Home cooking - Is it cheaper?

lostinrates

I don't think it's always cheaper.

However, I do think it's pretty much always the better choice, often as quick, usually better tasting (unless you are used to very heavy amounts of sugar, salt and 'processed' tastes) and often much, much healthier.

You can also cook what you like.

E.g. Tonight we are having an old favourite pasta recipe for supper. It's not cheaper than a cheap bought pasta sauce but it's delicious and no bought pasta sauce correlates to compare it too (it's ingrediants are chestnuts, butternut, garlic, onions, pancetta, blue cheese). I can make it cheaper than buying all the ingrediants for this dish in various ways......make the pasta rather than buy fresh, or buy dried (and we like dried pasta, it's perfectly acceptable and I cannot make the quantity I can buy as inexpensively.....IMO its a good bought alternative). The pancetta is left overs from a pack, the blue cheese is part of a stash in the freezer dh bought at an outrageously low price and we have been trying to use up for ages. The chestnuts.....well, I am afraid these were bought, but they can be foraged earlier in the year and store well.

Supermarkets just don't sell this sort of pasta 'sauce' and I don't like the bottled sort,one of which might work out cheaper.

Bitsy_Beans

I personally don't have oodles of herbs in my cupboard and I manage.

As for smaller portions for your LO Poundland quite often sell screw lid plastic tubs or when mine were at early stages of weaning smaller portions were just frozen in ice cube trays and a couple of cubes defrosted and mixed with the baby rice or whatever.

Or you could buy some resealable bags from pound shop and freeze small portion in that.

Archiebear

SandA wrote: »

As I'm on Maternity Leave, and my little one is 4 months old and will be weaned in a few months, I want to get in the habit of home cooking.

For now its me and the OH, but the little one will be eating our food when he's weaned. I also need tips on freezing bolognese sauce, if I was to freeze 4-5 portions worth in a tub, how would I seperate it when I want to make 1 portion of it? just smash it on the bench? lol.

Hi SandA

We batch bake and freeze homemade meals for 3 adults and a baby. On the first 'cook' we don't add salt or anything else (e.g. chilli) - this goes into ice cube trays for baby. This way you can use as many cubes as you need depending on how hungry little 'un is! Our little one is 12 months old now and we bought small plastic tubs with a plastic screw lid (99p for 6 in B&M) as he is obviously eating more.
Once our own portions are finished with chilli etc we just use tupperware containers to freeze.

tori.k

long term make a herb garden, most gardeners are happy to pass over seeds/cuttings herbs are one of the easiest things to grow most do well in poor soil, it's my favorite part of my garden as it's the most sensory

SandA

Wow didn't expect so many answers, thank you!

Ive been having this arguement with OH, i find the shop bought sauces tasteless, he told me its a psychological thing because food cooked by others is always better, but nope it definitely tastes of nothing! or i'm over cooking it!

Since your all pros, I'm having an issue with tasteless mince, am i overcooking it? I'm going to start getting mince from the butchers as I'm also debating that its the supermarkets quality that is making it taste of nothing.

Really excited to get started, ive been browsing recipes all evening and, found a lot of herbs criss cross, so i'll definitely be investing in the most common ones!

Yeah i've read up on the icecube trays for the LO, and going to invest in a couple of big ice cube trays from ikea! i will also stock up on freezer bags. See I have quite a small freezer, but once we've cleared out all the processed stuff we have, there will be plenty of room for batch freezing!

My OH claims that once you freeze food, its never the same and the taste reduces by 50%, would anyone agree with this? Also since i do shopping once a week, come thursday and friday i find all my veg has gone out of date, so i'm going to buy a little more and stuff it in the freezer! so I can still have proper meals later in the week other then ones that require no fresh food.

Is there any I can't freeze? and should i freeze veg in freezer bags to? Also how long would I need to let them thaw in the fridge?

Sorry for all the questions!

thanks x

Sambucus_Nigra

SandA wrote: »

Also since i do shopping once a week, come thursday and friday i find all my veg has gone out of date, so i'm going to buy a little more and stuff it in the freezer! so I can still have proper meals later in the week other then ones that require no fresh food.

Seriously? Veg does not go out of date.

It is ok to eat until it goes rotten. If your veg is going rotten between Saturday and Friday then you need to buy from a different shop!

SandA

I'm one of those who are scared to eat anything beyond its sell by date... what shop is the best for veg to stay fresh?

SandA

By Veg i'm referring more to peppers and mushrooms as I know mushrooms do go funny after 3 or 4 days (From Asda). Never really bought any others, but this will be changing! x

krlyr

I find my batches of frozen mince stuff is actually much, much tastier! The flavours seem to develop much more over time, so when I make a batch of bolognese or chili up, the stuff warmed from frozen always tastes better than that first lot we eat fresh.

Sambucus_Nigra

SandA wrote: »

By Veg i'm referring more to peppers and mushrooms as I know mushrooms do go funny after 3 or 4 days (From Asda). Never really bought any others, but this will be changing! x

They probably go funny because they are left in plastic.

Peppers, again, probably left in plastic. I have a chilli pepper picked about 2 months ago which I will be using for tea tomorrow.

Unless it's stuff that has a USE BY date, you can pretty much ignore any other dates; and just use your senses to see/smell if it's gone off or on the turn.