Meet The Member - Theo Michaels of FiveDinners
Our member - Harpenden celebrity chef Theo Michaels is the person behind FiveDinners.com. He is a Masterchef semi-finalist and author of six books, who alongside his wife have launched this wonderful weekly meal planning service to help make life easier and take the stress out of deciding what to prepare for your family each night.
Each week Theo creates a meal plan with five delicious easy family-friendly recipes with one complete shopping list which is then emailed out to subscribers, and also available electronically. You can change serving sizes, skip days and it automatically generates your weekly shopping list; saving money on your grocery shopping and reducing your food waste.
Theo, who has lived in Harpenden for over a decade, said he decided to set up the service after becoming fed up with the stress of meal planning. He discovered a need for some sort of structure for him and his family, especially when it came to shopping for ingredients. He started meal planning and he drastically reduced his food bill, found he was wasting less food and the children loved the meals.
This week we had the absolute pleasure of talking to Theo Michaels of FiveDinners, to find out more about him and his wonderful online meal planning service.
Hi Theo! We’d love to hear a little bit about your upbringing.
Born in Edmonton, London and lived there till I was five then moved to New Jersey, US and lived there for four years before moving back to London for a couple of years and eventually settled in Hertfordshire. Coming from a large Greek Cypriot family; whenever I think of my childhood I always think of food, noise and lots of people!
Have you always had a passion for food? Were your family good cooks growing up?
Food is part of our culture and DNA; time is spent grazing over the dining table, lingering around smoking Greek barbecues, food, people, conversation. My mum is an excellent cook, as is most of my family; I think with many Mediterranean cultures (and many others) everyone tends to be a good cook as everyone gets involved – whether they want to or not!
How did your food career start?
Professionally it started after MasterChef; after working in the corporate world for the best part of 20 years I suddenly found my passion again for food and decided to exit the business I was a shareholder in and follow my passion for cooking.
We’re huge fans of MasterChef. What was it like being on the show?
Surreal and all-consuming! It’s an incredibly intense process that absorbs every waking hour (and a few when you’re asleep!) but is also a magical experience to be surrounded by lots of other food geeks that get equally excited over ingredients, textures, flavours… Being on MasterChef and then working in food professionally is a bit like learning to drive – you do MasterChef and that’s passing your driving test; you’ve got a bit of credibility and then you spend the next 7 years on the road actually learning to be a chef.
Who inspires you?
It’s the people closest to me that are the most inspirational. For sure there are tons of incredible chefs that I admire, but the people that inspire me is my wife Anna, my Mum and Dad.
Anna holds our family together; I’m always bouncing around and never quite know what day it is, the kids have got a social life any 1980’s socialite would be envious of with a kids-club timetable that requires a degree in physics and algebra to schedule. Anna juggles all of us, her work and life – how she does it I don’t know…
My Mum is an incredible cook and artistic while my Dad has a zest for life and more energy than most people I know and always instilled a sense of living life on your own terms with a passion which is something that I hope to instill in my own children.
What ingredient do you dislike the most?
Ooh – tough one! Expensive ingredients annoy me; too often I think they are a cop-out for chefs or restaurants to charge a huge amount of money for mediocre food; I’m always most impressed when humble ingredients are turned into something delicious; not buying an averagely cooked Wagyu steak for mega bucks; just because it’s Wagyu.
What your absolute favourite meal?
Pretty much any fish cooked on a BBQ! I love simple food with touches of flair. And a beautifully fresh fish cooked on a BBQ (always charcoal – never gas) with a little dressing and I’m in heaven – just don’t forget the rose!
What is FiveDinners.com and why did you start it?
FiveDinners.com was born out of our own need to get our dinnertimes sorted. I was often working overseas for weeks at a time and albeit my wife won’t admit to being a good cook (she is) we needed a plan and wanted to stop shopping every day for food, wasting food and generally just wanted to make dinnertimes less stressful.
So, we started creating meal plans with a shopping list and literally overnight our shopping bill was slashed in half (because we weren’t buying random things while cruising around the supermarket isles), the stress of dinnertimes disappeared as we knew what we were cooking for the week and everything just got easier – and we stopped wasting so much food!
Tell us a bit more about the weekly meal plan process and how you choose your recipes for subscribers.
We create new recipes every single week and every meal plan is well balanced with fish, meat and vegetarian dishes. We ensure our recipes use easy to source ingredients, easy to cook, delicious and no processed ingredients – dinnertimes should be family time, delicious and healthy. If the recipe doesn’t deliver on those we don’t use it.
Ultimately, we cook what we eat at home and what works for a family. We stay away from expensive ingredients and technically difficult dishes.
What if you’re picky with your food? Can these plans be tailored?
Absolutely! Members can create their own meal plans choosing from our selection of hundreds of recipes broken into neat categories like 20 minutes, low calorie, GF, vegetarian, kid friendly, pasta, chicken and lots more! Meaning you can create the perfect meal plan for your family and get your shopping list with one click of a button.
Equally when members join they say how many they are feeding and the meal plans and shopping list are delivered to them set to their serving size so whether you’re feeding one person or family of 8 we’ve got you covered.
BUT… we’re always investing in the business and developing it further and right now are in the process of developing our biggest update so far that will make FiveDinners even more unique to every member.
What has been the most rewarding experience since FiveDinners began?
It’s probably the messages and feedback – we’ve received tons of lovely messages from members saying how much it’s helped them get out of that dinnertime rut and is saving them time, money and stress. And that’s awesome! We also really love hearing when parents say they’re surprised that their kids are eating things they never thought they would – that’s really cool.
How can the community of Harpenden benefit from this meal plan service?
Where do I start?! We’ve lived in Harpenden for 14 years and love being part of the community; the great thing about being a member; besides making your dinnertimes less stressful, saving money and cutting food waste is you also get exclusive access to our hot line – that’s right! Members can text us Monday to Friday for real time help in the kitchen; so, if you get stuck with a recipe or just want to ask a question you can text us and we’ll reply straight away!
You live with your wife Anna and three children in Harpenden. Why did you decide to live here and what are your favourite things to do here of a weekend?
Honestly, I never heard of Harpenden before some friends moved here; we were living in Crouch End at the time and used to visit our friends ‘in the country’ and just fell in love with how cute it is. We were thinking of moving from London to start a family and liked how safe it felt and how much open space there was. So, we took the plunge! At weekends, now we have a dog, we enjoy a good walk (which pretty much always culminates in milkshakes and coffee somewhere!)
Do you have a favourite local restaurant?
We’re big fans of the Silver Palate; the food is great, service is friendly and we always have a great time.
Finally, What would you like to see more of in Harpenden?
FiveDinners.com members of course! 😊 I was really pleased to see the Food Festival last year doing so well and hope more of those types of events make their home in Harpenden.
Use code ‘WEAREHARPENDEN’ for your first month free of Five Dinners on signing up to a monthly membership!