AIBU and very stupid to say this isn't junk /convenience food?

[dottytablecloth]

Right am really exposing myself for a potential flaming here but anyway...

Am making a sausage casserole today with the following ingredients:

Butcher sausages
2 peppers
Tomatoes
Mushrooms
Onions
Tin chopped tomatoes
Fusilli pasta

And now for the bit a JAR of Lloyd Grossman tomato sauce

It's a made up recipe a la dotty so please forgive me if that's not what a sausage casserole is supposed to be like!

Anyway SIL was her earlier and says she wouldn't feed that to her 3 year old as it's junk food.

I'm mortified

I thought it was quite nutritious.

I've a very fussy 20 month old who loves sausages.

AIBU and deluded to serve this up and think it's not junk food?

I stopped using salt because of cooking for young babies and wanting to do the same for everyone.

I don't miss it though. If you cook with meat or fish it tends to make things salty enough anyway.

I don't think it does any harm to add a little and maybe even some good.

The only thing I ever add salt to (and not through some religious fervour on the subject, I just don't see the need) is boiled eggs.

I'm sure that if you like food without salt or are used to it without salt then it is fine. But there are times when I've forgotten to salt the water for potatoes or pasta and the results are grim! (in my opinion only, of course!)

I don't have salt on the table - but I always add it when cooking. I cook from scratch (including making my own stocks) so I know exactly what goes into my meals and I'm not at all concerned that I use a small amount of salt. I also use alcohol when cooking (for the dish and for the cook) and that doesn't bother me either.

I love cooking - but not everyone does. Why make an added chore of out the process by insisting others can't take "shortcuts"?

Going back to salt: unsalted French butter is divine. On a pancake, with jam. I don't care if it isn't healthy because it tastes wonderful for breakfast on a Sunday morning. And that's what matters to me.

This thread is hilarious, I said just the other day that lots of so called healthy eaters on mn have terribly disordered ways of thinking about food, this just proves it.
I will add lg tomato sauce to my list of eeeeeevil foods.

Thanks BrilloHair I've been meaning to say this for some time. There is a regular supply of fat bashing on here and a load of holier than thou healthy eaters and I get the distinct impression that those militant healthy eaters have a percentage of disordered eaters amongst them.

I once read someone get their knickers in a twist over having pasta salad and rice salad on the same plate (two lots of carbs you know). It was both funny and sad at the same time.

I cook 99% of food from scratch and the Lloyd Grossman Tomato and Chilli pasta sauce still finds it's way into my larder. It's a very good "convenience" food.

Pasta in a sausage casserole? YABU.

Food needs salt in my opinion and under seasoning can ruin a good meal. Not as much salt as convenience food and not as much as my dad pours on his plate, but still a necessity to give flavour.

NoSquirrels Sun 28-Sep-14 11:18:42
I make pasta sauces from scratch, but if a Loyd Grossman tomato & chilli sauce is on offer I snap it up

^^ Agreed. It is food of the gods and I can eat it from the jar with a spoon.

Nutmeg sounds nice! Thanks everyone

Hasn't everyone seen the memo? Salt isn't the big evil villain we all thought, evidence is not 100% on how bad salt it. Sugar is the new killer in town.

When I was taught to cook in the 80s by a very ancient Italian woman she told me to add a good spoon of sugar to pasta sauce for every can or tomatoes. Also to liberally grate in Parmesan whilst it was cooking.

What about honey, whois? Is that allowed by the food police? Especially that manuka honey? Or are you only allowed to put it on wounds?

(disclaimer: I hate honey)

OP, sorry if I added to the sugar confusion , but the simplistic view that 'foods' are evil annoys me, and I agree with Fireside and Brillo, its disordered eating, disordered attitudes to food - othorexia which is just as harmful in its way as many other forms of disordered eating

your meal sounds nice, veg, carbs, protiens and I hope you all enjoyed it

(and even if you fed yourself on the purest wild organic tomatos, caught and slaughtered the pig for sausages yourself, made your pasta from foraged wild wheat you ground between two stones...

there would still be some ideological purists asking why you didnt make your child wear a hair shirt while eating it)

Good fat is very good for you. Most mumsnetters know that. Go and look at the healthy eating threads. It is the NHS which for 40 years has peddled a muth that fat is bad and led to a nation of obese people. We used to eat well in the UK - fish, eggs, veg, meat. It was all good and now it's awful.

