I sent my son to school this morning with a banana bran muffin in his tummy instead of the usual natural yoghurt with a spoonful of Nutella mixed in.

Now it’s 10am and my fingers are already smelling of garlic and onion. Their flavours are happily combining with that of tomato, red wine, herbs and organic minced beef in a pot on the stove. A slow cooked bolognaise sauce in the making.

The de Beer home cooking revolution has begun.

It started two days ago after watching the first two episodes of author Michael Pollan’s Netflix series Cooked.

What it boils down to is that people in developed countries, especially the US, are cooking less and less in favour of takeaways or ready-made, store-bought meals. Some spend more time watching cooking programmes than actually cooking. The health consequences are obvious.

My guilty conscience was triggered. Since I’ve started working longer hours, supper more often consisted of frozen schnitzel and chips (French fries/pommes frites for the non-South-Africans). Or some other pre-cooked dish shoved into the oven. Mostly with a tossed salad on the side, but still. I even bought canned Goulash soup the other day!

The advice of one of the experts on Cooked struck a chord. Eat as many biscuits or apple pie as you want as long as it’s home cooked from scratch. The same obviously applies to other food.

“Let’s try it,” I said to Coenraad, my husband. Fortunately, he eats everything I put in front of him, whether home cooked or junk food. His not-so-healthy guilty pleasures are Coke (Coca Cola), chocolate and cheese fondue.

My son Mattheus eats most fruits and vegetables in a raw state, but has a terrible sweet tooth. Not an afternoon goes by without him asking for chocolates, biscuits or sweets. In the evenings, meat and starches are often left over on his plate.

For now, my focus is purely on home cooked or baked. Even fudge and chocolate brownies are allowed as long as it’s not store-bought. We are not vegetarian, although I sometimes cook vegetarian. We also don’t suffer from food allergies. If a recipe calls for butter, eggs and regular flour, that’s what I use.

And no, I’m not going to throw away the few packets of biscuits and sweets left in the pantry. But once they’re finished, I will try my best to keep Mattheus satisfied with homemade treats.

Now that I’ve written a blog about my home cooking revolution, the pressure is on to at least try and stick to it as long and as well as possible.

If you are also inspired, here is the recipe for the banana bran muffins. I found it hand written in one of my recipe files. If I remember correctly, I was searching for a bran muffin recipe a few years ago and assembled this one based on the ingredients I had at home.

It makes about 24 muffins. I kept a few out for the next couple of days, but also froze some in pairs to take out later for lunchboxes or afternoon snacks.

Banana Bran Muffins

750 ml whole wheat flour

500 ml wheat or oat bran

250 ml brown sugar

12,5 ml bicarbonate of soda

5 ml baking powder

2,5 ml salt

5 ml vanilla essence or vanilla sugar

500 ml milk

80 ml oil (sunflower or canola)

2 eggs

3 mashed bananas

Mix all the dry ingredients together. Whisk the eggs and add to the dry ingredients together with the milk, oil and banana. Mix well. Fill muffin pans or paper forms up to two-thirds. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 15 minutes.