Best supplier of ready meals.

A friend who is alone buys a selection of Gousto every couple of weeks. You do the cooking yourself, so if that is a problem it is not for you. She uses them to make herself have 'a proper meal from scratch' and to try things she otherwise wouldn't. Pricey BUT includes every last pinch of herbs so you do not need to buy a whole packet of something you will only use once. (The quantities are often for 2 but she manages to use the 2nd soon enough there is no waste).

My parents had Wiltshire Farm Foods. They found that the ones that were a little more expensive were better but they did think there was a lot of potato. M & S meals are good and some of Sainsbury’s. Good luck.

brazenp75 yes there’s an extensive collection of M& food on the Ocado website.

I may be wrong, but can you get M&S through Ocado?

I wonder if these manufacturers of foods are trying too hard to be 'healthy'?
Parsley Box were tasteless until my Dad in law started adding salt(!) and pepper, and found them quite palatable. Wiltshire also lack taste.
You can buy something called 'LoSalt' so I got some, and you can't tell the difference.
M&S are the best in this area, but I dare say Waitrose might be better still if you've a shop near you. Cost seems to be the deciding factor.

I find any M and S meal tasteless, the Lasagne is the worst I think. Only tried about 6 but didn’t enjoy any.

Wrong, Axeline. I like a lot of things about M&S but every time I'm tempted by one of their ready meals, I'm disappointed. That's my experience over many decades!!

My mum disliked Wiltshire farm foods. She liked home cooking and complained about the lack of pieces of meat in the stew from WFF.

M&S meals tasteless!! Can only assume you've not tasted many.

I don't actually dislike M&S meals, but I DO find them pretty tasteless.

And irrelevant , I suppose, but I remember when COOK started up ( in the 70s, I think)- it sold mostly delicious cakes/gateaux/traybakes at first and was a hot favourite with young mothers who were entertaining, as it was quite easy to pretend they were homemade. Have always thought it a shame that they moved on to concentrating mostly on ready meals.

My elderly relative (aged 95) alternates between WFF and Oakhouse. She prefers Oakhouse.

"Cook" meals are absolutely delicious. They're available online or from their own shops in some towns, Cirencester & Stamford for example. Our local Co Ops have also started selling them recently so that's probably a nationwide thing now. Excellent quality, lots of different options, tasty puddings as well as mains and starters. I have been known to serve one of their family sized meals to guests....sssh!

Another vote here for Wiltshire. Good variety of size meals, something to cater for most tastes. Having a disability that limits things that I can do, cooking a meal from scratch some days, means buying & having delivered Wiltshire Farm Foods is good! Much better than sloppy or dried up ready meals full of all the wrong things! Would recommend!

COOK, meals are lovely and varied they do portion sizes for 1 or more if you are entertaining .....yum

My MIL liked the mini meals as her appetite decreased as she aged. As others have said, there’s different sizes to choose from. MiL liked traditional fayre such as roasts, cottage pie, fish n chips etc. she never complained about the quality, ever. Maybe she was lucky?

VD, we ordered ordinary meals like the one shown. That wasn’t what arrived in terms of quantity, although, to be fair, it did say one dumpling and that was accurate.

WFF provide mini meals, ordinary sized meals and even hearty meals. They advertise them as such.

The mini meals are, unsurprisingly, mini.

The others aren't.

Small meals maybe, but WFF doesn’t advertise small meals. We tried 3 different ones, on special offer just in case we may ever need them.
Roast beef, veg and roast potatoes with gravy. Potatoes had multiple black patches on, the beef was OK but what gravy? It didn’t fill a tablespoon. Sausage and mash, with gravy. Sausage OK, just about a tablespoon of mash, but not enough gravy to make it enjoyable so I made some more.
I know illustrations of food are meant to show what it could be like, but the WFF meals we had didn’t match the pictures. This looks good and generous, but wasn’t what arrived in quantity or quality.

Dh loves Waitrose ready meal Nasi Goreng, which he first became addicted to while based in Jakarta for a year.

Towards the end of a long car journey we often stop at a petrol station with an M&S Food, and pick up a couple of ready meals. I usually go for a SE Asian noodle-y thing, but one we both really enjoyed in winter was the outsize Yorkshire pudding with beef, veg and gravy.
I could just fancy one now TBH, but we still have a lot of 🎄gammon to eat up.

I've never met an elderly person who doesn't want small meals.

Ethelwashere1

I’ve tried Wiltshire foods and they are not good. Too small portions and disgusting soft mashed potato. I would rather get a takeaway. Does being elderly mean you can’t enjoy a nosh up, a good potion of chips and a large fish (yum). I’ve never met an elderly person who doesn’t eat much.
If you are home all day then nothing wrong in cooking from scratch

Isn't mashed potato supposed to be soft? My inlaws would never dream of having a takeaway - neither could manage to eat a huge portion of fish and chops. Although they are both at home all day, neither is now capable of cooking meals from scratch. I do make soup and meals and take them to them whenever I can, but the Wiltshire foods (which are our local 'meals on wheels' service) have proved very useful in between times.

Another shout out for Oakhouse Foods. I get them for my dad and, although definitely not the cheapest, they are decent portions and I think are good value for money.

Don't understand why you 'can't stand ready meals especially M&S ones'. They have a massive range of types of meal from classics like cottage pie to pretty exotic vegan curries and all points in between. Have another look at M&S.

I don't know why but I have recently gone off cooking after a life-time of being considered quite a good cook.
It might have been after having lunch with a friend and our husbands. She cooked a wonderful meal and yes we loved it but I realized that I no longer wanted to produce four course gourmet meals which took hours of standing up and many techniques . I am keener on having simple meals now and have started trying out the various types of ready meals a couple of times a week. We like Cook, Charlie Bigham, Waitrose, M&S and also Asda 's sliced roast beef in gravy. That is really cheap but with fresh veg, frozen yorkshire and or frozen roast potatoes it makes a nice midweek meal with almost no effort. I don't know if this is just a phase I'm going through but for now I am happy with it. My daughter at first saw it as a sign of me 'giving up' but now realises that as I have lots of interests, committees etc. on the go that I am not giving up but simplifying things to free up time.

I don’t think anyone has mentioned Donald Russell. Their ready meals are excellent, the quantities are good and the food’s delicious. My Sister in law is no longer able to cook for herself and has a small appetite, so she orders frozen ready meals, desserts, etc., from DR. When I go to stay we both eat them and they are excellent.