Do you bake from scratch? Do you bake the occasional batch of cookies, or do you make your own wheat thins and corn flakes? I remember my mom making corn flakes... I don't think I will try to replicate that scenario. We live in an age of convenience. Not only can you get a $1 cheese burger in less than 5 minutes, have a jar of pesto sauce warmed and topping your pasta in 4 minutes, you can get premade, crustless PB&Js to throw at your kids in no time at all! So in a world of fast food why would anyone want to spend 4 hours making classic pot roast, 3 hours making bread, or even 30 minutes dicing the heck out of vegetables for homemade salsa? LOTS OF REASONS:Taste
Health
Variety
Saving money
Martha Stewart Syndrome
A return to the simpler ways of life (is "simpler" really the right word here?)
Allergies
Being able to sneak vegetables into everything your child eats
The smell
And I just found one more: Avoiding the garbage!
A couple of weeks ago Albertson's was having a killer sale on all those fun convenience foods that I never buy my family. The kids were so excited to see me putting Breakfast Cookies, Hot Pockets, Tostino's Pizza, Frozen Egg Sandwiches, Instant sugary Oatmeal, and fruit bars into my cart. I was excited telling myself, "You deserve a break. This will make life so much easier." Boy was I wrong! For one thing the kids were only willing to eat half of what I bought, the rest they turned their noses up at after taking one bite so I had to cook for them anyway. But the thing that totally astonished me was the amount of garbage that came from all that food. Half of it could be recycled, true, but it seemed like everything inside 
the cardboard boxes was individually wrapped in plastic. Between the wrappers and the uneaten food I was starting to feel very guilty. Most of it is gone, we even gave some of it away, and I am relieved. I don't mind convenience, not one bit, but I think I will keep baking most things from scratch. My kids enjoy my Breakfast Chocolate Cake way more than they enjoyed the mostly uneaten Quaker Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies, and that is just fine by me.
the cardboard boxes was individually wrapped in plastic. Between the wrappers and the uneaten food I was starting to feel very guilty. Most of it is gone, we even gave some of it away, and I am relieved. I don't mind convenience, not one bit, but I think I will keep baking most things from scratch. My kids enjoy my Breakfast Chocolate Cake way more than they enjoyed the mostly uneaten Quaker Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies, and that is just fine by me. 
7 comments:
I so agree with everything you said. I cook and bake from scratch, and always have. It's funny, but when my husband was thinking about marrying me, one of the first things he asked me was whether or not I'd be willing to bake all our bread! Fortunately, I thought that was a great idea myself, and here we are, 26 years later...
By the way, I followed the link to that Chocolate Breakfast cake. That sounds wonderful! Nobody here would argue with chocolate for breakfast!
I do bake and cook a lot from scratch, or mostly from scratch. However, those few items out there that I find taste just as good from a jar and a box I am all over. It doesn't hurt to be lazy sometimes :) !!
I don't make my own cornflakes, because if I'm going to actually cook something, its going to be something good, not cold cereal. We could have hot cereal for the time corn flakes probably take...
I do cook from scratch, and I mean from scratch-often with no recipe. But breakfast is often simple/convenience foods-yogurt or cold cereal.
Food for thought...(couldn't resist!) :D
I like to bake from scratch. I LOVE homemade salsa and it is my husband's absolute favorite. I sometimes fantasize about living totally self-sufficiant on a farm in Minnesota.
I got the Columbus Day Play from Julianne S. Kimber's "I Love Amereica" book. Email me if you would like details. amessonja@gmail.com
Did you know that recycled paper creates 8 times as much "sledge" as virgin paper? But then there is that whole deforestation thing...Er Aaa.. pass the Pop-Tarts please. I need my RDA of sugar, corn syrup, enriched flour high fructose corn syrup, corn starch and my favorite FDA allowable amount of rat poo and insect remains. Thems good eats!!!!!!!!!!
I love to cook from scratch, or close to it! It is so much better! Plus, I love the creativity!
You know, while we were in the midst of our recent move, we were "forced" into loads of convenience food because all we had was a microwave. I thought Little Man would be in heaven...eating all the stuff he normally doesn't get. But boy was I wrong...when we finally got into our house and found our kitchen stuff, he asked me if I could just make "regular food" for dinner...it broke my heart...
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