WHAT are you going to have for tea? That’s a question that always puts me in a quandary.

I’m not the most decisive person anyway, and being asked what I’m going to feel like eating in 12 hours time when I’m still chowing down breakfast, puts me in a bit of a spin.

It is good to plan ahead, and resident Taste blogger Jenny is a shining example of this, but sometimes you haven’t had chance to get to the shops or just don’t know what you feel like for dinner until the very last second.

Fortunately, there’s a website for people that need inspiration.

Cooking By Numbers allows you to tick on a checklist the contents of your fridge and cupboards.

After a few seconds you’re presented with a list of recipes you could make with what you have to hand, starting with meals that feature 100% of your ingredients working downwards.

Hmm, sounds easy enough I thought, so I decided to give it a go.

Now, I know I have a piece of chicken breast left from yesterday, garlic, onions, tomatoes, cooking oil, pasta, rice, stock cubes, herbs and spices and tinned tomatoes, so I sat back and let the website get on with the thinking.

Seconds later 12 pages of results were in. Here’s just a few of the recipes it suggested:

Hot or cold tomato salad (basically oven-baked tomatoes drizzled with olive oil, the word salad dresses it up a lot more than it deserves)

Chicken and tomato pasta (an obvious choice, but that’s what I had last night)

Grilled tomatoes (that really doesn’t sound exciting, at all)

Stuffed cabbage leaves (I didn't say I had any cabbages!)

Fish soup (I also never said I had any fish!)

So, if I want to make Stuffed Cabbage Leaves or Fish Soup, I’m still going to have to head to the shops anyway, which at least means I won’t be buying food unnecessarily as I already know I have the rest of the ingredients at home.

Will I use Cooking By Numbers again? Probably not. But on the positive side, it’s made me realise that I’ve got more go-to essentials in my kitchen than I thought, and I can certainly do better than grilled tomatoes!