[WeavingGryphon]

The food is that bad in the local hospital when I was in to have my youngest I made pizzas and had the husband cook then smuggle them into me and ate that breakfast, lunch and tea. The porridge was like wall paper paste, the meals were burnt and dried out baked potato is not a meal.

I didn't have pregnancy cravings for either pregnancy I had pregnancy aversions so pizza was all I wanted for about 3 weeks. I basically went off of everything but melted cheese, cheese and onion crisps and fish fingers. I couldn't stand ginger nuts and almost 7 years after I first got pregnant I still can't face the thought of eating potato. I can make it, but I cannot look at it and think dinner. For 18 months Husband had to go around to his parents for potatoes as I wouldn't cook it and wouldn't let him cook it in the house as the smell was enough to give me the horrors.

[WeavingGryphon]

ZOMBIE THREAD.

You lot, especially those who post on the "What's For Tea" Thread really make me feel happier about people and society.

I was at a parents meeting recently on my lonesome and since the listening device headphones had died I had to listen to the world around me. I wasn't deliberately eavesdropping but I love to hear what people are having for tea, inspiration and all. So when the people in front of me asked each other what did you have for tea I got interested. I overheard a lot of discussion about dinner.

Out of the 10 odd people I heard talking I was amazed, only my family had a home cooked meal. So that's 11 families including my own. One parent had cereal as usual, another sandwiches, someone else thanked their Divinity of choice for baked beans with sausages in the tin, one had nothing and left a ready meal in the oven for the Husband, she'd probably have tea and toast later if there was bread in the house, ready meals for some others, pot noodle. Toast and butter, microwave macaroni cheese, someone else had microwave mashed potatoes with something and there was salami and packet of salad, micro chips for the kids, someone was having micro spaghetti bolangase which they have every week, the kids were getting sick of it but there's only so much choice. One person's parents fed the kids thank their Divinity of choice so they were having casserole or something, mum always has a go about them not getting proper food at home (habitual cereal eater). They were all saying as usual, as usual, as usual!

Not even some pasta, chicken bits and a stir in sauce. Or fish fingers! Mashed potatoes!

Every night even when I was working split shifts (8-13, 16-10) every night my lot had a dinner cooked from scratch. While it is occasionally pasta (home made sauce though) between a slow cooker and pressure cooker I could get food on the go so it was ready when tummies rumbled. feeding people is how I show affection, I like/love you = I feed you, Husband shows affection by staying out of the kitchen.

It's  saddening and kindo of horrifying. 

I honestly don't understand how you could live like that.
You can buy frozen onions, fling then in a slow cooker with some meat and stock/sauce in a sealable tub the night before to marinade. Put in the slow cooker on low before you leave in the morning, ready when you come home. Or fry odd onions in the pressure cooker, meat in cook with sauce/stock , depressurise, veg in for a final 10. Done. Soup, 15-20 minutes in a pressure cooker or soup maker then blend. In the interim you can have yourself and kids out of your work/ school clothes, homework underway and table set.

Husband isn't a fan of cooking (the fact that I could cook is what got me a date over another woman). He doesn't like it and avoids it whenever he can, unless it involves bacon! But he was rather appalled as well. His standby standard answer to potential problems with tea is, you can't go far wrong with pork chops and mashed potatoes.

Hearing that and the fact it was all the usual few dishes. I heard on the BBC news that people had the same few dishes every week, Tuesday was spaghetti bolognase, Wednesday was macaroni cheese etc which is why these meals delivered in boxes were a success.   

That's why I log on the What's for tea tonight thread, so I can make sure they don't have the same meal within a 2-3 week period. It helps that I have OCD collecting cooker books.

Can people share what their experiences in this are? Have they heard similar?

[John]

Val does the cooking usually but I can still whip up a meal if allowed! I'm pretty good at omelettes if I say it myself As for ready meals - very rare. Before we moved we used to treat ourselves to a delivered take-out Chinese. Here we have a choice of one Indian and one Chinese. They prefer you to book in advance for a take out!! The one Indian I had was the worst I have ever had and I spent 2 days poorly {graphic details deleted] They're also more expensive than London.
When we met Val cooked brown rice with a few vegetables ..her Viet Cong Macrobiotic phase.. but I ate them.

[Plot 1 Problems]

While I normally I post on the dinner thread to regale in the exceptions where we nosh on illicit delights like chips, fried eggs and the like, the truth is we eat mostly scratch cooked and often homegrown food for the majority of the time. When I left home, I realised my only dinner option was the local chippy, so the next day I went to my Nan's and begged for some cooking lessons. Long story short I taught myself enough cooking skills that I snagged a few girlfriends and eventually the wife on the strength of a home cooked meal being better than going for  a restaurant date!

[Growster...]

When I was in my first flat in London, my mother suggested that I just take a tin of Scotch broth, and use that as a base for anything, like mince, etc.

When I met the future Mrs Growster, and was 'instructed' to lose weight (which I did pdq), the best way was buy a cabbage on a Monday, and make a huge coleslaw - again as a base for just about anything, from a chop to a hunk of cheese, with few carbs etc.

Seemed to work...

I do knock up a good pasta though, and also like something with courgettes whenever possible. And as Mumofstig said some time ago, adding a bit of cheese makes anything, pretty well worthwhile!

But I won't be making a 'jus', and I won't be using aubergines either..;0)

[WeavingGryphon]

We go out for an evening walk and when wandering around Husband and I have both commented you hardly ever smell anyone's dinner any more. You can go for streets before smelling something.

 

When I was in my first flat in London, my mother suggested that I just take a tin of Scotch broth, and use that as a base for anything, like mince, etc.

