Is your family is snobby when it comes to homemade dishes

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My in laws are very snobby when it comes to homemade food.

When I say snobby they wouldn’t judge a single mum relying on something pre made for example but when it comes to the stuff they eat they massively favour homemade stuff. I just find it amusing tbh! They all get VERY excited when someone brings over homemade bread and desserts. Wanting to know what recipe/method you chose. All birthday cakes are homemade. I swear a cake from Tesco would sit completely unopened in the fridge.

There is one vegetarian family member and my sister in law is going to make an entire veggie wellington just for him. I suggested just getting something from M&S and she completely baulked at the very idea. Tbf everyone is a good cook.

It definitely stems from MIL. Who grows her own food, makes chutneys etc. They would never dream of shoving in an Indian selection from Waitrose as starters like my family doesx

I just find it fascinating tbh.

Anyone else have family like this? Even croissants are homemade!

Im very like that but I was reared with great food, am a great cook, as are all my friends.
I'm constantly being gifted jams, pickles, marmalade, salted herbs, flavoured gin, you name it.

I gift friends tubs of my roasted veg, incredible curries.
We all love it, because we love great food and value it.

I think people value different things. Often, shop bought means additives which aren't very good for you. I can also understand the aversion to shop bought food purely because as a society I don't think we actually make enough home made and it's bad for your health to eat too much processed food so rejecting processed food can be an expression of a wider dissatisfaction with the UK culture around food.

Some people find more enjoyment in homemade food because it's an expression of themselves and they have worked hard for the result which is rewarding.

I prefer homemade for the above reasons but wouldn't reject other stuff if that's what was going and often I don't have time for homemade.

Haha our family is exactly like this but I I don’t think it’s snobby!
We just like good food, well made and prefer it over mass produced anything full of additives and preservatives and not real food.
We don’t eat ready meals, jarred sauces, packet mixes, frozen dinners etc, as much as possible for us is freshly preferred at home.
I don’t care how anyone else chooses to eat, I just care about putting decent nutrition into my kids and ourselves.

I don't think this is snobby either. If you like cooking and food and have time, homemade is far nicer. Birthday cakes are easy to make, brown bread is easy. Do they make their own pastry for croissants?

My DC (11 & 7) won't eat anything re-heated. Is this snobby according to you?

"Compulsive desire for homemade food" ?! Honestly, listen to yourself. You've been completely captured by big corporations marketing their highly processed slop and making it seem in some way strange or over the top to cook from scratch.

100 years ago, would it have been considered 'snobby' to cook your own food at home? So why on earth is it now?

No way is it snobby!

Homemade is always better!

I can’t cook and am time and money poor but if I could do everything homemade then I would.

I also get excited when someone brings me something homemade as I know they’ve put time and effort into it.

Every year I will make my DC a birthday cake. I will also buy a cheap one too.
Mine looks like crap but for me it’s an expression of love.

You’re definitely in the minority here OP.
Perhaps you’re just feel a bit inadequate which I understand but that doesn’t mean you should look down your nose at your in-laws.

Not snobby at all.
I prefer homemade to shop bought.
Packet bread sauce - yuk. Homemade is so much more flavourful and no horrible processed chemicals added.
I can guarantee what goes into my food when it’s homemade

Look at photos from previous decades and see how slim and healthy people looked compared with today. Very few people were overweight in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but as a nation we’ve been growing steadily bigger since then (I am quite overweight myself, so this isn’t a dig at larger people).

Part of this must be due to processed food, so good on your MIL and her family for cooking proper food without additives. As previous posters have said, it’s much better for you, tastier, cheaper and can also be an enjoyable process that brings people together. Much of what people buy in the supermarket these days is just ‘stuff’ to fill your stomach, and has little to no nutritional value at all.

Well, this sounds like a family who love food, understand how food is produced - commercially and from scratch - and have the energy and resources to make tasty, healthy stuff every day.

I wish I could. I can and do make things from scratch, but don’t always have the energy to do that every day. So, it’s nice to have both options. But homemade really does taste better.

Nah, I live off junk and find cooking chat very boring but you’re being weird here, it’s a completely normal thing to enjoy and prioritise.

I think (almost) everyone who generally cooks from scratch has some things they buy either because they’re difficult or because, well, life’s too short. For me it’s puff pastry, bread (from local baker), croissants, hummus, pasta and probably a few other similar things.

Well, food manufacturers have clearly done a good job if we’re living in a world where it’s to be remarked upon that people prefer to eat healthier, safer, tastier, cheaper food that’s entirely to their taste and that they’ve cooked themselves

Homemade is snobby but Waitrose is chilled every day normal fare. Righty-ho.

Snobby is definitely the wrong word.

my in-laws are the polar opposite, nothing is made from scratch ever, everything comes out of a packet or jar. I once made a cheesecake for a family gathering and it sat there untouched, eyed suspiciously, as they all tucked into the “gorgeous” 99p mandarin cheesecake from Farmfoods.

I used Nigella's (or was it Hugh F-W's?) recipe one year and found it a massive faff with no discernable difference between the results and a bought pudding. I think the homemade/ shop bought difference is most stark when it comes to relatively delicate things with a limited shelf life (bread, pastry, sponge cake).

Whereas Christmas pudding could survive a nuclear holocaust unscathed, and give the cockroaches a festive treat.

We do make Christmas cake and mince pies though.

What’s snobby about preferring home made food?

As you say, “you’ve no idea”.

Perhaps if you think about things which are important to you, and to which you will make efforts more than average, can you say this is their version of that.

Lastly, as a homemade food person- I think it is most unlikely to come from a place of insecurity.

As others have said, homemade is usually much nicer and usually worth the effort.

What on earth is ‘snobby’ about wanting to avoid the myriad health problems caused by eating processed foods? About wanting a healthy old age, not one ruined by diabetes? About wanting your kids to avoid early onset colon cancer? About not wanting to line the pockets of corporations that hijack our taste buds to hook us on profitable, processed junk?

I am really shocked by this framing of processed food not just as the norm- but as so essential that if you dare to deviate from it, you are ruled ‘snobby’.

The only people benefiting from processed food are the shareholders in the corporations that make it. And they’re certainly not eating it themselves.

I feel sorry for OP’s in-laws, having to put up with this level of brainwashed stupidity. Yes, cooking from scratch is difficult and exhausting, given the amount of work most of us need to do just to pay the bills. That’s a bad thing, a symptom of the sickness of untrammelled capitalism since the 1980s. It is not something to be celebrated & encouraged, lemming like, as the norm.

What happens when you have them over and give them shop-bought stuff? Do they turn their nose up, or do they just eat it and not mention it?

This.

It's not snobbishness - it's a hobby, or an interest. In fact, it sounds as if you have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder about it.

I think it's rather sweet - I would take an interest and ask all sorts of questions without having the least compunction about serving M&S (or ever Aldi) party snacks myself.😀

Since when did making food to eat become snobby.

Literally what the whole of humanity until 20/30 years did and much of the still world does.

I don’t think snobby means whay you think it means op; are you just looking for a reason to have a go at them? They are good cooks, they prefer to cook, what on earth is wrong with that.

My MIL believed that stuff you made was more unhealthy than bought stuff. She used to get very upset that I made things and then complained she couldn’t eat them as they would be so ‘rich’.

What is snobby about that? It sounds like you are judging them. I much much prefer homemade food especially as i get older. I don't want to eat a load of processed junk.