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Got mushrooms? We’ve got ideas. 🍄 Chef Laz has just dropped 4 brand-new mushroom recipes for Premium Members. Head to your Chef Tab and have a look.

Mushrooms are one of those ingredients that can go in so many directions — rich and savoury, quick midweek dinners, comforting bowls, proper weekend food.

And that’s exactly what this week’s Recipe Drop is about.

Premium Members: your 4 new mushroom recipes are waiting in the Chef Tab. Save the ones you fancy to My Cookbook so you can find them again.

Not Premium? You can still add mushrooms to your day in Ladybug and see what they contribute to your nutrient charts.

Not a fish fan? Mushrooms might just be your little vitamin D sidekick. 🍄 Vitamin D is the one supplement we recommend through the winter months, but we still love getting useful nutrients from real food wherever we can. And mushrooms have a very clever trick up their sleeve.

When mushrooms are exposed to UV light, they can produce vitamin D₂.
That matters because vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, supports healthy bones and contributes to normal immune function.

Oily fish is one of the best food sources — but if salmon, sardines and mackerel are a hard no, UV-exposed mushrooms are worth looking out for. Just check the pack.

If it says Vitamin D or UV-exposed, brilliant. If it doesn’t, don’t assume it’s giving you much.

Not magic. Not a replacement for your winter supplement. Just another ordinary food doing something useful.

Ladybug Larder: 🍄 MUSHROOMS! 🍄 Cheap, quick to cook and brilliant at soaking up flavour — but there’s another reason they’ve made it into the Ladybug Larder this week.

Mushrooms are one of the few foods that can provide vitamin D, particularly when they’ve been exposed to UV light. ☀️

Why does that matter?☀️
Vitamin D helps our bodies absorb calcium and supports healthy bones and muscles. That becomes particularly relevant as we get older and start paying a little more attention to keeping our bones strong — and vitamin D is naturally found in relatively few foods.

There is one catch: not every mushroom contains much vitamin D. Mushrooms exposed to sunlight or UV light can contain significantly more vitamin D₂ than mushrooms grown without that exposure, so if you see “UV-exposed” or “vitamin D mushrooms” on the pack, it’s worth noticing.

Otherwise? They’re an inexpensive, versatile ingredient that can go into soups, sauces, curries, omelettes, pasta, toast.

And tomorrow Chef Laz is dropping 4 brand-new mushroom recipes for Premium Members — all waiting for you in the Chef Tab. 🍄

Simple. Savoury. Useful. 🍄

Mrs. Ladybug 🐞🌸

Digestive system feeling a little sluggish? This week’s Recipe of the Week gives you a huge 19.2g of fibre in one portion — that’s around two-thirds of the recommended 30g daily fibre target for adults. And that’s before we even get to the protein, magnesium and calcium.

Chicken, Apple & Cashew Curry 🍎

One portion gives you:

🟢 19.2g fibre — 69%
🔴 49.1g protein — 70%
🟣 173.9mg magnesium — 32%
🔵 161.8mg calcium — 13%

That is a lot going on in one proper dinner.

Apple might not be the first thing you think of when you picture curry, but here it works beautifully with the chicken, vegetables, spices and cashews — adding sweetness, texture and another little nudge towards that fibre total.

Premium Members: the full recipe is waiting in your Chef Tab. Save it to My Cookbook if it looks like one you’ll want again.

👨‍🍳 CHEF’S TIP: APPLES 🍎
“Keep the skin on!” advises Chef Laz.
Wash your apples properly, then leave the skin on whenever you can — raw or cooked. That’s where much of the fibre is.

Mrs. Ladybug 🐞🌸

Does 3pm feel like 3am? That mid-afternoon slump can be very real. And if you’re sleeping badly, rushing through lunch, stressed, busy, or simply running on empty, it’s no wonder you start looking for *something* to keep you going.

