Pre-prepared is a good thing.
May. 1st, 2012 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
windtear posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
cookingforpeoplewhodontHalf-homemade is a strange but lovely concept and one I embrace wholeheartedly, because it sums up my cooking style perfectly. These are the non-homemade parts of my cooking that I recommend:
Prechopped frozen vegetables! I love these things. schemingreader endorses pre-prepared spinach, but I expand that to all vegetables. With frozen vegetables, it doesn't matter if your (or a fussy family member's) favourite veggie is out-of-season, because it's right there in the freezer section waiting for you. They're uniformly chopped, which is a boon for cooking. Heck, they're pre-prepared, so all you really have to do is pop them in the wok/roasting pan/microwave bowl/steamer/pot of boiling water and away you go. If your dish is supposed to be served 'with cooked vegetables', the prechopped frozen vegetables take the labour out of that side and make it a viable part of the meal and not something that you try to dodge.
Soup mixes, be they canned, dried or stock cubes, are God's gift to the busy cook. Only once have I ever made soup from scratch and it's not something I see any need to repeat. Stock cubes combined with cakes of egg noodles make great cheap ramen, canned cream of chicken soup is a wonderful base for almost any chicken casserole, and powdered soup in sour cream is a quick and easy dip. Plus, of course, they make tasty soup.
Finally, I recommend pre-spiced pieces of meat (chicken, steak, etc). Toss them in the frypan or roasting dish and cook away. They're pre-portioned into meal-sized pieces and the spice mix is usually good (or at least worth trying, and if you feel the need to add, say, some sprigs of rosemary, nothing's stopping you).
Cooking from scratch is fun and good on the weekends, when there's time. For the week, though... that's when we all need a little help. I don't see anything wrong with cooking from a packet or using a premade sauce - it's all cooking, and it's all ours.
Prechopped frozen vegetables! I love these things. schemingreader endorses pre-prepared spinach, but I expand that to all vegetables. With frozen vegetables, it doesn't matter if your (or a fussy family member's) favourite veggie is out-of-season, because it's right there in the freezer section waiting for you. They're uniformly chopped, which is a boon for cooking. Heck, they're pre-prepared, so all you really have to do is pop them in the wok/roasting pan/microwave bowl/steamer/pot of boiling water and away you go. If your dish is supposed to be served 'with cooked vegetables', the prechopped frozen vegetables take the labour out of that side and make it a viable part of the meal and not something that you try to dodge.
Soup mixes, be they canned, dried or stock cubes, are God's gift to the busy cook. Only once have I ever made soup from scratch and it's not something I see any need to repeat. Stock cubes combined with cakes of egg noodles make great cheap ramen, canned cream of chicken soup is a wonderful base for almost any chicken casserole, and powdered soup in sour cream is a quick and easy dip. Plus, of course, they make tasty soup.
Finally, I recommend pre-spiced pieces of meat (chicken, steak, etc). Toss them in the frypan or roasting dish and cook away. They're pre-portioned into meal-sized pieces and the spice mix is usually good (or at least worth trying, and if you feel the need to add, say, some sprigs of rosemary, nothing's stopping you).
Cooking from scratch is fun and good on the weekends, when there's time. For the week, though... that's when we all need a little help. I don't see anything wrong with cooking from a packet or using a premade sauce - it's all cooking, and it's all ours.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 01:37 am (UTC)I've just realised that I don't tend to mentally classify things like frozen or tinned veg (provided they have nothing else in them) as non-home-made foods. Which is possibly cheating, but really, they are effectively fresh fruit and veg in a more accessible form...