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...

We use loads of jars for pasta, lasagne, bolognese that type of thing.

We do make veg, chips and mash from scratch but I can't be bothered to do the sauces!

We cook from scratch (including sauces, marinades etc.) 90% of the time but always have a couple of pizzas, chicken Kiev's or similar and some oven chips in the freezer for nights when it all goes a bit wrong and we're short on time, inspiration or energy (sometimes all three).

Our most common meals are spag bol, lasagne, meat (chicken, pork, steak, sausages) with a few veg, slow cooker curries or casseroles, or in summer things like quiche or pie with salad and new potatoes.

I have a fabulous Japanese place that delivers fresh cooked meals to my office daily and then at night I'll have a salad from Marks. At the weekend we eat out. I neither have the time nor inclination to cook from scratch. My son eats his meals at nursery or the nanny cooks for him. Reading that back I sound like a lazy sod, but I'm not!!!!

Stir-fry made with pre-chopped veg and packet sauce.

Steak and oven chips with pre-made salad.

Frozen pizza and salad.

Chilli con carne using a jar, with microwave rice.

I do cook from scratch at the weekend but mid-week we both get home around 7-7.30pm so like to cook something quickly.

Wizardoftoss never underestimate the power of pastry in a pork pie. Greggs sausage rolls are possibly my all time fave snack. Food of champs etc...Even on maternity leave I didn't cook. That was lazy!!!!!

We have both bought and made meals. DH does all the cooking though, if I had to cook I think there would be considerably more convenience food.

Spaghetti Bolognaise/Lasagne - home made with bought pasta
Meat/veg pies - home made with bought pastry (if puff - I can't make it!)
Meat/veg stir fries, casseroles and curries - home made, slow cooker
Roast Dinners - Home made
Chips/wedges - Sometimes shop sometimes home cut/cooked

We do have shop bought Pizza's, pies and supermarkets 'Special' range 3 course meals with wine occasionally too. Also, a few too many takeaways .

Call me old school but I love a roast dinner, & I was one of those sad kids that used to love meat, potatoes, & veg. Although I do throw a pizza in the oven from time to time, or gran a cold pastie.

I know at least 2 people who never cook a dinner as such, & they do all their shopping at Iceland. When I asked what food the kids like they said finger foods Think they just grab from the fridge.

We properly eat the same as you, just use jars instead for time. I always use fresh meat and veg but jar/tinned/powder sauces. i.e curry, casserole....

On days I can't be bothered we'll have beans on toast, pizza, mezze or antipasti style platter. I don't like the taste of most ready meals and jars and I find that the ones I do like are expensive so it's a rare treat to have a Charlie Birgham or Tesco Finest.

Oops. Meant Charlie Bingham

Toast.........

I don't mind cooking, but I still cheat to save time, and because it's no different sometimes...frozen diced onions in a sauce taste exactly the same as if I cut up the onion myself, so why spend the time?
So, I guess I 'put ingredients together' rather than cook from scratch, and I do that most nights. I'm doing slimming world at the moment, so we eat lots of veg (mostly frozen), meat, rice, potatoes, pasta. We all prefer homemade pizza dough to store bought, so I do make my own (in the bread maker), but all the toppings are store bought. We also always have fish fingers for when I cba, and the DCs like super noodles for lunch at weekends. I don't see the point at being smug about the cooking thing...some people like it and make time for it, some don't! Doesn't matter in the grand scheme, eh?

I don't buy ready meals but I do use jars of curry paste, pesto etc, frozen mash, ready prepped and frozen veg. Sometimes we have oven chips, fish fingers, pizza too.

This thread made me laugh....I once bought a new cooker and the first time I went to use the oven I discovered it did not work. Problem was I had had it for 4 years so thought I prob could not return it.

What do I eat....toast! Sometimes 3 times a day. If I want a proper cooked meal I tip beans on top. I can't stand ready meals and life's too short to spend cooking so on days I'm not eating out it really is toast and nothing else.

But I do live on my own

I'm not a fan of jars (of pasta etc) but will happily buy and eat frozen pizzas, ready made sausages and the like. I'd say 3 days a week are ready meals here (like sausages and salad), the rest of the week I make stews, casseroles etc.

Mostly cook from scratch. However, we always have

• ready made stuffed pasta
• a jar of pesto
• packets of gnocchi
• ready made quiche
• breaded fish and oven chips

in the house, and would normally eat one of those once or twice a week - so 5-6 nights cook from scratch, one or possibly two nights a week from the above staples.

Don't use ready made jars except for pesto, though I do use curry pastes for some curries sometimes (Thai green curry paste, occasional Jalfrezi curry paste) rather than starting from individual spices or curry powder.

