I know I shouldn’t admit it, these being the food pages of The Times and all that, but I’m getting a teensy bit bored with this cooking malarkey. Sure, we all like to play at being Jamie Oliver for a while, but it doesn’t half wear thin.

I wouldn’t mind doing my bit a couple of times a week, but that family of mine will insist on eating every day. So you cook them a really nice dinner, and what do you know? The next evening they want another one. As if they haven’t had breakfast and lunch in-between.

It simply can’t go on, which is why I’ve decided, in a brave two fingers to the culinary Zeitgeist, to embrace the ready meal. It will have to be on the sly, though. When you’ve spent as long as I have boring on about the importance of home cooking and how all the ills of the world can be traced to the Pot Noodle, it doesn’t do to send out mixed messages. So, ready meals that look and taste as good as home-made are the name of the game. But it’s much harder than you’d think.

I’ve never had a supermarket dish that made the grade – good for a supermarket, yes, but good for home-made, no – so that’s them out of the picture. The other day I pulled into Selfridges on the way home to pick up some dishes from Tom Aikens’ brilliant new takeaway range, launched late last year. I recall having enjoyed a velvety butternut squash soup and hearty coq au vin, but that’s all it will remain, a memory, because the tufty-haired one has given up on it, in order to concentrate on his restaurant empire, apparently.

So I cycled on to Whiteleys shopping centre in Bayswater. Hitler had the former department store lined up as his HQ for when he invaded Britain, but, more recently, it’s been in the sights of Dominic Ford, the man who made Harvey Nichols the foodie destination of choice in the Nineties.

Ford has installed Food Inc – a dozen or so stalls that snake their way around the ground floor. There’s a great butcher, fishmonger and cheese counter alongside a greengrocer, baker and deli, and prices are really pretty reasonable. I found a bottle of my favourite Spanish vinegar a good £2 cheaper than at Brindisa. I’ll certainly be back when I’m in more of a cooking mood, but, on the ready meal front, I drew a blank. You can hardly pitch up at home with two dozen fresh ravioli and pretend you whipped them up at work during a screen break (020-7229 8844; www.whiteleys.com).

For a truly home-made taste, I guess it has to be made in a home – just preferably not my own. With two days’ notice, chef Maria Balfour will drop off a full three-course dinner – something like braised lamb with parsley, beans and white wine, or chicken with tarragon and shallots, plus accompanying veg, which just needs to be shoved in the oven. But, at around £25 a head and with a minimum order of £120, it’s not really one for the children’s tea (020-7341 0914; www.effortless-eating.com).

What was much more to their taste, and undoubtedly my best find so far, is the fare of the Pudding Room, on the shore of Lake Coniston, where Helen Boardman makes the most phenomenal rum’n’raisin sticky date, lemon pond, traditional bread and butter and rich chocolate brownie puddings to her own family recipes. She uses the purest ingredients – just as you would in your own kitchen if you had the time and knowhow – and the results, we all agreed, are the finest we’ve tasted. Certainly the best I’ve ever not made. A pudding for four costs a very reasonable £5, but do make sure you hide the pretty packaging if you want to fool everyone (07769 697868; www.thepuddingroom.net).

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