Good Food, Good Mood: 5 Clever Kitchen Tips + Win a $500 Gift Card

FACT: Good food makes people happy. Especially when you’re over-the-top hungry. 

While going out to get good food is always a treat, it’s probably not something you want to do every single day. Most nights, it’s up to us mums (AKA kitchen queens) to dish up the goods for not only ourselves, but our entire families.

This is why Harvey Norman is giving away a Good Food Good Mood $500 gift card to one of our lucky Mum Central mums. Put yourself in a better mood and prepare for some seriously good food with these five clever kitchen ideas that make cooking less time consuming and more fun.

Be sure to keep reading down to the bottom of the page to enter to win a $500 Good Food Good Mood Gift Card to spend on food and drink at scores of restaurants right around Australia. It takes just 20 seconds to enter and you could be the lucky winner. You never know! 

Find your cooking mojo

1. Make use of technology

Love it or loathe it, technology is pretty much here to stay. Not only can you use the wonderful advancements in technology to entertain your kids for hours (thanks YouTube), but you can also use it to boost confidence in the kitchen.

Take Harvey Norman’s range of kitchen appliances. Their ovens, cooktops, steamers, combination steamer ovens and pyrolytic ovens not only cook for you, but also come with built-in recipes, self-cleaning features and all sorts of other high-tech functions to give you more confidence in the kitchen.

They even have rangehoods that automatically turn on when needed. That’s right – your rangehood basically talks your oven and automatically turn on so you don’t have to do it.

Gotta love technology!

2. Involve the kids 

Sure, you have to pretty much monitor their every move and you will probably find that their carrot grating skills leave you with a minor eye twitch, but, hey, it’s all about doing something together as a family and teaching the kids about responsibility.

You may be surprised how many tasks the kids can do on their own, even if you’re not confident letting them use knives (or a grater). And induction cooktops, like those from Bosch and Miele, help make cooking safer because they don’t get so hot to the touch.

3. Stop cleaning 

Okay. Not entirely. You still need to do the dishes and wipe down the counters.

But do yourself a HUGE favour and invest in a self-cleaning oven. Seriously, these things are insanely awesome and will save you hours and hours of scrubbing.

Harvey Norman’s pyrolytic ovens come with a special self-cleaning button. Instead of turning it on to cook, you turn it on to clean. Then it locks the door and heats everything to reduce it to ash. All you have to do is open it, give your oven a bit of a wipe and it’s clean!

4. Add music

Music goes really well with cooking. As does wine. Lots and lots of wine. But wine also tends to cause you to burn dinner. So we suggest pumping up the (kid-friendly) tunes and dancing your way through the slicing and dicing.

A little bit of music can make the tedious task of prepping dinner a lot less dull. And it will hopefully put the whole household in a good mood too!

5. Invest in your appliances 

They are there to make cooking easier for you. So why not use them? There are heaps of different appliances that really can make your meal time easier. The GLEM Multifunction Cooker, for example, is a powerful and versatile freestanding oven that is fuelled by natural gas, taking the cooking costs down and ensuring you have the right temperature every time.

A multi cooker is another must for busy mums. Add ingredients. Turn it on. Leave the house. Come home after work or school pick-up to dinner practically cooked. You don’t have to stand in front of a stove making sure you don’t burn it. You don’t even have to be in the house!

Testing out different appliances can also help you gain more confidence to experiment with different dishes you normally wouldn’t try out. You may be surprised how great you are at making food taste good, with the right tools on your bench.

Whip up some good food– And win $500

Feeling motivated to get cooking? Great! Get your kitchen party started with $500! 

Simply click on Harvey Norman’s Good Food Good Mood competition for your chance to win a $500 gift card to spend at your pick of a swag of restaurants around Australia.  

It takes all of 20 seconds to enter and you could be the lucky winner. Gotta be in it to win it, though! So head on over now!

This is a sponsored article for Harvey Norman.