I have this argument with my wife often. I like to cook, and for me cooking is more than taking frozen meatballs and dumping them into a pan full of jar pasta sauce. I would rather make the sauce, maybe have some meatballs made in advance. My wife seems to think that pre-made stuff or mixes are the way to go. I would rather just make pancakes scratch, which isn’t hard, where she would rather I just open the mix, add water, and make the food. But I do agree that having a frozen lasagna is better than taking the full effort when I just want to get dinner going. So where are your eat the pre-made vs make it from scratch?

  • BougieBirdie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    12·
    19 days ago

    Cooking from scratch is almost always going to be less expensive, better tasting, and healthier.

    Cooking with pre-made ingredients is often faster and easier.

    For me, the decision is often predicated on how much energy I have. Sometimes prepping all the ingredients and the resulting cleanup feels like an impossible undertaking. Which is a shame because I’m a good cook - but sometimes I hate cooking.

    Meal prepping or making batch meals is often a happy medium. Homemade food that you can later just reheat. If anybody has tips for making it feel less like I’m eating leftovers all the time, I’m happy to hear them

    • beastlykings@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      19 days ago

      This is us basically. Though we’re pretty busy, so we usually try to cook 2 maybe 3 meals a week, and eat the leftovers on the days in between.

      Don’t get me wrong, we cook good stuff, we just purposely make a lot. I’m not going through all that effort for one tiny meal, unless it makes sense to do so, like we won’t be home for meal times or something so it would go bad.

      But we keep some premix stuff around, and I have a few fast but not so healthy scratch recipes I can whip up in a jiffy. That’s usually us on Tuesday nights.

      I’ve got one where I literally just throw rice, chix broth, frozen precooked (by me) chicken, frozen mixed veggies, and garlic/other spices into a rice cooker. That way I can just slap it together, jump in the shower, and eat quick before leaving again. Sometimes life is just that way.