Home Made Vs. Shop Bought

Isis_Black

PipneyJane wrote: »

Marguerite Patten's Jams, Jellies and Preserves, is the book you need to consult because it's written for British conditions and British equipment.

Curse you lol just had to go purchase this from amazon lol
But I do love this lady's books :-)

Amaretti_2

There was a programme on telly a few months ago about supermarket bread, apparently it has around 55 ingredients and makes us fat. Bread should only have 4 ingredients, tastes great and doesn't make us fat, the French taking bread seriously ban supermarkets from using unnecessary ingredients. Real bread is so delicious but can work out expensive, I might invest in a bread maker, finding somewhere to store it will be a problem though.

Now that I'm cooking from scratch food tastes so good, after all those ready meals I'm in heaven.

Also, my seduction skills are improving daily, a man wants a woman who can cook, I felt like such a failure before but that is now changing. If I start making my own bread then whoopidoo, how great will I be!!!

watermelon88

:-D

I have to admit home made soup is much nicer. Tonight's experiment is going to be home made oven chips :-)

Gradually want to make everything I can from scratch.

sonastin

A few of my local B&Q stores were selling strawb plants off cheap not so long ago - you might have missed the window by now but if you have one near you and somewhere to plant them, it'd be worth going to have a look. OH's mum worked as a strawberry picker when he was growing up so he's had a lifetime's worth of strawbs - won't even entertain the idea of letting me grow some!

wondercollie

American jam making always calls for hot sterilized jars and then using fresh rubber ring seals a water bath to seal the jars. Scares me to death because I have a fear of boiling water.

Back in the '70s when I had cooking lessons in school we made jam and poured it into hot sterilzed jars and then used parafin wax to seal it and put the jar lid on top.

watermelon88

I'm starting to enjoy all this making it from scratch stuff.

The home made soup was a winner, and I've put a couple of other soup recipe's aside to try out at some point.

The home made crisps were ok, but I think you really need the right sort of potato for them to be just right.

I'm totally hooked on our home made oven chips, low fat, low calorie and high in taste! I'll never buy shop ones again!

The next home made experiment we're having a go at is going to be tuna and sweetcorn fish cakes :-D

amyloofoo

Reading all these posts has inspired me to start cooking more again. I always enjoyed it but can never quite get motivated to do the 'batch' cooking that would save so much money... I just end up doing it sporadically and spending even more than ready meals! Thanks for inspiring me to get off my lazy bottom and get the freezer bags out lol

watermelon88

We don't have a big enough freezer to batch cook, or cooker come to think of it.

Doing it from scratch is working out slightly more expensive bit it's still in budget & it's tasty enough to be worth it.

415SanFran

when my children were small I used to make fried rice.
It was so easy and cheap.

All you need is a small amount of meat (or not as the case may be), fry it off and add an onion again fry it of but don't let it go too brown.
You could even use some ready cooked chicken from last nights roast, or a few slices, even a couple of sausages again left over from the night before.
Have some rice that has already been cooked, rice freezes fine if you ever cook to much, actually I have been known to do that in the past cook up the whole bag all at once, saves on the leccy!
OK so scramble an egg in a separate cup, and take out the meat and onion mixture and cook the scrambled egg in the frying pan.
when it is cooked add the meat back in and and a hand full of frozen veg, and then the cooked rice.
give it a good stir till the veg has defrosted and the rice is warmed through. A splash of soy sauce and that was on of our meals, we just didn't use the egg or the meat.
I'm not sure if it's just me but when you go back to canned soup after getting used to making your own, It tasted really salty. I couldn't go back to that.

GreenFairy

I've done a few sums this evening and worked out that it costs about 80c/63p to make a loaf in my breadmaker, and that's with organic ingredients. I can make a large cheese and tomato pizza for a euro. Made a whole load of jams and curds recently for under a euro a pot - not bad considering the T value strawberry jam is 69c and the first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup!

I've yet to eat a slice of homemade cake or bread (mine or a generous friends!) that didn't knock the supermarket versions out of the ballpark. I think that if we're honestly comparing prices between what we can make in the old style way, with care, attention and good ingredients, without all those junk fillers, then we should be comparing like with like - our goodies to the high end supermarket ranges, and not automatically looking at the value stuff.

ETA: This wasn't meant to sound ranty! We put our gorgeous home made stuff down too often and I feel very strongly that we should be celebrating it