We have a lot of jacket potatoes with maybe cheese and beans, pasta into which I empty a tin of tomatoes and grate cheese over, breaded chicken of various types from M&S as theirs is the best with mash or chips and veg, bacon butties, sausages with chips and egg, omlettes with various fillings with salad or chips, full English on weekend mornings, i do manage to make my own soup and we generally make our own pizzas but shop bought garlic bread with them, lots of those different just cook style meals with ready prepared veg and potatoes so you just fling the whole thing in the oven when you get in from work (love them) plus the frozen risottos from Waitrose are very nice too.

When not cooking from scratch we have dinners like:
Carrot sticks, celery sticks with humus and sliced apple or fruit salad for afters. The occasional tins of soup with bread and butter or beans on toast.
Cooked up pasta with Pesto or a pasta sauce with some cooked veggies thrown in. Sometimes tinned chilli with rice.
But in all honesty, who can really say they cook everything from scratch? No one makes their own pasta, they buy it. Most people have at least one ingredient that's pre-made and gets thrown in to a meal.

I've looked at the ingredients on pasta sauce jars, and to be honest there's really nothing evil in there. It saves you chopping and frying your own onion, which makes it worthwhile for me at the end of a long day.

I used to see the pressure to cook "from scratch" as one of the things that holds us as women back - and as a result felt that ready meals were just a new division of labour for the 21st century. But looking at this thread, it seems that's wrong. Some people genuinely enjoy it, and others dh do the cooking. It's probably just my own justification for not doing it.

I always cook from scratch and often with the children. I never use sauces and jars as just don't like them and many have lots of hidden salt and sugar. I don't make my own pasta no, but pesto, hummous etc I make. Its how I relax after a long day at work. I do travel for work a lot and eat out in restaurants or room service so then I obviously do not cook, but I think this makes me crave home cooked food.

my favourite is Tesco finest mousakka - shove in oven and pour wine

i think cooking from scrath is just cooking a meal.but that can mean jars of sauce,like kormas and dolmio etc.tinned tomatoes.putting a meal together.even baked beans and a jacket potato I think is from scratch.
not from scrath is like packet whole meals,microwave meals.not really nutritious meals as if you cooked them or over looked them yourself.
for instance cosco does great shephards pies and fish pies that they make in store.i don't think this give a blck mark on me if I buy these a few times a month and have with some vegg or salad.

This is my list of normal meals, only including stuff that at least 2/3 of us will eat. It's taken from my winter meal plan, I probably do add some other stuff in in summer.

Totally lazy/frozen:
Frozen pizza
Chicken nuggets/fish fingers and chips
Burger and chips
Frozen fish and chips
Instant noodles
Meatballs with sauce
Pasta with jar sauce
Baked beans on toast

(DS doesn't like chips so has froz. mixed veg with his)

Jar sauces etc with some prep:
Chicken curry
Mushroom curry
Sweet and sour chicken (Uncle Ben's)
"Home made" pizza (ready made dough + sauce)

From scratch:
Spaghetti bolognese
Chili con carne
Stir fry with noodles
Egg fried rice
Some combo of meat + veg + carb e.g. chicken with peppers and rice (Not v often because this requires imagination...)
Chinese chicken in slow cooker
Stew in slow cooker (sometimes use packet mix)
Sometimes make a pasta with a cream or tomato sauce from scratch but DS and DH prefer the jar stuff. Plus, imagination problem again.

The long ones, just for the occasional weekend:
Toad in the hole
Pie (with ready made pastry)
Shepherd's pie
Roast dinner

I suppose that's quite a balance actually. The issue is DH is convinced he can't cook so he'll only attempt things from the first category with the occasional foray into a stew. I did convince him to attempt the sweet and sour chicken though, that wasn't very difficult, though he did serve it with chips instead of rice. So we end up eating more out of the first category. At the moment DS needs quick dinners and they mostly fall under the first type and DH is home before me 3x a week so I need to make sure that what's planned is something he can cook and then I don't feel like doing the whole cooking thing every night.

The thing with the frozen food is it's easy - everyone has their own portion so you can pick out what you fancy and it doesn't take any input at all, just throw it in the oven and then come back to it when it's done and that's it. With the actual recipe stuff, you've got to plan it, work out what goes in it, hope the shop has it (if the shop runs out of pizzas, which it never does, you can just buy more fish fingers instead - but there's frequently no chicken or none of the specific veg you want or the thing you want is more expensive this week) and then you have to be in the mood to cook it before it goes mouldy, whereas if you leave your pizza in the freezer a few more days, it's fine. Frequently I get home and feel too tired to put effort into cooking stuff and then cleaning it up and it's much easier to pick something out of the freezer even if it doesn't taste as good...

I know it's a terrible habit but if you get used to the ease of something it starts to feel difficult to do the other thing. Especially when it's only ever me who does it. It gets you down. And I like cooking I just stop liking things when I feel like I have to do them.

@crunchymum. Rice cooker. Equal rice to water. Press button. Wait til clicks up. Job done. Godsend