Most of us thoroughly enjoy a good dinner party. Delicious food, good wine, great conversation – what’s not to love? But evening get-togethers can also be incredibly stressful, especially if you’re a busy professional and don’t have a lot of spare time to dedicate to preparing an elaborate meal.

If we were all capable supernatural beings capable of whipping up dinners in a matter of seconds, there’d be no need for freezers or frozen meals. But sadly, we’re all just ordinary individuals: we’re busy; we’re often stressed and tired; we have a million things going on; and we need pre-made dishes to fall back on when we just don’t have the time or energy to put together a meal from scratch.

Thank goodness for frozen meals! They’re a real life-saver when you just don’t have the time to cook up a feast for the family or for an upcoming dinner party. But there are also certain risks involved in freezing and thawing food, and if not done correctly, you could wind up contaminating dishes and making yourself and others very ill.

You can’t go wrong with lasagne. It’s saucy, delicious comfort food at its finest. And it’s a great frozen food option that defrosts easily, so you can store a few good portions in your freezer for those evenings when you feel like serving up hearty goodness without any of the effort.

For many of us, the last thing we feel like doing at the end of an exhausting day is preparing dinner. So we resort to grabbing take-out on our way home or we throw something super quick (but relatively unhealthy) into the oven. Home-cooked frozen meals, however, provide us with an option that’s both convenient and wholesome, so the whole family can eat well, while preparation time is kept to a minimum.

Whether you’re readying yourself for a busy week ahead or prepping meals in advance for a big dinner party, our ability to freeze food adds a lot of convenience to our lives. But if you’re going to, quite literally, put some meals on ice, it’s critical that you know how to defrost them properly when the time comes.

So, you’ve decided to go the somewhat easier route and serve take-out for dinner. There’s nothing wrong with that – sometimes you just have to be realistic about what you can handle given the time you have, and picking up takeaways will save you many precious hours at the end of a busy day.

Between securing a venue, booking a photographer and designing invitations, it can be easy to forget about the finer details involved in catering for a wedding. Managing the provisions at such a big event entails much more than just selecting starters, mains and desserts off a pre-planned menu. You have to consider budget, quantity, dietary restrictions and logistics, too.

Having friends or family over for a meal is so special, and so many incredible memories are made throughout the evening. Don’t let stress and poor planning affect how the evening goes, and take you away from spending time with your guests.