agirl
Posts: 4530
Joined: 6/14/2004
Status: offline
|
I also grew up at a time when fast food wasn't around, nor were packet meals or takeaways. I grew up with a Mum who cooked from scratch where this was the norm. Everyone cooked from scratch. Even at school we were taught how to make pastry and many important basic cooking skills, boys and girls alike.
There was no option but to be able to cook. My children have learned to do the same thing because they have a Mum that has always cooked from scratch.
My 19yr old son has just left home and is having a whale of a time cooking. He works in town and could eat out every day as he's not poor in any real sense of the word but he prefers to cook from scratch, as does his housemate. They alternate cooking for each other like an old married couple and in a few short months away from home he's found out the best places to buy good quality food at the best prices.
My daughter, on the other hand, is living on an extremely low income and has roughly £20 per week to feed herself, and her daughter when she stays. All the same, she eats healthily and cooks from scratch. She eats a lot of chicken, turkey, fish, fresh veg, rice and potatoes. She also makes a lot of homemade soup.
They are both lucky living close to our small town, where we have a market twice a week which sells fresh veg at amazing prices, and shops close to hand.
Building up a basic store cupboard for creating meals is essential for homecooking and for the ability to make good meals stretch a long way. Things like lentils, pearl barley,rice and various types of beans are invaluable for making meat based meals go further in a healthy way.
I would say that not having a freezer would be a drawback as it's much cheaper in the long run to cook huge pots of things and freezing the excess into portions for days when you don't have time to cook.
I agree that being able to cook healthily and cheaply probably comes a lot more easily for people of my generation as it's ingrained. It's a skill like any other and can be hard nowadays for young people that have grown up with fast food and ready meals as their norm.
Some of my son's young friends think a microwave Rustlers Burger in a Bun is a meal! Their palate isn't used to homemade casseroles as they've hardly ever had them and they look at the piles of fresh steamed vegetables on our plates with a *erm, ok* look........lol
I very much take for granted that I can make anything I want to from a pile of ingredients. I take it for granted that I can adapt a recipe according to what I have on hand, that I know what herbs go with what without being told in a recipe, that I know what to grow easily for cooking,( sage, thyme, rosemary,bay).
When this has been part of your very fabric of daily life from the word go it's easy to forget that it's not the case for younger people. These skills aren't taught or passed on as a matter of course any longer.
Anyhow...Baked potato with tuna and sweetcorn, Baked potato with adzuki beans and cheese, Cauliflower cheese, Omelettes with just about anything, Broccolli with feta cheese crumbled over it. If you like roast potatoes but want to have them without the fat content, Twice baked baked potatoes.
Our family recipe for Twice baked Baked potatoes.
Bake whole potatoes until you can just push a sharp knife through them,
Remove and cut into chunks.
Throw into a baking tin, sprinkle a little salt, pepper and paprika over them and put back into the oven until crispy on the surface. No fat involved.
A big favourite here.
agirl
_____________________________
See how easy it can be?
|
RE: What can you knock up cheap? - 
Profile
.gif){kind=avatar}
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread