How much???

PasturesNew

I buy dried packet custard so I can make just 3-4 spoons of custard at a time quickly/on demand without needing any "fresh" ingredients. I use custard about 6x a year and I buy milk as a "special/purpose bought" product, so rarely have it in the house. Packet/instant does the trick!

I, too, can't bear the look/thought/smell of hot milk... just looking at hot milk makes me feel ill.

LameWolf

PasturesNew wrote: »

It is disproportionately expensive ... but it might be that they're fed up of having leftovers to get through. If you buy a pack of peppers and a bag of onions ..... that's a lot of times you have to eat both those things when you might only fancy fajitas, or anything with onions/peppers in, once a month.

Buy a single pepper and onion at the F&V stall at the market? They sell 'em loose and by weight, so you need only buy what you need.

Farway wrote: »

If your Yorkies turned out like mine you would understand the ready made ones:o

OK, I take your point.

PasturesNew

LameWolf wrote: »

Buy a single pepper and onion at the F&V stall at the market? They sell 'em loose and by weight, so you need only buy what you need.

OK, I take your point.

A market you say? They're as rare as hen's teeth .... and one is usually pricier than a cheap value bag of products in a supermarket.

Markets, where they exist, have mostly gentrified in the last 20 years; they're the "must be seen at" venue for the middle classes.

purpleivy

I have been to Knaresborough market a couple of times recently and the things there aren't over priced, you can get what you need as far as quantity is concerned and you can use your own cloth bags if you are trying to reduce plastic coming into your house.

caronc

My Dad uses a lot of frozen sliced veggies as he finds them easier and more economical. He eats a lot of soup & stew type dishes and they are fine in those. The fresh prepped stuff is over priced IMHO but I can see why it useful for folk who struggle either physically or timewise to prep veg but still like to cook. He also buys frozen mash as a stand by for the same reasons. When the kids were at home I used to regularly buy the fresh packs of stir fry veg, so handy if I was late back and wanted a quick but healthy meal on the table.

sillyvixen

I would not usually by pre chopped veggies unless they are yellow stickerd for next to nothing and I have a use for them. However when I had a complex shoulder fracture things like ready prepared veg and pre grated cheese while not money saving were a great help.

freyasmum

I can't quote, but I buy frozen yorkies cos I do weightwatchers and can point them much more easily than I could homemade ones

Prepped veg, I don't buy because it's a lot more expensive and I quite enjoy chopping veg with a decent knife... but it certainly has a place for people with dexterity issues x

PollyWollyDoodle

I wouldn't buy them, but then I'm able to chop and prep veg, I can see that for anyone who finds that difficult, they're useful. You can buy loose onions, peppers etc in most supermarkets, you don't have to go to a market.

As I live on my own I usually work on the 'cook once, eat twice' principle and make up a full recipe and freeze/adapt the other half. However if I only need, say, half an onion, rather than put the other half in the fridge where it will stink to high heaven, I chop it and put it in a bag in the freezer. That way I've always got some chopped if I'm in a hurry, and it doesn't get wasted. Works for peppers, mushrooms and celery too.

Lolly_willowes

I have to stand up for frozen Yorkies as whilst easy and cheap to make one egg makes a lot of batter. It's only me in the house and whilst a whole chicken can be used in lots of ways after a roast dinner I don't always know what to do with leftover Yorkshire puddings. Sometimes I'll make a toad in the hole the next day but once again that's the same sort of food and a big portion to eat up. It's the same reason I'll sometimes use stir fry mix, I'm not too lazy to chop the veg up its just the economies of scale that come into it. One person cannot use up a pack of bean sprouts before they go off and I really like the crunch of them. But some stuff that comes ready made I will not ever understand like frozen omelette mentioned

firebubble

Am agreeing with Lolly - as a household of one, nothing irritates me more than forever having leftovers, particularly when they are bits of this and that, and you have to forever faff about trying to use that little bit of X up by buying some of Y, which then needs to be used up itself.

It also gets really dreary and dispiriting to forever be scrabbling around to assemble meals out of random bits and pieces, with the alternative being eat the same thing all the time - the only effect of which is that my food budget goes up as I start to buy 'treats' to break up the monotony, which then defeats the purpose of trying to eat well.

If you haven't got someone else to cook for it's tempting, if you're tired and even chopping an onion seems an ordeal, to just have toast. And if the thing that stands between cooking a healthy meal and having toast is using chopped onions to overcome that initial hurdle, so be it!