This is one reason why Old Stylers cook meals from scratch and avoid ready meals!

purpleprincess

Tesco finest banoffee tart (frozen) is the best I have ever bought! Really had to wean myself off it a while back - seemed to mysteriously disappear out the fridge without anyone else having any!

Real bananas, loads of toffee, fresh cream and chocolate shavings all on a crumbly biscuit base ( I don't like compressed digestive bases) Mmmmmmm........

Oh heavens! I know where I'm going tomorrow!!!

Anne_Marie_2

Addiscomber wrote:

Thank you so much for this. Maybe some sort of Damascene conversion will hit my eldest one day if I do not weaken

Actually when he chose to stay at home when we went away, he bought various ready made products but didn't like them. Still couldn't be bothered to cook himself anything though :mad:

I shall keep my fingers crossed for you, know exactly where you are at! :rolleyes:
Stick to your guns girl, and let the wee blighter starve! :rotfl:

Quasar

These ready made, supermarket meals/puds etc are made with very basic ingredients which are cheap and therefore make large profits:

white flour
sugar
salt
hydrogenated fats
flavourings
colourings
very little other ingredients.

Sugar and salts are addictive, in the sense we get used to them and then we can't taste the food if we suddenly cut them out, which is why we ultimately keep wanting that stuff.

Living on my own I'm not inclined to elaborate cooking, so for dessert I always have fruit.

[Deleted User]

What amazes me is the amount of cash that people spend on ready-made food.They obviously have more money than sense. I think I must be too mean to spend a couple of quid on a rice pudding that I could make for a fraction of the cost. But then I could never see the point of frozen ommelettes ,for goodness sake how long does it take to make an ommelete about 2-4 minutes .Longer than it takes to take it out of the packaging and shove in the m'wave. Why do people buy this rubbish. Our world is turning into instant this and instant that .Our landfill sites will become the epitaph for this country .We live in an instant society where no one has time to do anything .What do they do with all the time they have 'saved' by doing things 'instantly' We will become an instant dustbin for all the packaging that is dumped in our green and pleasant land:mad:
I shall get down from my very high horse now:rotfl:

competitionscafe

The people who say they have no time to cook are probably the same ones who spend hours each week watching mindless pap on TV. That's their choice of course and each to their own but if anyone ever says they use ready meals because they are quicker I offer them a 20 minute challenge (I can't compete against a microwave but most ready meals take about 20 mins to heat up in an oven, or 30 minutes total if you need to preheat oven). In 20 minutes it's not hard to come up with something tasty and simple even if it's pasta or a stir-fry. 30 minutes and you could make a risotto or meat/fish with some veg, any of which is pretty much guaranteed to taste better than 99% of ready meals!

letsgobilliejoe

competitionscafe wrote:

The people who say they have no time to cook are probably the same ones who spend hours each week watching mindless pap on TV.

that's why it pays to put a TV in the kitchen!

following on from what everyone else says: I've always enjoyed cooking, baking and whatnot from being very young (always at my nannas, you see!), but I was always on ready meals apart from when my dad could be arsed making something decent. even when I moved in my girlfriend a few years ago we lived on (vegetarian) ready meals most of the time cos that's what her mum bought for us.
My main education in life has come from turning vegan. Having little choice from the usual fayre presented to me by her overindulgent and overmeaty parents, I had to look for alternatives, of which there was and expensive drought. Then I realised how cheap and healthy it was to make your own...well...anything! I try my best (after fiding out the OS board!) to boast to people that my pancakes cost about 5p each - and that was organic; and that my chocolate cake is no more than 10p a slice! I now find myself taking pleasure out of the simplest things - like making my fiancee her dinner for the next day completely from scratch.I gave her a pasta salad with fresh veg, fruit salad etc today for what can be no more than a pound for a 12 hour shift's worth of food.
As a 20 year old lad just stared uni, people think it's "odd" or "weird" for me to take pleasure out of being thrifty, baking or washing clothes - but I love it! And it's thanks to many of you on here that i feel compelled to not buy that fruit salad for £2 when i'm out!

Trow

Thats a great post letsgobilliejoe - and I am sure if people that are new to OS read it, it will inspire them greatly. Thanks for sharing

jennyjelly

THIRZAH wrote:

Shirley Goode's recipe for Sticky Toffee pudding which she posted in her Blog sometime early in December is really good-and it freezes.

She's recently posted a recipe for Bakewell pudding-the real thing like they make in Bakewell- but I haven't tried it yet.

Do you have a link for this please?

I had a fab book by her full of really great budget recipes, but I lent it to a "friend" and she lost it :mad:

I really must keep an eye open for a replacement, but till then I'd love to read the blog.

Thanks!

jennyjelly

My pet hate is jars of bolognese sauce. This is the easiest thing to make yourself and tastes 100 times better.

The stuff in the jars costs a fortune, tastes of chemicals and has the consistancy of snot. Ugh!

ti1980

That was a great post letsgobilliejoe.:)

I'm not saying that people don't have time to cook, but some people just don't enjoy cooking. I know as I am one of them. When I was little I used to love it, messing around in the kitchen. I remember one time when my mum (what was she thinking of?) let me invite 4/5 of my friends round and we made about 3 dishes in one afternoon. We must have been 12 or 13 then, one of the girls was 8. I think we made 2 sweets and one pastry type thing. I made everyone eat some even though it didn't taste the best, then they found out that I didn't have any(they saw my portion in the bin! They weren't very happy with me!:rotfl: I remember that as it was yesterday and it was at least 15 years ago.

I think that one of the reasons I liked it then was that I chose to do it, I didn't have to whereas now, it feels like I should be doing it.

I find it such a chore, not at all enjoyable. I would rather clean or iron and I dislike doing those as well.

My friends can't understand why I don't like cooking, most of them love cooking and they are great cooks. There is almost nothing better than when we get together at someones house and one of them cooks. I bring either the wine, fruit juice or a ready made dessert (none of those that is on your list though competitionscafe!)

My mum is a fantastic cook and when I go and visit her (every few weeks), I love eating whatever she has made. She buys practically nothing ready made, its pretty much all made from scratch.

Homemade food is often so tasty. (depends who is doing the cooking!) I think that part of the thing with me is that a lot of the things my mum makes takes ages in the kitchen and I'm not going to cook something that takes hours to make but literally seconds to demolish. I keep thinking that maybe I will change my mind if/when I have my own family to look after but the older I get, the less sure I am about that.