Scotch broth idea was a good one
Hmmm, cabbage.

[wighty]

As I am lactose intolerant I can't have any dairy so home cooked is the norm here, a microwave meal is a real rarity and a takeaway even rarer as we can't guarantee ingredients.  Fortunately both of us love cooking and I have  a pile of recipes that we work our way through so that we have a varied diet.  I do agree about the smell of other people's cooking, liver and onions was one smell that I remember.

[Growster...]

Mrs Growster always remembers living in Bury St Edmunds, and walking with the school on a Sunday, smelling boiling cabbage...

(Which reminds me, it's only ten days before I start cooking the brussell sprouts for a 'seasonal' nosh..;0)

[mrs bouquet]

How about this years Christmas flavoured crisps.    Brussel sprouts with cranberry, turkey with stuffing, sausage with bacon roll.     OMG.          Mrs Bouquet

[rowlandwells]

its know wonder these food takeaways  and home deliveries are making a fortune we are honestly getting a nation of don't know how to cook or can't be bothered 

I'm glad to say both my wife and me where brought up on traditional cooking what would be the point in us having an allotment if we didn't cook what we grow having said that we have a very good fish and chip shop and several Indian and Chinese and about four tea shops we sometimes have a fish and chip takeaway

there seems to be a lot of sausage egg chips  backed beans chips or beefberger and chip for kids these days our grandchildren turn the nose up at sprouts and cabbage and other veg? when my daughter was brought up on traditional meals stews Sunday lunch meat pies and so on

how long does it take to cook a jacket potato with fillings together with a slice of good old apple pie
chips and snacks  are on the school menu these days in my school days we had proper dinner ladies cooking real food and I always asked if there where seconds


these days some women spend more time making them selves up than cooking a family meal its sad very sad but for those women who do actually cook a good meal pat yourselves on the back your a champion you deserve a good holiday 




 

[Growster...]

I'm actually delighted that there are so many sandwich shops around these days.

The choice is fantastic, and stretches from a humble £1 or so, cheese and onion offering in Boots to a gourmet Wagyu beef concoction with enough trimmings to make a salad, but there's the real choice - a darn good meal with a drink, of course, and at a fraction of the cost of going to a chippy even!

Mrs Growster and I sometimes just buy a really decent looking sarnie from a supermarket, have half each and have a glass or two of vino, for a really decent evening meal in front of the DVD player!

[WeavingGryphon]

Yesterday we went to to local supermarket and out of the 10 people at the checkouts 8 had ready meals, one with only a packet of family sized crisps and someone with de icer. One of them had about 10 ready meals!

Out of everyone's trolleys only one hadn't got ready meals in it and they'd only got as far as the bananas.

We go out walking every evening and we can honestly be out for an hour -90 minutes and not smell food cooking. Except outside our house. You used to be able to smell onions or mince. Never any more.

I will admit for the first time this year we got 2 ready meals, but only because they were 40p each and were the extra special fancy types. Lasagne and macaroni cheese-I don't consider the latter a meal but Husband and Eldest love it. Eldest loves it that much when Eldest was a 11 month old babby they climbed in the Mother-In-Law's dish with it to eat it better.

[Growster...]

Mrs Growster has an addiction to macaroni cheese, as do I, but with a fried rasher of bacon cut with scissors into small pieces directly onto the plate!

A propos the post though, what does a Tesco streaky piece of bacon taste like with the sort of cheese we use - Cathedral?

Fabulous! (But this 'ere bacon should really be pancetta..:0)

[WeavingGryphon]

Aberdonians on a whole seem to regard it as the best food eva. On it's own, with nothing else "macaroni cheese is a meals in itself"-Quote barbarian I married. I never make it because I think it's not. I never heard of people eating it except in American books until I moved up here to the land of "mince and tatties" and Macaroni cheese.

I don't know if the local school does home economics, but when I was in school in the 90s we had it once a week. All we made all year was scones and a sandwich. Once each. Marko's mum was sick when she ate his scones. The only homework I remember was about why you shouldn't eat raw chicken and to design the sandwich. It had to have 3 ingredients, have a name ("Yum Bun") and you had to draw it. Then the next week you were to make it to your specifications and eat it. Some people decided that they were to make the most disgusting sandwich and refused to eat it. So it was a bit of a nothing topic and dropped by almost everyone. I can't imagine that the standard has gone up since then. 

No one else in my class of 25 could cook besides 2 others and I was more advanced. They couldn't gut a fish, cook a chicken, make pastry or a casserole, cakes and buns. But I couldn't make a white sauce. My parents could cook well-one was at a professional standard and I learned a bit from watching them. But I wasn't called through to learn so it was just the basics. It was when I moved out on my own that I really learned. Neither of my siblings could cook and if I was at the house they'd wake me to make them a cooked breakfast. By the time they persuaded me to help-I hate cooked breakfasts it'd have been quicker to do it themselves.

Update, Husband make a fish bake, but it smelled "absolutely atrocious and I felt that the fish should have been baked some time ago and wouldn't eat it".

My kids have at nursery gone to the shop, bought eggs, came back and make banana bread and I know they made something with Rhubarb. I remember a friend of Eldest wandering around with a stalk and chasing after them because I was worried they were going to try the leaves. They weren't, they harvested them with the teacher and were going to cook with them but I don't know what they made. But from nursery they don't cook until primary 4.

Anyone willing to share their kid's experiences?

[mrs bouquet]

Following on from Growster's restaurant theme, which I cannot find now,  What is this "Fillet of Leek's"   ?        Mrs Bouquet