What has happened to people cooking!

sammy_kaye18

Im thinking next week of having a cooking day - also this year my little boys school start date got pushed back due to the high number of kiddies wanting to start this year. (Hes supposed to start on june 4th but they've moved in back to the beginning fo September now :eek: so i have him for almost 3 months longer!)

Either way we are having a few baking/cooking days next week as money is tight this month and i need to make bread etc so im going to make some cheese twists etc - plus might see if i can teach him the art of snadwich making - he is turnign 3 next week too - my little boys not so little anymore

chardonnay_2

we never by ready meals mainly due to cost and portion size. hubby would ask where his dinner was if i served him one. to then add chips/totties & veg would make this more expensize and just as time consuming as cooking from scratch. i think we find a happy medium.

we always buy reduced meat (chicken, 100% lean steak beef mince. pork, beef joints, steaks etc) in bulk & freeze whenever we see them. we buy fresh veg along with some tinned and frozen veg. certain meals it's easier to use frozen ready chopped veg like onions /peppers. if this saves us from resorting to ready meals or takeaways them we're happy. quite often we make our own version of ready meals and freeze in individual portions. - we do this by bulk cooking reduced meat with ready chopped onions / peppers / tinned tomatoes etc.

we also buy some curry sauces & pasta sauces in jars when on offer - this doesn't make us bad people but i think it is still better than buying a totally processed product as we know the quality of the meat and add as many veggies as we like.

we recently bought a big bag of value onions to dice ourself in the food processor to bag up and freeze. after all the effort & tears we had less than the 80p approx frozen diced onions we buy from asda.

i laugh when mil buys grated cheese but she uses it for fil's pack lunch sometimes and it makes life easier for her. we have weaned her off ready meals and she is starting to cook in bulk and freeze her own ready meals. she used to cook fil a home cooked meal then eat a ready meal as he prefers very bland plain food.

i don't judge other peoples shops but in stores like aldi & lidl i glance to see what others have bought wondering if it is good.

yellowmonkey

I would imagine after last nights Whistleblower program about supermarkets that quite a lot of people now will ditch the ready meal in favour of proper cooking.

You know it makes sense.

ym

newster

Didn't that stuff look disgusting ?? How can that be called food?

nickyhutch

seraphina wrote: »

TBH why is it any of our business what other people choose to spend their money on?

If people do want to cook these days there are a hundred and one resources/teach yourself how to cook books/ good sites like the OS board. You'd also have to be living under a rock to not notice the current vibe about organic/healthy eating in general, so if people want to buy ready meals, that's up to them.

The next comment is NOT aimed at the OP but is something I have found about OS board in general these days - it does occasionally become a bit holier-than-thou, with people preaching with the zeal of the converted about how they would never touch a ready meal/packet mix/prechopped veg. There's an air almost of pity on the poor people who don't know any better! I can think of many worse "crimes" to commit than ready made mash:rotfl:

Anyway, I did not mean to offend with the above comment.

I was reading through this thread thinking about what to reply, but you went and said it EXACTLY Seraphina. I don't use ready meals/packets/suaces etc. but I wont have a pop or whinge about people who do. It's up to them.

Chipps

I have to say that having just read this thread, I do wonder sometimes what people might make of my supermarket trolley contents - I don't buy meat at supermarkets, or veg/fruit, so it must look a bit unbalanced to say the least.

But to go back to what was said about home ec. at schools (or rather, the lack of sensible cookery teaching), one of our DD's friends was taking "food technology" GCSE (that apparently is the nearest to cookery they get) I think the term food technology is indicative of just how relevant it is to ordinary cookery. Anyway, the main theme of the course was to produce a ready meal! The remit was that it had to be suitable for someone on a cycling holiday! (why a cycling holiday in particular??)
So his poor parents had to suffer the same meal being prepared over and over! He also had to design the packaging etc for said meal.
But the basic message as far as I could see, was that meals should be ready packaged, and if you are going to do any cooking, you do it as a job providing instant "food" for other people.

Anyone surprised that 2 of our children were home edded?