How many nights a week do you cook from scratch?

[Ceolas]

My DD (10yo) was saying yesterday that most of her friends' mums used ready made foods instead of cooking from scratch. It got me thinking about why we do it. We have probably 2-3 dinners in the month that aren't home cooked. Usually one take away night and 1-2 bought pizzas.

Mostly it's to keep the food budget manageable but it's also how my mum cooked and I suppose for health reasons too.

Don't want a judgey type thread, just interested in whether most folks do and why

I think it really depends what you count as cooking from scratch.

This week we've had:

Jacket potatoes with tuna sweetcorn mayo and green salad. Does this count as from scratch? Nothing came out of a tin/packet except the tuna, but it's hardly 'cooking'.

Ready-made frozen chicken cordon bleus, with homemade potato salad and green salad

Jacket potatoes with homemade lentil bolognese and homemade broad bean and pea salad with mustard-cream dressing.

Tonight is pork in oyster sauce, the marinade has been made from scratch but the oyster sauce itself will come from a bottle. And we have frozen special fried rice in the freezer needing to be used up, so that'll be served with it. The antithesis of from-scratch.

It really depends on where you draw the line. This week I'm probably using a bit more frozen stuff because I didn't get the chance to do a full supermarket shop at the weekend. Also you can see my week has been potato-heavy, I bought a massive bag of potatoes two weeks ago that I've been desperately trying to use up!

Pretty much every night, might have a takeaway once a month and a frozen pizza even less frequently but I love to cook so it doesn't feel like a chore.

Most of what we eat is "from scratch" but I tend to double or triple up when I cook and then freeze it. I just can't be arsed to cook some days after work but I'll always have a box of bolognese or a curry in the freezer. It means spending the odd Sunday afternoon cooking like a madwoman, and it means we tend to eat the same cycle of meals again and again, but it works.

I cook everyday from scratch because my little boy won't eat anything frozen