Only 1 in 4 meals cooked from scratch....

[Deleted User]

Well I am an ...errm slightly older lady and I don't eat processed food mainly because I just don't like the taste I have never eaten a chicken nugget, and wouldn't know where on a chicken you would find one.I also have never ever bought chicken breasts as I like to buy a whole chicken( better value) and cook it in the slow cooker (which in turn gives me free chicken stock for my HM soups.) I also have never bought a shop made sandwich I just don't like the look of them.
I do buy wholemeal bread mainly because I could not knead bread anymore because my right arm has lymphodema and has very little strength in it, but as I don't eat a lot of bread a loaf lasts me about 10 days as I portion it up and freeze it.

Today I bought a kilo of onions.two large leeks ,a kilo of carrots a big head of celery and some tomatoes .This will keep my fresh veg rack going for the best part of a week I have some potatos in the rack that need using up so Leek and Potato soup will be made I also want to make a carrot cake for the tin plus the rest after I have grated a couple for the fridge I will peel slice blanche and freeze. Some of the celery will go into a salad with the tomatos and some cucumber I have already and the rest maybe made into celery soup.The onions I will peel and dice and put into the freezer for use during the next month.The veg came to £2.53 and I have the basics of quite a few meals there.
If my tomatos start to get a bit soft I reduce them down with a bit of onion,and garlic and once cold freeze for use when I make pasta. Pasta I buy as again its not worth the effort of making it unless you have a pasta machine and when you live alone as I do pasta is usually a once a week meal I enjoy rice instead of veggies at times especially with chilli or curry.I amke my own curry from left over bits of my SC chicken Its amazing how much meat simply falls off the bones.I am lucky in as much as I am time-rich although at times penny-poor but what I do have with home cooking is my own satisfaction that I am independant at the moment and enjoy streeeetching the food and my purse. This month I have been especially frugal as I want to defrost my freezer before Christmas so the meat and fish in there is being used up over the next few weeks.To those who are time poor processed food is very useful but its just not for me personally.
One of my grandsons who is in the seniors and year 8 had to take to school last week
Half a melon
a bunch of grapes
and apple
an orange
and some skewers He was then 'taught' to cut them in half and make fruit kebabs with them The ingrediants and skewers cost my DD a fortune She wasn't best pleased as none of his brothers wanted to eat them time he got them home in the afternoon .But I was happy to take the other half of melon home and enjoyed some with my dinner that night and the rest in the morning for breakfast (I do hate any sort of waste :))

fuddle

To be honest my confidence and ability when cooking still isn't great. I will cut corners because I know if I don't it will all end in disaster.

I don't consider myself to cook from scratch all the time and I probably fall into the 1 meals in 4 malarky but that doesn't mean I and my family live of frozen meals.

I'll grill up a chicken breast, open a tin of peas and roast some potatoes and will think nothing of whipping up a peppercorn sauce from a sachet.

I'll use mince,veg and red wine in my lasagne along with dried pasta sheets, a jar of cheese sauce and beef stock from a cube.

As far as I'm concerned as long as i'm using good proteins and complex carbohydrates in my cooking then does it really matter whether my meals are prepared from complete scratch. Is it so wrong to use short cuts... and some short cuts do end up being cheaper when looking after the pennies.

Ok, us oldstyle people have a grasp on batch cooking and know we can string and pad meals out - some of us are masters of it (myself I'm only learning) but as a society I find it a shame that we look down on at how people choose to live or eat. On the surface of it 3 frozen meals for a fiver when you live on your own seems like a good deal. A large family sized lasagne priced at what, say £4 seems like a good deal when mince itself was price at £3.48 in the Coop his morning.

I find it unfair to say that cooking from scratch is cheaper because with many, many meals it is not - especially if you're not like us Oldstylers and don't have a full store cupboard of every ingredient imaginable

scheming_gypsy

valk_scot wrote: »

And if that lot only does 2-3 meals for a family of four...ahem, I don't like to be rude but how's their weight?

You tell me, you just made it up.

All i said is that it'll do 8 - 10 adult sized portions and that's based on splitting the left overs into takeaway cartons. You can stretch if further if you wanted by the usual methods of not sticking as much on the plate of using more rice

Although people seem far too interested in how I cook chilli

BitterAndTwisted

When I saw this item on the news this morning I was astounded that so many people claimed to cook from scratch. I imagined that the numbers would have been much lower than that. Good news for a change!

However, I do have some sympathy for working mums: for a lot of families (including mine when I lived at home) the mum does a full day's work and then rolls up her sleeves to get a dinner started, doing the washing-up from breakfast and then some tidying up . No wonder some resort to something a bit less challenging. I suspect I'd be tempted.

becs

seraphina wrote: »

I also disagree with the idea that schools should be teaching this kind of stuff. What are parents for, otherwise? Schools have plenty else to be getting on with without expecting them to teach basic life skills to kids.

