Family refusing to eat shop bought now - your experiences?

Anne_Marie_2

On looking through this board, seen comment several times that family refuse to eat "shop bought" products anymore and want home made. I think this is wonderful news, and gives us hope for the future, our family/children do actually want to eat real food, even though it sometimes means more work for us at the moment, hopefully, our children will, want to follow on.......

My lot will not eat loads of shop bought stuff.
Soup has to be home-made. Tomato soup is only one allowed to be shop bought - obviously never got that right yet, but not trying too hard!
Burgers - only home made - despite the fact I am a veggie, and have to wear plastic gloves. Am okay doing this for 2, but refuse to do any more - barbecue for few folk, means packets of frozen burgers!
Mashed potatoes - have to be home made. Tried the frozen and dried and not got away with it, despite trying to disguise with extra butter/cream. Did get away with it on shepherds pie and fish pie.
Roast potatoes - get away with using frozen, but they prefer homemade.
Bread - can't really disguise home made bread from shop bought. They do like shop bought white though for toast, otherwise it doesn't fit toastie-maker.
Bought tomato sauce (ended with mio) - tried it once and never again, it wasn't nice. Felt sorry for OH and DD as they tried to eat it in bolognaise sauce without hurting my feelings!
Pizza - home made on the whole, but there are some shop bought they will eat - only problem is me remembering which ones! Can get them to eat pizza made with shop bought bases, home made toppings.
Just a few things to get you started off with!

Bogof_Babe

Wish I could say the same . My hubby complains if I get the kitchen in a mess while doing something involving more than one saucepan and an oven tray :rolleyes: . I've tried to explain that you need a certain amount of equipment around to make a meal from scratch.

If I make a pasta "thing" I have to do it while he's at work and make sure everything is washed up and put away before he gets back! Then of course it has to be reheated for the evening meal.

When we both worked I'm afraid we nearly always lived on (vegetarian) ready meals, and if I occasionally looked like getting out some real potatoes to peel, he'd say "oh no, you're not cooking are you?". He used to really annoy me by hanging around and washing things up before I'd finished with them!

When he retires, we'll have to renegotiate our positions on this matter!

badgermonkey

Some of those things I would never eat shop-bought anyway - mash, tomato sauce, roast potatoes. Now we only like HM lasagne, cakes, breaded chicken (used to eat chicken dippers, not any more!), salad dressing, and loads of other things I'm forgetting about. We still eat some ready-made things (frozen pizza, mostly) but HM is nearly always just yummier!

henhog

Since I've been at home a little bit more I have made more and bought less ready meals. I like to make things in the slow cooker as it really is hard to mess that up. I often combine a bit of both - I make my own spaghetti bol etc but use jars (supermarket own brand usually). I find this quick and cost effective.

Ticklemouse

Mine especially love HM chicken nuggets and won't eat shop-bought ones. Likewise we have HM mash, roasties, soup, gravy, puddings (milk puds, crumbles, etc) and I don't buy meat that has been ready prep'ed

Haven't mastered the art of decent HM pizzas yet and my breadmaker is [email="cr@p"]!!!!!![/email] so white loaves only rise at one end, although wholemeal are better for some reason. We have HM marmalade but will be doing jam this year. I've bought an ice-cream maker but haven't used it yet. I expect that will go down well

When we go to other people's houses, who use MSG packed instant packets to so called 'flavour' their food, they won't eat it. (They aren't old enough to be polite yet) I love home cooked hams, but boys still like shop bought for their sarnies. Haven't got round to HM tommy K - must try that soon as boys love it.

jenpoptab

We are really appreciating my maternity leave as it's allowing me the time to concentrate on cooking food that isn't from a packet. I'm enjoying it, we are saving money as we are spending less on rubbish, however it's not doing the post pregnancy belly any good as it's not shifting as we are eating so much more!

apple_mint

Over the last 6 months we've gone from convenience food eaters to a largely 'home-made - make from scratch' family. The only things I don't do from scratch are fish fingers and the Quorn meals my vegetarian daughter has now and again ... but we are working on that. The rest we take back to basics - 5 seed bread, home made yoghurt, casserole, home made potato wedges (with seasonings), flapjacks, dried apple rings and a couple of jars of lemon curd are all things that have come out of our kitchen today. It takes more planning but it is cheaper, healthier and OH actually helps in the kitchen and garden as he finds it just as creative as I do.

Most of this change has been down to finding MSE when I was looking for cheap low cholesterol recipes. My family only want home-made meals now.

Anne_Marie_2

Good grief Bogof_babe - send him round to me! After 10 mins being locked up in my kitchen, he will be dying to get back to yours when you are in the middle of cooking all and sundry, and won't dare complain at all! (Wish I could do all those cool icons - imagine piccy of him begging on his knees to you to be allowed back in to yours!)