There’s a whole industry ready to sell us the answer in a shiny wrapper. Sometimes that’s useful. Sometimes the answer is much less glamorous.

An apple. A spoonful of your favourite nut butter. Thrown in your bag on the way out the door.

Cheap, easy, portable, very little waste, and no pretending it’s a miracle food. Just a simple snack that might make your afternoon a little easier.

That’s the sort of thing Ladybug is about.

Real food.
Real life.
No need to make it more complicated than it is.

Mrs. Ladybug 🐞🌸



Visuals created with AI.

Friday Recipe Drop!🐞 📕 Got apples? We’ve got ideas. 🍎 This week Chef Laz has created 4 new apple recipes for Premium Members — taking the humble apple well beyond the fruit bowl.

Premium Members: pop into your Chef Tab, have a look at this week’s recipes and save the ones you fancy to My Cookbook.

Not Premium? You can still put that apple to work in Ladybug.

Add it to your day and watch what it contributes to your nutrient charts.

Not standing beside a kitchen scales wondering how much your apple weighs? 😂
Enter around 180g for a medium apple as a handy estimate, then watch those Ladybug levers move.

Because even something as ordinary as an apple is adding something to the bigger nutritional picture.

Mrs. Ladybug 🐞🌸

🐞🚪Ladybug Larder: APPLES! 🍎 🍏 Exciting! 😂 Wait… they actually do much more than you think. They’re cheap, easy to find, easy to carry around, there’s very little waste, and they’re one of the simplest snacks you can grab when you’re heading out the door.

No fancy packet. No prep. No container.

Just an apple. 🍎

They also give us **fibre**, especially when we eat the skin, plus vitamin C and other naturally occurring plant compounds.

And they’re much more useful than just being something you chuck into a lunchbox.

Slice them into yoghurt or oats. Add them to a salad. Roast them. Bake them. Pair them with cheese or nut butter. Use them in savoury meals.

That’s why apples have earned their place in this week’s Ladybug Larder.

Simple. Seasonal. Useful.

And this week Chef Laz has created **four new apple recipes** for Premium Members, showing just how far one very ordinary apple can go.

Mrs. Ladybug 🐞🌸

Beef, Beetroot And White Bean Borscht With Dill Quark. 🍲 When Laz first put a bowl of this strangely coloured soup in front of me years ago, I was more than sceptical.

These are liquid colours I’m used to seeing in my art studio — not in a bowl. 😂

But my goodness, the flavour. 💗

It’s rich, slightly sweet, slightly sour, and every spoonful has a different texture from the beetroot, cabbage, beef and beans. It is genuinely one of my favourite dinner soups now.

And making enough for lunch the next day in a Tupperware? Even better.

Nutritionally, one portion gives us:
70% protein
50% fibre
26% magnesium
16% calcium
8% omega-3

The beetroot starts the story, but the beef, white beans and dill quark build the wider nutritional picture.

Premium Members: you’ll find the full recipe in your Chef Tab until Thursday. Save it to My Cookbook so you can find it again.

Mrs. Ladybug 🐞🌸

I’ve been talking to my husband about my bowel movements for years. There. I said it. 😂 Or lack of bowel movements, more accurately.

“No pasta for me tonight.”
“Give me the root veg.”
“Have we got anything with more fibre?”

Very glamorous conversations in our house!!

But looking back, all those little conversations were part of something much bigger. 🐞 While I was trying to understand what was happening to my body, what I could do to feel better, and what I should actually be eating day to day, Laz was listening — with his chef / solutions-based brain working quietly in the background.

Somewhere along the way, all those chats about fibre, protein, calcium, magnesium and what was on my plate started becoming Ladybug.

So if talking publicly about something as unsexy as constipation helps another woman in her 40s think, “Oh! Maybe there’s a reason this is happening to me too”, then every awkward conversation was worth it…

Although I am cringing inside still. I’ll get over it! For you x

Mrs. Ladybug 🐞🌸