Food writer baffles This Morning viewers with tips for cheap lunches – as she claims parents should bake cakes while preparing packed lunches, freeze hummus and send kids to school with crumpets to be toasted

A mum has been criticized by This Morning viewers for her tips and tricks on how to prepare school lunches.

Food writer Suzanne Mulholland, known as ‘The Batch Lady’ from the Scottish Borders, took to the TV show today to discuss how parents can save money by cooking their children’s packed lunches.

The former time management consultant told Dermot and Alison about the cheapest foods to include in lunches, advising parents to make pasta in advance, freeze hummus and yoghurt and send their children to school with crumpets.

Suzanne is a fan of freezing various foods and thawing them when needed, and she asked her parents to clear out a drawer to dedicate to school lunches – admitting she has a large freezer to store all her items.

But her tips didn’t go down well with viewers, who said they wouldn’t give their children three-day-old pasta and questioned how to roast crumpets at school.

She told Dermot and Alison about the cheapest foods to include in the lunches, including pasta, hummus and crumpets

Suzanne Mulholland’s best tips for saving money when packing your child’s lunch

‘The Batch Lady’ went on This Morning today and talked about her tips and tricks on how to save pennies when preparing lunch.

Bake your own cakes

Instead of buying processed cakes to put in lunch boxes, bake your own when you make other items in the lunch box.

She said sweets are cheaper this way and you’re not feeding your kids highly processed food out of a packet.

Make hummus from scratch

The chickpea-based dip is cost-effective and can keep for days in the fridge, making it perfect for packed lunches.

Suzanne recommended baking cakes fresh and freezing them because it seems cheaper

But Suzanne says to make it yourself rather than using store-bought hummus, as it only contains a few ingredients and is therefore cheaper.

Hummus can be used with vegetables like carrot, celery or cucumber sticks, making it an easy way to incorporate vegetables into packed lunches, she said.

She said you can also freeze hummus and yogurt to consume at a later time.

Buy your bread in advance

Suzanne said if you want to change the type of bread you use in your sandwiches, buy the packages at the beginning of the month and keep them in the freezer so you can easily thaw and mix and match.

Dedicate a freezer drawer for packed lunches

Because Suzanne’s tips include a lot of food freezing, she says dedicating freezer drawers to school lunches gives you room to plan.

Buy in bulk

The Batch Lady said to avoid buying things advertised as lunch or snacks and buy things in bulk instead.

That way you can hand out what you need and it works out cheaper than buying compelling items.

Avoid juice boxes

Suzanne advised parents to avoid juice boxes because they can be quite expensive and instead use squash, which provides the same effective fruit flavor but is cheaper.

Batch Lady said: ‘If you’re not using your freezer right now, clear it out and get a drawer just for school lunches.’

She added later in the show: ‘If you have a few things that you’ve pulled out of the freezer, you can put them in still cold and then it will keep it cold going forward in the summer.’

But one user wrote: ‘You can’t just have a freezer drawer full of children’s lunches, what is she wearing?’

She then went on to say that you can easily freeze hummus and yogurt, much to Dermot and Alison’s surprise.

But others questioned how true this was, with one user claiming that the dishes would become watery if frozen and then thawed.

Suzanne’s segment did not go down well with fans of the show who lashed out at her freezing methods

‘Who freezes hummus???? WHO??? Ridiculous element. Yogurt gets watery if you freeze it,’ they said.

Suzanne also suggested that parents bake cakes while making the lunches in batches to make more efficient use of time, adding that the sweets could be kept in the freezer and taken out at a later time to ensure no food goes to waste .

The mother said cooking tonnes of pasta allows parents to hand it out during the week and she estimated portions can cost as little as 7p.

She said: ‘Things like pasta are really good to make. You can make it at the beginning of the week, it will last a few days in the fridge, about three days. If you’re on a budget, pasta is a great way to make (lunch).’

But one viewer took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to say they wouldn’t eat three-day-old pasta.

Another person wrote: ‘Who puts buns in the freezer? Just eat them.’

Suzanne also told parents to buy crumpets for school lunches if they are on a tight budget as they only cost ’20p a piece. portion and are really filling and lovely’

One user said they wouldn’t eat three-day-old pasta, as Batch Lady recommends

She then told parents to go for non-nut pesto and chocolate spreads if there are kids with allergies around, angering some viewers and questioning how they were doing in their school days.

‘Why should you go for non-nuts? Ffs how did we survive childhood before all this b*****ks,’ one commented.

Suzanne also told parents to buy crumpets for school lunches if they are on a tight budget as they only cost ’20p a piece. portion and are really filling and lovely’.

But viewers of the show questioned how their child would be able to eat a crumpet when it has to be heated up.

They wrote: ‘Now a crumpet needs to be heated or toasted. What f*** school would warm a krump?’

She then ended her segment by advising parents not to buy juice boxes because they are too expensive, but instead use squash diluted with water.