One of the reasons we started up Bit Spicy was to make it easy for people to have a curry away from home. Whether you are in a holiday cottage in Cornwall (and remember, it will be raining!), working in Barcelona, back-packing in the Andes or even caravanning in the South of France, there may be moments when bifteck, baked beans, cottage pie, tortilla or roast guinea pig is just a bit boring!

This is why we include ingredients such as sugar and salt in some of our mixes. They are obviously things you have in your kitchen cupboard but may not carry with you on holiday. You should be able to find onion, garlic, ginger (though possibly only in a jar!) and canned tomatoes anywhere, whilst a block of creamed coconut is an easily transported substitute for a can of the milk (and needs just hot water!).

Here are a few ideas:

• Padang beef can be made with minute steak, in which case obviously it needs much less cooking and less liquid. Try using block coconut but with less water to make it creamier.

• Satay is perfect for BBQs. Marinate it when you start the fire up.

• We also have some other spice blends which you can use for bbqs or grilling. see our bbq section.

• Fry up some taco spice with whatever meat you have and eat wrapped in a lettuce leaf with some ordinary bread on the side - this is also the diet option for at home if you leave out the cheese! Strips of chicken work well here, or just use the spices as a bbq marinade.

• Whilst we talk about 'your secret sauce' a lot, we do have many recipes that don't use it: try the spicy meatballs, tandoori, padang beef and all the mexican recipes. They need the minimum of cookware (and hence washing up!). The 'secret sauce' is simply a mixture of onions, garlic and ginger, boiled then pureed, but if you can't face doing that you can either make some at home and bring it on holiday in your freezer (high-end camping!), or chop your onion and garlic as normal, add ginger if available and add a tin of tomatoes. This works beautifully for our tikka and keema peas recipes, and would do as well for most of our tomato-based curries.

• All the curry blends can be used by vegetarian, even when they have meaty names - Aceh chicken is particularly good! Our chilli con veg is delicious as a sort of spicy ratatouille if you are around the Med in summertime.