Who else cooks like this?

[Anythingyoulike]

I think we eat well as a family and I would say I cook “home made” rather than “from scratch”, as in we don’t do very much freezer food and no ready meals or anything like that, but I do like convenience.

For example, tonight we had meatballs from M&S in their “family hidden veg sauce” with spaghetti and salad. I just use a jar of sauce for things like that and obviously haven’t made my own meatballs. When I make bolognese I used tinned chopped tomatoes and tomato purée and build the flavour with garlic and herbs etc and never use a jar of sauce. If we have a roast chicken I will roast the veg and potatoes or peel and mash potatoes, but I don’t roast a chicken myself I buy one from the rotisserie section in the supermarket ready to go and just add our trimmings.

I’ll use the leftover chicken for making a chicken risotto with onion, garlic, and lemon. Or we’ll have it with a creamy tomato sauce I make myself with sun dried tomato paste, garlic, shallots, herbs, cream and lemon. I use the slow cooker to make curries and chillies where everything is just flung in and left to it.

We also eat a lot of simple tuna pasta dishes, baked potatoes, omelettes, baked salmon, and so on.

Are most people cooking like this? I think it’s a decent balance of kind of home made with convenience. I’m definitely not a natural cook but our family eat fairly healthily I think and we have a good rotation of curries, chilli, pasta dishes, tacos, risotto, fish, as well as the odd night of fish finger sandwiches or pizza!

Wasn’t it ‘shit in a bowl with milk’ @Jellycatspyjamas? I do love a mumsnet food thread and that one was particularly bracing…

The only additive is citric acid, which I would always add to a tomato sauce in the form of a squeeze of lemon. Ingredients include 84% vegetables - not including the onion or celery. There’s no sugar, which I usually add to a tomato based sauce. The ingredients are all store cupboard staples. Not a bad choice at all given the many pasta sauce options out there.

Mix like this is absolutely fine. Just tonight we had chicken, green beans and homemade wedges with aldi spanish chicken jar sauce🤷
Yesterday we had rice, prawns, veg and spices.
Tomorrow is homemade sauerkraut with chicken and potatoes.
Day after will probably be jar of curry.
We even make own bone broth, eat 7 day at least.
We also don't shy away from breaded chicken strips from food warehouse 😂

It's just normal balance for cooking imho and from what I see around. I grew up on similar mix except that mum breaded her own chicken.

Thats one of my most favourite breakfasts.

It was indeed - I was waiting to see someone suggest taking a kids into care because they had a whole bowl of weetabix (which my phone autocorrected to satanic, which sounds about right). Absolutely bonkers.

I think the way you are preparing meals works for you and is fairly healthy too. It's probably similar to how I cooked when we were both in full-time work. But now that I'm retired, I do everything from scratch. Cooking is actually one of my hobbies and I read recipes like they're some sort of porn. And I've even got into canning some of the produce we grow in the garden! So I wouldn't beat yourself up that you're not cooking enough from scratch. And depending on your inclination, when you get more time, you may find yourself making more things yourself that you now get ready-made. Bon Appétit.

I love the poster who quietly commented she didn’t use tinned tomatoes but reduced down fresh ones. I feel the bar has been raised in the competitive scratch cooking community!

Mumsnet is ridiculous about this. If two parents work ten hours a day to pay the mortgage they're not going to be making meatballs and pesto from scratch in the evening. It's just not how most people live. Basic stuff like bung chicken breast in the oven and boil some potatoes is fine. Or curry/fajita kits with the spices in them already and you just need to add the meat/veg and a tin of coconut milk. Thats cooking for me.

I used to be all organic scratch cooking when the kids were small but… life takes over doesn’t it. I wouldn’t condemn anyone for using a jar sauce.
The pasta sauces do come up quite sweet though. I wouldn’t buy white sauce either.
DH has a sneaking fondness for those packet mixes for sausage casserole and such. I wouldn’t get wound up about it.

