a Bag of Cashews

Cream, cheese, milk and ice cream — all from one humble nut.

Ask anyone who cooks dairy-free what their single most important ingredient is, and the answer is rarely a speciality product from the free-from aisle. It’s the humble cashew. Soaked and blended, cashews transform into cream, milk, soft cheese, frosting and ice cream so convincingly that dinner guests routinely refuse to believe there’s no dairy involved.

If you’re newly dairy-free — or cooking for someone who is — this guide will take you from a plain bag of cashews to a complete dairy-free repertoire, with tried-and-tested recipes from our kitchen at every step.

Beyond the Pudding: A Complete Cook’s Guide to Chia Seeds

One bag, a dozen jobs — the cook’s guide to chia.

If your bag of chia seeds only ever comes out for the occasional overnight pudding, you’re missing most of what this remarkable little seed can do. Chia is one of the most quietly versatile ingredients in the store cupboard: it thickens, binds, sets, replaces eggs, turns fruit into jam without cooking, and slips invisibly into bakes, smoothies and breakfast bowls.

In this guide we’ll walk through chia’s kitchen superpowers one by one — with tried-and-tested recipes from our own kitchen for every technique.

5 Store-Cupboard Swaps That Save You Money

Same cupboard, same cooking, noticeably smaller food bill.

With food prices still creeping up, it’s tempting to think eating well has to cost more. In our experience, it’s usually the opposite: the biggest savings come from swapping heavily-branded, over-packaged products for honest, single-ingredient wholefoods that you buy once and use again and again.

We pack all of the ingredients below under our own Sussex Wholefoods range, right here in Sussex. Here are five simple swaps to start with – each one lowers your cost per serving, keeps for ages in the cupboard and cuts down on food waste too.

Sunflower Seeds: The Underrated Powerhouse

A little ingredient that quietly earns its place in the cupboard.

Sunflower seeds tend to live a quiet life in the cupboard. They’re not flashy. They don’t get the press that chia or hemp gets. There’s no wellness influencer dedicated to their cause. And yet, we’d argue they’re one of the most useful, affordable, and genuinely good-for-you ingredients you can have on hand.

We pack a lot of them under our Sussex Wholefoods range, and they’re the kind of thing we keep reaching for in our own kitchens. So here’s a proper look at why we love them, what they actually do for you, and how to use them without overthinking it.

Cook For Dad: 5 Healthier Twists on BBQ Classics

Father’s Day weekend, the grill is fired up, and dad’s got tongs in one hand and a cold drink in the other. The smoke smells incredible — but the bill on his arteries doesn’t have to be. Whether you’re cooking for a meat-and-two-veg traditionalist or a plant-curious dad who’s open to a swap, these five wholefood upgrades deliver the same crave-able, smoky, sticky BBQ hit with more fibre, more plant protein, and less of the ultra-processed stuff.

Every recipe below uses store-cupboard staples you can grab from our pantry, and they’re all dad-tested for that “is this actually plant-based?” reaction in a good way. Pour him a Paloma mocktail, fire up the BBQ, and let’s get cooking.

The Quick Answer: What Are Healthier BBQ Alternatives?

Five easy swaps make a classic BBQ healthier without sacrificing the flavour dads love:

Beef burger → kidney bean & oat burger (more fibre, less saturated fat)
Pulled pork or ribs → sticky sweet-mustard glazed seitan (high protein, no nitrites)
Chicken kebabs → tofu satay with peanut sauce (plant protein, big flavour)
Mayo-heavy coleslaw → Thai rainbow crunch salad (crunchy, peanut-dressed, no dairy)
Shop-bought crisps → smoky & sweet BBQ spiced pumpkin seeds (zinc, magnesium, & serious crunch)

Each swap takes 30-45 minutes and most of the prep can be done the day before. Let’s break them down — keep scrolling for each recipe.

Stock the BBQ Pantry: Healthy Supplies Essentials

Every recipe above is built on a handful of pantry heroes worth keeping in. If you’re starting from scratch, this is the shop:

Smoked paprika & onion powder — the duo that makes anything taste BBQ-y
Organic kidney beans, butter beans & black beans — patty-base for any veggie burger
Firm tofu and vital wheat gluten — your high-protein blank canvas
Organic pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds — for snacking and topping
Smooth peanut butter and tamari — the satay sauce backbone
Tinned coconut milk — for satay, slaws and marinades
Apple cider vinegar with the mother and Dijon mustard — for glazes and dressings

Frequently Asked Questions

Are bean burgers as filling as beef burgers?

Yes — and arguably more so. A bean and oat burger delivers roughly the same protein (15-18g) as a similar-sized beef patty but adds 8-10g of fibre, which is what actually keeps you full. Beef burgers spike, then crash. Bean burgers stay with you.

Can you BBQ tofu without it falling apart?

You can — and the trick is pressing it first. Wrap firm tofu in clean tea towels, weigh down with a chopping board and tins for 30 minutes to squeeze out moisture, then cube and marinate. Pressed tofu holds together on skewers and gets a beautiful golden crust.

How do you make BBQ taste smoky without the meat?

Three ingredients do the heavy lifting: smoked paprika, soya sauce (or tamari), and a touch of liquid smoke if you have it. A pinch of cumin and a small amount of date syrup or coconut sugar rounds out the flavour. Together they recreate the smoke-meets-caramel character that meat gets on the grill.

What sides go best with a plant-based BBQ?

Anything fresh and crunchy to balance the smoky, sticky main. Our top three: the Thai Rainbow Crunch Salad above, a Roasted Red Pepper & Walnut Dip with flatbreads, and a simple cucumber-and-mint yogurt (dairy-free yogurt works perfectly). Add corn on the cob and you’re done.

How can I make BBQ healthier for kids?

Lean on the bean burger and the tofu satay — both are kid-friendly when you ease off the chilli. Serve in soft bread rolls or wraps, with the satay sauce on the side for dipping. Skip the seitan for under-5s (gluten texture can be a bit much) and the BBQ pumpkin seeds for under-3s (choking hazard).

The Bottom Line

A healthier Father’s Day BBQ doesn’t mean lecturing dad over his lunch. It means putting genuinely delicious food in front of him — food that happens to bring more fibre, more plants and less of the stuff he’d rather not think about. These five recipes are the easiest place to start.

From all of us at Healthy Supplies, Happy Father’s Day. Now go fire up the grill.

Need the pantry staples? Stock up on Father’s Day weekend essentials with free delivery on orders over £25 (code FDEL).