Ticklemouse and Badgermonkey - have nearly always made my own pizza bases, sometimes resort to bought ones as last minute thing, due to time to make them. I used to make by hand, and found it wonderful therapy when I was in a bad mood - thumped the heck out of the dough! Now do in breadmaker, not nearly so therepeutic, but maybe I have calmed down a bit! Am sure that you will be able to do the dough in your breadmaker Ticklemouse. (Had that problem with lop sided bread twice - and it was white bread too! Think I must have measured wrongly or something.)

Anyway recipe for pizza dough which has always worked for me -
(took measurements of my breadmaker cup which is equivalent to 8 fl oz. in my pyrex jug. Also you can use medicine spoons for exact tsp and tablespoon measures - 5ml = 1 tsp, 15 ml = 1 tblsp).

1 cup water
1 tblsp olive oil
1 tblsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 cups bread flour (but found normal plain flour works too)
1 tblsp easy blend yeast

Put all ingreds into breadmaker in order, set on DOUGH. When cycle finished, remove, place onto well floured surface and roll out using plenty of flour on rolling pin. Place on greased and floured trays and leave for 15 mins to rise. Add toppings and bake for about 15 mins.
Dough sufficient for 2 large or 3 thin crust medium pizzas - will be fine for 1 very large deep crust.
I make tomato sauce quick way in microwave sometimes - tin tomatoes, chop them in bowl, unless you can buy chopped for same price, squirt tomato puree, chopped onion, garlic, oregano, stir all together and bung in micro for 10-15 mins stirring every 5 mins. (Remember to cover bowl or your micro will be splattered).
Spread over pizza base. Add any kind of topping you like and then add grated or sliced cheese.

Apple_mint - being a veggie, I do use Quorn. Tend to buy the mince, bits, swedish balls or fillets, not ready made meals. That way we can all have the "same" meal sometimes making one sauce, which is obviously vegetarian, but then most are really. This method does sometimes use an extra pot. (Bog_of Babes hubby needing resuscitation now!)
Cook sauce in one pot, whatever it might be, then add to meat and quorn in separate pots (and using different spoons to stir with), and continue cooking.
Or start off curry by doing onion, spices, perhaps tomatoes, then ----
meat based, brown meat and add some of onion/spice mix - cook for however long.
And to original pan add veggies/lentils whatever to make veggie curry. Obviously you would need to add water/tin tomatoes/stock to these.
Oxo rich onion gravy is vegetarian (it's in a jar), there are bound to be more. Oxo veg stock cubes are the norm in this house. Had no complaints - but then, they can't/won't cook!

Not saying this is the best way to cook, just easy way sometimes to combine and please most people!

Chipps

My lot don't refuse to eat shop bought - in fact if anything they consider it to be a "treat"!!! :mad:
I think thats because they get such stuff so rarely, & its usually therefore not the really disgusting shop bought stuff (I mean, is life really too short to mash a potato for example?)
YS gets to eat things like shop bought chicken kievs when he visits my mum, so asociates that sort of thing with "eating out"!

Galtizz

My OH considers shop bought stuff a treat too :rolleyes: I didn't realise this until he offered to cook some 'proper food' for me the other night. He bought a shop bought pie and managed to put it in the oven and re-heat it :rolleyes: though he did admit that he felt a bit ickey afterwards (we haven't had processed stuff for so long I think it was a shock to both of our systems, either that or it wasn't cooked properly :eek: LOL, it was, he's not a bad cook really)

Bogof_Babe, I used to be just like your OH , Now if he does cook I just stay well out of the kitchen until he's finished (out of sight, out of mind). OH is the only person I know who can use 3 bowls 2 tins and 1 baking tray to make 2 jacket potatoes .

I put some water in the washing up bowl and put pots in after I've finished using them, how about telling OH, if you've put it in the bowl it's OK for him to wash it, otherwise, you've not finished with it yet so leave it alone? If he washes something you need just dry it and re-use it, once he's washed a few things twice he'll stop.

Pooky

It's amazing how quickly you get used to the decent taste and textures of home cooked foods.

My DD's have asked for chicken nuggets a couple of times but have realised that they're not as nice as they thought. I asked them on friday what they'd really like for dinner over the weekend, the verdict....homemade toad in the hole, (DD1 made the batter - she remembered the quantities from last time) DD2 decided what veg we were having and duly set about chopping, peeling and finding the right sized pans (and took the left over bits off to the compost heap). Not bad for 9 and 7.

They were taken by a friend to the pizza place in town for a treat (I think she feels I'm being tight by not treating them to meals out) but only then did she realise why I dont do it....they both ordered their meals and said thanks for the treat but we really do prefer pizza and garlic bread the way mummy makes it. :T

I find that both the kids are eating such a good range of foods and appreciate the work that goes into prepairing it, they both love to help and it's nice that they can get involved.... not much you can all do when cooking a few nuggets.....I suppose one could open the box, one could turn the oven on......

My overall aim is to start growing my own veg next year - I've attacked this MSE and OS business one step at a time. Got the debt under control, got the food bit sorted, the clutter and hording is being dealt with as we speak and the recycling kicked off in a big way this weekend with bins being set up for everything feesable. Veggies and chickens here we come!!!!! :j