I’m also team pragmatic - I take different shortcuts to the op, but at a similar level I’d guess.

A couple of nights a week I know I’ll be in the office late and it’ll be something from the m&s “easy to cook” range with a side of roasted herby vegetables - the kind of thing I can prepare in under 5 minutes and leave in the oven til it’s ready. I love bao and am not competent to make them myself so I get frozen ones from itsu sometimes - an authentic street food version is better, but there isn’t one within an hour of me. We have a full on ready meal now and then, too.

On the days I have a bit more spare time and energy I’ll cook mainly from scratch - eg this week I’ve made a chilli with enough to cover two evening meals - once with jacket sweet potatoes, once as burritos, with cheese and homemade guacamole. We had homemade dahl over the weekend, with okra, brown and wild rice, and a homemade chutney from last year’s batch.

I’ll happily acknowledge my diet isn’t perfect, I’m okay with that, I’m fit, active and somewhat health conscious, and a reasonable cook. I have other things I want to do than cook some evenings, though!

I think as long as it fits with your lifestyle and budget, just keep doing what you are doing. Who are other people to judge?

Love mine, got it second hand on gumtree takes less than 5 mins to but ingredients in and turn on, I delay the timer so wake up to the smell of it 🙂

Its just not the real world. And Im a complete hypocrite because I do cook everything (most things) from scratch because I enjoy it and Im very fussy but its not because I think theres anything 'wrong' with ready made stuff, I just prefer my own flavours.

And literally if I see reference to fucking crostina and molifuckingca again I will throw this laptop against a wall. Gives me a Pink Panther twitch.

Sounds fairly standard for most families I know, mostly from scratch with a few time saving ingredients thrown in or pizzas once a week. Personally I never use jarred sauce BUT I refuse to make my own mash midweek and always get the ready made microwave stuff. The M&S is just potatoes butter milk which is what I would use. I also mostly do micro rice in the week as I am hit and miss with how nicely I cook rice.
Why do you ask @Anythingyoulike has someone made you feel bad?

I think white sauce is very hard to get a good version of, they all seem full of gums etc and never taste good. I can put a decent white sauce together easily and the taste and texture are much better. A plain tomato sauce is also pretty easy but I always have a jar in the cupboard just in case.

i don’t consider buying wraps, or tacos any kind of shortcut, they aren’t things I’d ever consider making them. I do make pasta and flat breads when I have time or inclination but similarly don’t feel I’m cheating if I buy them.

I’ve sinned again then! We have porridge every day of the week but Saturday is coco pops day 😁 and Sunday is bacon and eggs

Shit in a bowl with milk! 😂 I need a link to the thread

Surely balanced means… balanced? We eat a lot of veg and whole foods.

I dont think people actually know what a balanced diet means.

I cooked from scratch a lot of the time when the DDs were little - mainly because it worked out cheaper/you got more food from buying ingredients for the same price and usually meant there was enough to make a separate meal or two with the addition of different spices or protein/carbs.

It meant I learned to cook, they learned to cook (and shop), so everybody was happy.

At the risk of being the reason your laptop meets a tragic end I must say that I really love the Crostina and Molifuckingca Stromboli pizza.

I batch cook a lot - soups, stews, big trays of roasted veg. I do a lot of warm salads or grain bowls - boil up your grains, couscous, barley, spelt or rice, add in herbs and roasted veg, top with a protein - fish, chicken or cheese.

I’m not cooking for a family now though, and have more time. One good thing I think helps whatever your circs - if the oven is going on, what else can you cook to use later? For me, it’s generally a tray of veg. Endlessly useful.

Oh really? I’m in Scotland and every supermarket near us has them. Whole chicken or half, drumsticks and so on as well. Next to the deli and fish counters.

I think it all sounds lovely and normal op. And yes, pretty much the sort of ‘home cooked’ I used to do when I was working and had 3 hungry school kids to feed. We’d also do the odd McDs as a ‘treat’ - oh the horror!!

Arrgghhh