cooking her meals - and it's even helped her shed weight.Margaret McKinley, from Edinburgh, has saved an astonishing £2,700 in total since she started cooking her food in advance before freezing it.The savvy Scot said it only takes her a few hours a week to prepare the meals which gives her plenty of free time on weeknights to spend with her family.Margaret said: "I started batch cooking about 18 months ago, because my then 18-year-old son left school and was taking a year or two out to decide what he wants to do.“Because Connor ate meals at school and my husband was on the oil rigs for three weeks in and three weeks off, I never really had to cook much."Then when Connor was home all day, I found he was a typical 18-year-old who wanted to.