As for people suggesting healthy food is weird or purist for many of us it is is just normal food, delicious gorgeous food and junk does taste empty and disgusting to us. Man kind has always eaten as I do. it is people eating junk food who are the weird ones.

Sugar does take the edge off the acidity of the tomatoes that's why it's in the ready made stuff. I find a bit of nutmeg in at the end serves a similar purpose.

I didn't realise I was so into nutmeg, until this thread.

But I think you should cook things as you like them, add sugar, salt or Lloyd Grossman. Not really a big deal.

I survived my teen years on ready meals as my bothers are ten years older and think my mum had got bored of her limited repertoire by then and it has driven me somewhat the other way in that I like to cook from scratch mostly and have everyone up at the table together, but it doesn't pay to worry too much about it either. Food is to be enjoyed.

Am I the only one tempted to buy this LG tomato and chilli sauce now? I haven't tried it before but it's livked up such a fuss, I feel like I ought to.

I'd throughly recommend it Alpaca it's delicious and healthy

It's lovely stored through pasta and tiger prawns Alpaca.

Wait! How many carbs is in that?

*stirred

OP has a 3yo who will eat pasta, peppers, Tomatoes, Mushrooms, Onions, and pasta sauce?

Sorry, but OP does NOT have a fussy 3yo.
(Not a stealth boast thread, is it?, did I miss the memo?)

As for my fussy 3yo, he probably ate some fruit juice, cooked carrots, humus & baked beans (total options for F+Veg), chips, ssgs, full fat milk like rest of us, ketchup, bacon, mashed potatoes, plain brown or white rice, most breakfast cereals, most biscuits, wholemeal bread like the rest of us, toast with butter, milk, lots of porridge, maybe sausage rolls, ham, small handful of other things. I would have been flipping delighted if he would have eaten pasta. I would have CRIED if he would have eaten something like OP's pasta bake. Mr. Fussy does eat pasta now at 6yo, but not a lot of other additions (and would still screech in terror at that pasta bake).

Thanks GahLin and Bake

I'll get some when I'm next in Tesco my local independent organic farmers market.

Fuck me I wish my kids would eat that.

MN is barmy about food. Would love a list of what we actually can eat.

if my two consumed that it would be the healthiest thing they ate all month . . .

Would love a list of what we actually can eat

my rule is simple - lots of fresh fruit and veg, and sensible sized portions of a wide variety of different foods.

the kids have a chocolate biscuit or a small bun in their lunches every day. they have sweets once, sometimes twice a week. fizzy drinks only on special occasions, less than once a month. they have 6 fruit and veg a day. we eat sausages (good quality gluten free 97% meat ones) - we are having toad in the hole tonight (gazillion calories but tastes lush) with baby new potatoes, runner beans, carrots, peas and gravy (shhh! bisto best - that utter evil poison)

tomorrow we are having homemade fish fingers (salmon chunks dipped in egg and crushed cornflakes and oven baked) with JPs and salad.

variety variety variety is my motto

Yes, our ancestors ate much more variety then we eat today.
A good basic rules is "if man made it don't eat it".

The bottom line is that 60% of people in the UK are overweight for the first time in our history and most people are eating the wrong foods. No one likes to hear that but it's the truth.

I would suggest to parents the first thing to tackle with children is what they drink. Get them on to tap water. Colas, diet colas, fizzy orange, fresh orange, squash with aspartame and all the rest are just not needed at all . Start by getting them only to drink water and anyone can do that even if you are on benefits as it costs nothing.

People on the net spraff a fat lot of bollocks about what their kids eat, too.

From MN you'd think they all lived on organically-sourced fruit and veg, a dusting of organic meat with 4 veggies on the side, a dab of chcolate.

It's like FB, bullshit.