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!

I don't use jarred sauces other than pesto , that's my go to for a quick dinner where we are late home, but I also batch cook roasted veg pasta sauce and freeze in ice cubes so that's available too. It takes minutes to make meatballs so I wouldn't buy those either. I will buy sausages I don't really like burgers but DH and DS do so occasionally when I'm going out they have them and they are bought. There are only 3 of us so if I make anything sauce based curries, Bolognese, casseroles etc I make enough for at least two family meals and freeze what isn't eaten

I buy their piadina wraps weekly for lunches. The Tesco own brand ones we were happily buying for years were the basic definition of a UPF. (Aware this will now cause a PP to smash their computer, sozzzz)

We only cook like you when work hours become excessive (60+ hrs) but otherwise I really enjoy cooking so do cook from scratch most days. I became more obsessed with it after having gestational diabetes which made me more health conscious - particularly about the children's diets.

I don't think there's anything wrong in how you cook btw - it clearly works for your family and your meals sound nutritious and tasty.

I think your way of cooking is entirely normal. It’s a good balance of home cooking, with the occasional cheat/helping hand.

I cook like this. The majority of meals are cooked from scratch with no upf, but sometimes, I just can’t be arsed to cook a ragu for 4 hours and a jar of Loyd Grossman pasta sauce is used.
Dh bakes most of our bread, although I am partial to Waitrose sourdough.
A roast is cooked from scratch, including Yorkshire puddings.
Curries are homemade, but I do use spice pots spices.
Only eat overnight oats, so no sugar laden cereals, however all my good work is ruined, as I can demolish a whole pack of party rings in a couple of days!

It all sounds fine to me but I can't understand why you'd buy a rotisserie chicken instead of just chucking one in the oven! It usually takes less than an hour, is cheaper and you get more chicken.

Sounds delicious! Maybe you should think about opening your own restaurant?

I watched an interesting film on tinned tomatoes the other day, in which 9 or so brands were compared. Some had as little as 60% tomatoes, with citric acid and water making up the difference. Others were closer to 100%. Mutti’s tomato % very high, as you’d expect from the price.

Was there not a pot noodle restaurant somewhere? I’m sure I remember the cereal restaurant being opened

Wouldn’t surprise me! They aren’t as nice as they used to be, sadly, taken out a few of the tasty additives I suppose.

It’s very easy to roast your own chicken

Every time I look at M&S stuff (MIL is a huge fan) I'm astounded that it has sugar listed as an ingredient - even savoury stuff like pasta sauces.

We generally cook from scratch, although sometimes will get skewers and chicken parcels and things like that from the butchers.

I searched the M&S sauce we use:

Tomatoes (58%) · Red Peppers (12%) · Carrots (10%) · Onions · Courgette (4%) · Sunflower Oil · Tomato Paste · Celery · Sea Salt · Garlic · Basil · Cornflour · Acidity Regulator: Citric Acid · Ground Black Pepper · Rosemary

I’ve no problem with this for a jar we use a few times a month.

The one that I find most shocking is sugar in kids yoghurts. I’m very picky about which yoghurts we buy as the majority are either full of sugar or artificial sweeteners.

this thread made me have a look at my bottle of Lloyd grossman roasted garlic and tomato lurking in my cupboard - there’s nothing nasty here about the ingredient list-almost identical to if I made from scratch - itsall about balance, if you eat plenty of protein, fruit and veg and quite plain carbs such as decent bread, rice and pasta then it’s good enough for most - all the doing everything from scratch is both hard going , time consuming for many , especially people who both work away from the home and with kids and can be quite expensive too. I do cook nice recipes from scratch maybe 2 or 3 nights a week but rest of times will be something like M&S boxed beer battered haddock with a nice big salad and a couple of potato croquettes or waitrose Rosti or a tray of roasted vegetables on a bit of rice with a seasoned chicken breast on top or a prawn stir fry - there’s only 2 of us at home though

Good lord do we not have enough to beat ourselves up about already without having to carefully scrutinise every tin and packet lest we be allowing a morsel of UPF to pass our lips? I think as long as you can find a balance that works for you that isn't ready meals 100% of the time nor collapsing with exhaustion cooking from scratch after a 60 hour work week, then it's fine.

Sometimes good enough is good enough and we carry enough guilt already between parenting and working and running a home and keeping a stable marriage. Let's just do what we do.

That seems a reasonable ingredients list. The red peppers and carrots will add a lot of sugar so I suppose they don't feel the need to add extra as they do with their more traditional sauces.

We always just bought big tubs of unflavoured yoghurt then added jam or honey for flavouring. Never saw the point of the pre-flavoured small tubs. Probably makes no difference to total sugar consumption but a lot cheaper and less packaging waste.

I went and looked at my packet/tinned tomatoes - something it never occurred to me to do before. the ingredient list says - Tomatoes :). I'm going to start looking when I buy them in future. I do buy whole tinned tomatoes usually as they say the worst tomatoes are used for the pulped/chopped tins. But still how bad can a tomato be?

And now I've typed it so much the word "tomato" is looking funny to me!

This thread has given me some great ideas.
It's just two of us since DC left home. I used to bend over backwards to make everything from scratch but once DS2 left I vowed to live on ready meals forever.
That didn't last long and I went back to cooking and baking but I have no qualms about the odd ready meal or shortcut.
You do get in a rut though.
I've recently had to change my eating because of digestive problems and I've been forced to do things differently (excluding fat as much as possible). So roasted veg is now out, along with home made chips, roast potatoes, pastries and so on.
I generally shop online so I've never seen rotisserie chickens but I'll definitely try one.

@ViciousCurrentBun chicken and egg friend rice and chicken and sweetcorn soup sounds lovely.

My default in autumn and winter is frozen pre-cut veg mixes in the slow cooker, in summer is steamer packs of vegetables, microwave rice and chicken or fish. I make the odd mix for the freezer to chuck in and like fresh herbs from the garden.

I don't eat a lot of sauces, so prefer to make my own usually, but there's a lot of flapping about additives - actually, if you eat well or 80-90% of the time then your body is able to handle the odd stuff well.

I think that happens with every word, the more you think about it the odder it looks. For me, anyway!

I always add a pinch of sugar to my pasta sauce (if it's tomato based) anyway, this is probably healthier than my lovingly homemade version 😁Sometimes I'll use balsamic vinegar instead, sometimes both.

Last night we had the dreaded Crosta & Mollica flatbreads, used them to make quesadilla type things with cheese, tomato, onion and a bit of dodgy looking avocado that needed using. Some chicken or similar would have been good for more protein but we didn't have it. Served with salad, and home made sweet potato wedges.

Out tonight for a family birthday. Tomorrow will be lemon prawn & pea orzo, with some extra veg on side - takes about 10 minutes to make if that. Another night I'm doing pork, veg and egg fried rice, will cook/ cool the rice in advance and it'll take under 10 mins on the night. Maybe a quick thai 'style' curry another night but using lazy jarred garlic and ginger, adding lime, soy sauce, chilli, corriander and a tin of coconut milk.

All of those are what I'd consider 'home made' or 'from scratch' in our house. I've no desire to be a tradwife and don't need to grow, harvest and simmer my own tomatoes nor milk my own coconuts.

We eat like this, it's normal despite what the 'holier than thou' crowd on mumsnet preach.

No. No jars of sauce and always cook chicken.

Less than an hour to cook a chicken? How small are your chickens?

No, I either cook from scratch or just buy a complete ready meal. To me it seems kind of pointless buying parts of the meal ready made and then still having to cook parts, but if it works for you that's great!