If you don't "cook from scratch", what do you eat?

[Notcontent]

Sorry, this is prompted by another thread, but I am really curious.

I am not a super-woman but I do (mostly) "Cook from scratch" despite being a lone parent who works long hours four days a week. I guess I do this because I am not British (but live in the UK now) and have always cooked. I don't really have time to cook when I get home from work so I batch cook on the weekend or sometimes in the evening. Or I make things that are very quick, like egg dishes, etc.

If you don't really cook, then what do you eat? I guess if you are single you can get away with eating out but that's not an option if you have kids...

Ready meals from marks. Ready made pizza. Pasta with an already made sauce.

I'm on my though and am better now than I was

I'm not at all a foodie and don't spend much time cooking or batch cooking.
Typical meals in our house include an element of ready meal and home prepared stuff. e.g.

Sausages (shop), mash (made) & peas (frozen)
Marinated chicken (shop), potatoes wedges (made), roasted peppers and onions
Cottage pie (made) & veg, recently this includes Aldi frozen cauliflower cheese
Spag bol made with a jar & pasta (brought fresh or dried)
Pasta (as above) & sauce (shop), sometimes meatballs (shop)
Roast (all home prep'd)
Pizza (shop)
Curry (ready meal)
Lunches when home tend to be things like;
Poached eggs
Beans on toast
Full English (for the boys, I have a couple of sausages)
Toasties
French loaf & pate, cooked chicken, salami etc
Soup (tinned)

I like to do a bit of both, but if you want to know what people like me are cooking/reheating when they're not cooking from scratch, maybe have a glance over the other 80% of the supermarket aisles when you're next there.

None of it is there purely for decoration purposes.

I wonder this too OP.
One of my daughter's friends (8yo) wandered into the kitchen once and stood wide eyed, watching me chop veg and garlic etc for a soup or whatever we were having. Everything I did was met with a question, Child: "What's that?"
Me: "Um... garlic."
Child: "Oh. What's garlic?.... What are those?"
Me: "Carrots"
Child: "Do you cook food EVERY night?!" ::gasp::

Confused, I couldn't help but ask what they ate at home. Oven pizzas and Chippy most nights or a sausage roll from the bakery. That night she'd had waffles and potatoes.
Sometimes they had crisp 'pieces' (sandwiches in Scotland)

I guess I do this because I am not British

British people do cook you know!!

If I don't cook from scratch we have one of the following:-
Shop bought pizza
Chicken Kiev
Pukka pies

We usually have one of the above once a week, one takeaway a week, and five scratch meals.

We cook frozen/ prepared stuff with extra veg added

E.g.
Frozen risotto (Tesco) with extra fresh/ frozen veg added
Frozen Thai sauce with packaged noodles and lots of veg and tofu
Frozen cauliflower cheese with lots of veg added
Fresh fish fillets fried, with veg
Sausages (frozen veggie ones)

We eat loads of veg

We rarely eat homemade food except at the weekend when we eat with the DC, for them we make an effort

Our usuals are:
Ready-made (fresh or frozen) pizza
Ready-made fresh soup
Meals from Waitrose or M&S
Bread and cheese / sandwich
Pasta with sauce from a jar
Fresh tortellinis
"Scratch" dishes
Tinned tuna / mayo on bread

Strange this should pop up, as I was wondering this myself the other day.
I know someone who says neither she or her husband cooks, and I'm thinking "you must cook sometimes ! Otherwise what do you all eat?!
Apparently they never do though so this thread will be interesting. Following!

Charlie Bighams

(I can cook as well,but there's nothing like a Bighams and some ready-to-microwave preprepped veg when you're knackered)

I'm British and I always cook from scratch, or my DH does. Unless we're eating out of course.

I'm lucky though as I work from home and can crack straight on with it after work.

I cook from scratch ALOT but do use a jar of sauce on occasion or have an oven pizza

Good question. Everyone i know cooks from stratch. Its so easy. The one or twice we got a ready meal i find it more complicated than getting my streamer etc out. My mil treated us to a m&s chinese take away last week. Sooo complicated with the different times in a microwave. Couldnt do that every day. Its stressful!

Im british too.

My cheats are:

Batch cooking at weekends
Frozen Veg
Microwave rice (we don't eat much rice actually but I absolutely hate cooking it)

Well, what counts as cooking from scratch?

If I make spaghetti and tomato sauce with store bought spaghetti which I just have to boil in water, and tinned tomato purree, then is that "from scratch"?

I don't cook. I eat what DH cooks which I would describe as semi-scratch.

Well I'm British and as a family we eat a home cooked from scratch meal at least 5 times a week! We can actually cook you know
When I say 'from scratch', I mean no ready meals, no jars/sauces or tinned soup, no lazy garlic type stuff, no packet sauce things, no freezer meals or reformed chicken piece type things. We do use things like dried pasta, tinned tomatoes, sausages etc.
Days we don't cook, we go out or (rare, because it's never as good), get a takeaway.

I used to cook from scratch until recently. Now I've discovered that jars of sauce and packets of mix are just as tasty and zero effort.

So now I only cook from scratch once or twice a week. We had chilli last week that took five minutes to assemble (and two hours on the hob) using a packet mix. My fabulous homemade chilli is hours of work and costs a fortune in ingredients. There is very little discernible difference, to my children and husband's unrefined palates. So my fabulous meals are now reserved for special occasions only.

Vestal raises a good point? Do you make your own pasta?

Bolognaise with veg and a jar
Chicken in a sauce from a jar
Sausage casserole with a jar
Mexican using the old el paso boxes
Curry for dh using a jar

Our glass recycling is all jars we do cook some stuff from scratch, like a roast. DD1 only likes chicken in gravy so we don't have the chicken tonight style jars much at the moment.

Tonight is fish fingers with mayo and lettuce on toasted brioche buns with homemade garlic wedges. Quick and easy.

I mostly cook from scratch but if I don't we have:

Pizza (thin crust kind, less oily)
Tortellini/ other "filled" pasta with pesto or with tomatoes and mozzarella
Baked potatoes with beans or tuna
Fish fingers and oven chips or new potatoes
Stuff that's been cooked from scratch another day

I do a mixture of from scratch and pre-prepared, some things not from scratch are:
Pasta with sauce from a jar
Curry with sauce from a jar (add my own meat/veg)
Ready-made soup with roll
Tortellini or ravioli ready made with sauce from a jar
Oven chips, chicken nuggets, frozen veg, bag of salad
Jacket potato, bolognese sauce from a jar, frozen mince
Chicken breast or nut roast, stuffing, roasting potatoes, frozen veg
Frozen/chilled pizza (normally add extra veg), bag of salad

I don't really understand what "cooking from scratch" means. I don't know anyone who minces their own meat and very few people I know make their own pasta, but they would still say that they cook from scratch.

minnce, dolmio, lots of veggies, pasta
fish fingers, boiled spuds, veggies, tom sauce
veggie burgers from freezer, pasta in pesto, salad
loaded nachos, salad
enchiladas (sauce from jar)

Go point wye i don't make pasta. Have a friend who does but its a faff and doesnt taste any sifferent to shop bought. Im not a fan of pasta anyway. I love rice cooked in my rice cooker.