If you have ever looked at some of the products on offer in the chilled section of your local supermarket, then you will know how overpriced they can be. If you want a tiny pot of potato salad, pasta salad or mixed bean salad then it will normally cost you far too much money. After all, they do not have very expensive ingredients…

Here is a recipe that I came up with after getting fed-up with being fleeced by the big stores.

1. Rinse off a tin or two of mixed beans and empty them into a bowl.

2. Choose which vegetables (or maybe even fruit) you want in your salad and get them all chopped up. I always use; onion, tomato, celery and a red or green pepper. Maybe you want to do it differently? Drop in a bit of whatever you fancy.

3. Give it all a good stir and then add a good splash of soy sauce. This will give it lots more flavour and your ingredients will soak it up. If you are a fan of garlic then crush/dice some very finely and bung it in. If you are not a fan of garlic then check to see if you have a reflection in a mirror…

4. Make sure that it’s all really well mixed and that’s it. Easy, huh? And you will have about thirty times more bean salad than you would get in one of those tiny little pots! Not only that, but your salad is going to taste even better the next day because all of the flavours will have mingled.

Obviously, if you can do this with a mixed bean salad then you can do something similar with a pasta concoction. Have a mess around with a few different ingredients and see how you get on.

Update on Jayne’s surprise party: I need a few more people to get in on the resorts idea and I can put the money down so we can put this plan into action.