In an ideal world I would agree however unfortunately a significant number of todays children have parents that can't cook themselves so are unable to teach their kids. If we don't want the next genertion to be even less domesticated we do need to teach kids in school. Quite honestly I'd far rather see a child taught the nutritional value of a healthy meal and how to feed an average family for a few pounds when on a tight budget than learn trigonometry and algebra-neither of which I and many other adults have had use for since leaving school.

tigerfeet2006

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

lol, trust me. If i did that I'd get home from work to a ceramic pot still in the fridge.

A big note on the front door that says

DON'T FORGET TO PUT THE SLOW COOKER ON!

would do the trick, no excuse then.

Since several people have added their SC chilli recipes, I'll add mine

Brown 700g of mince in a pan and put in SC. Fry off 1 choped onion and garlic to suit. Add one tsp of chilli powder ( or to taste), one tsp paprika, 1/4 tsp of crushed chilli's ( or to taste) and fry for a minute. Season. And bung in SC.

Add two tins kidney beans, two tins of chopped tomato, one tblesp tomato pur!e, 200ml stock ( if you use turkey mince then I find chicken stock is better, beef stock for beef mince.)

I serve this with rice and a good dollop of sour cream.

cooking-mama

Interesting to read that the survey was carried out by Kenwood..anyhow,i think different people have different opinions on what is "cooked from scratch"...when i first met my OH he thought putting frozen fish portions and oven chips in the oven was "cooking",my opinion is thats simply reheating and is still therefore a "Ready meal"..ready meals are more than just Ping dinners,unfortunately OH hasnt made much progress since those days,tho he can now boil potatoes and make real chips in the actifry,LOL..When im working late 2 days a week my family have wht are probably classes as "ready meals"...breaded fish or chicken portions,chips(from real tatties now we have an actifry),tinned peas and tinned sweetcorn..or bagged salad...when im shopping i do budget in these 2 days,and honestly if i was to make meals like that every day,i think my shopping bill could be halved,I dont know where people get the idea that cooking from scratch is cheaper,in my experience its more expensive..maybe im doing something wrong?.

tessie_bear

i like cooking but im a sahm so have the time...i have just stood in a long queue in farmfoods as i buy milk in there....other peoples shopping is sometimes so depressing...but i suppose they could be going home to team it all up with an abel and cole organic veggie box but i doubt it

i think when u look at prices it is no wonder people grab a £1 made lasagne when that wouldnt even cover the cost of the mince...i know u get more and its nicer and u have ingredients to carry forward but if u only have a quid in your pocket its needs must

bedpotato_2

Well for lunch I just had some basmati rice, veg, and baked beans. Two out of three were boiled by me. The beans came out of a tin. So I guess that ticks two out of three (assuming boiling things counts as cooking).

Are we counting frozen or tinned ingredients?

I rely a lot on frozen veg and tinned pulses to make my meals. Does that mean I'm not cooking from scratch? Is this survey implying we should buy everything fresh?

I prefer tinned pulses to dried because the dried ones take AGES and AGES to cook! I've got low blood sugar, so when I need to eat, I need to eat NOW.

Cat501

cooking-mama wrote: »

Interesting to read that the survey was carried out by Kenwood..anyhow,i think different people have different opinions on what is "cooked from scratch"...when i first met my OH he thought putting frozen fish portions and oven chips in the oven was "cooking",my opinion is thats simply reheating and is still therefore a "Ready meal"..ready meals are more than just Ping dinners,unfortunately OH hasnt made much progress since those days,tho he can now boil potatoes and make real chips in the actifry,LOL..When im working late 2 days a week my family have wht are probably classes as "ready meals"...breaded fish or chicken portions,chips(from real tatties now we have an actifry),tinned peas and tinned sweetcorn..or bagged salad...when im shopping i do budget in these 2 days,and honestly if i was to make meals like that every day,i think my shopping bill could be halved,I dont know where people get the idea that cooking from scratch is cheaper,in my experience its more expensive..maybe im doing something wrong?.

I do exactly the same, I have big bags of chicken dippers from Farmfoods in the freezer, enough for 8 meals for £2.50, with HM chips and cheap beans, it's a cheap meal a couple of times a week! I also have veggie burgers in for veggie DD1.

I've stopped buying ready made mash and chips (4kg of potatoes from FF for a quid these days), microwave meals (except about once a month if I'm doing a big shop, because I get home fit for nothing but flopping into bed), and jars of pasta sauce unless Homepride pasta bake sauce is on special (it was BOG2F in Sainsbury's a while back)

I absolutely refuse to see using tinned toms, frozen veg and dried pasta as "not cooking from scratch":D