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?
I try to make everything from scratch, but sometimes I make pre made when I know I’m avoiding eating because I don’t feel like cooking. If I make pre made though, I’ll always add something to it to bulk it out. Ramen? Handfuls of frozen veg. Frozen pizza? Slap mushrooms, peppers, onions on top. Pasta sauce? Spinach, homemade stock, and carrots.
To me, its about health. I know processed food isn’t healthy, so I want to mitigate the damage.
I would rather cook because I like the taste much, much more. Almost all frozen stuff is just flavorless to me so I end up having to doctor it up anyway. It’s easier for me to just start from scratch unless it’s something that’s a giant pain.
I also worked as a cook when I was young so the effort/time is probably a bit less for me since I can do the food prep stuff quickly and without much mental effort. When I chop vegetables, my brain basically does it on autopilot.
Depends on difficulty. I make most things. but a labor-intensive dish like lasagna I’m happy to buy frozen.
You enjoy cooking, she doesn’t. You can cook from scratch, she can heat up the frozen stuff. I don’t see why this is cause for an argument.
Yeah, I personally despise cooking. I’ll do anything to get my meal the quickest and with the least amount of effort and mess possible. I don’t see the big deal. If people want to cook from scratch, go ahead. I’m just not going to be the one to do it. Why does it matter if one person prefers to cook one way and one person prefers the other?
Edit: If it’s specifically pancake mix that OP’s wife prefers, maybe there is something about the flavor that she likes better with it. My brother also weirdly prefers instant mashed potatoes over homemade…even if he is not the person making them. With certain things, some people just have a preference it seems.
In this same vein, I’ve never had a from-scratch brownie that I like better than the box brownies.
She will insist on the mixes.
As in when you cook she wants you to use the premade stuff? Why?
Nostalgia for what her mother used to make.
Would she be open to use the pre-made mixes as a base and then you improving on them? I love to cook from scratch with nothing but fresh vegetables and base ingredients; it really makes me happy and, if I do say so myself, I do a good job at it (it is indeed a time consuming experience). My mom cooked from scratch and the taste and process of pankakes starting from scratch is familiar and comforting.
I have also learned that there is a lot that I can do by using pre-made ingredients, and that sometimes it’s a huge advantage because I can then focus my cooking creativity on the parts that are less about ‘turning the ladle’ and more about personal time and experience. Some examples:
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Pasta sauce: Buy a decent tomato basil sauce. Then add caramelized onions (40 min), mushrooms, artichokes and spices. Now I can focus on what the sauce goes on top of.
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Pankakes: Some of the store bought pankake mix is pretty great, I especially love the Ube mix from Trader Joe’s. If you are not making your own mix, then you can really focus on creating some excellent and amazing hme make toppings. It’s a good excuse to perfect a recepie for marmalade or make a perfect mini fried chicken from scratch to go with that pankake.
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Mac’n’Cheese: It’s absolutely possible to make Mac’n’Cheese from scratch, but also delicious to start with a box, and then figure out how to max it Gormet in all different ways.
just some ideas.
For all these responses, it’s not just pasta sauce or pancake mixes. And yes, the she does let me doctor things up sometimes. It just gets irritating when I make a sauce, it’s delicious, and then she buys a jar version because “you like this kind of sauce”. I found a great soup recipe I want to try, ask for specific ingredients and she just buys the canned version of the soup. I’ve talked with her before about it when she brought home a cookie mix. I used to make homemade cookies when I was depressed, and it would cheer me up. She suggested I make the mix, all I had to do was add some eggs and water, and we can have the cookies. I had to tell her it wasn’t the cookies that made me feel better.
Talk to each other, apologize, and compromise. Sometimes do it your way; sometimes do it her way. Understand and forgive each other, enjoy both approaches, and be happy about the situation.
It sounds like you should be doing the shopping when you want to do the cooking.
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Yo man, that’s a legit resson for her to prefer one type of cooking over another
NGL man, you’re coming across as Defensive Internet Man on this. You two “argue frequently” about this, she “seems to think” mixes are the way to go when it sounds like it’s really only pancake mix that’s hanging you up and you know perfectly well why she likes pancake mix over scratch. She “tried to pull” nostalgia on you as if missing her deceased mother is a trick she’s playing on you.
Amateur advice from someone with no special related experience: any time someone says they like a Thing because it reminds them of Close Dead Relative, maybe just take their word for it and let them be.
Yeah maybe she might be a little overreaching there? Forcing someone to always make (and eat) the thing you prefer is not a healthy relationship. Time to compromise.
With OPs tendency to trickle in less flattering details only after 2-3 comments in, I’m skeptical she’s “forcing” him to do anything. This is a one-sided perspective from someone intentionally devaluing his spouse’s perspective.
Compromise, then?
Perhaps every other night you can cook from scratch, and cook as she likes on other days. Or, you could try to replicate the flavors she’s looking for in your cooking. Involve her, have her try tasting some sauce you’re making or whathaveyou and then try to see if you can nudge the flavors in a direction she likes.
I’d call what you’re doing “cooking”.
I’d call what she’s doing “not cooking”.
Pro tip, make the premade stuff. Make like a gallon of pasta sauce and freeze/can it all. Make like 5 pounds of meatballs and freeze them.
I like to make my pasta sauce when I can, from tomatoes. If you are a fast chopper, it goes by really quickly. Super thin slice it, add some diced enough, maybe some shredded carrot and celery, add some crushed garlic, salt, pepper and some seasonings. In around an hour or so you will have made a bunch of it.
Also look for professional advice for canning, cause idk if my way is the safest. I boil some water in the can in the microwave, dump it then add the pasta sauce, and close it really tight with an oven mitt.
I also grind my own meat, with just a knife. Dice the meat into small cubes and mince it for a while. I do it until it can form a cohesive meatball. Also consider what you’ll use it for, if its just being tossed in a bolognese sauce, it doesn’t need to be so fine.
You can make pizzas ahead of time too, roll the dough, add marinara, mozzarella and wrap it in foil and put it in the freezer.
I make my own stock too. I’ll collect bones and veggie scraps in a freezer bag, and when it’s full, I dump it in a slow cooker, set it and forget it. The store bought stuff is basically just water. If it’s tasteless, it’s baseless.
I’ve also frozen lasagna portions too, fully cooked. If raw its impossible to cook them without completely de-thawing them.
I also have a box of instant cake batter I mixed together myself. It’s like a year old but it’s still not terrible!
If you have time, make food for the whole week and you eat “pre-made food” (point for your wife) made by you from scratch (point for yourself)😁
Some people don’t like leftovers, I can only figure their experience with leftovers has always been bad.
I love having leftovers around, but I make a pot of good stuff with plans for the leftovers. Some things are never leftovers because they don’t hold well (anything with leeks or tarragon for example).
Sometimes, leftovers don’t reheat the same way.
My experience with leftovers growing up was having to eating my mom’s terrible cooking again when it wasn’t even good fresh. As an adult I love them because I like my own cooking and it means I get to skip a few nights a week.
Personally, as with a lot of the comments, I’m in the food-prep and make it yourself crowd.
I found a book that dives into the details of when it is and isn’t worth making things from scratch.
It’s called Make the Bread, Buy the Butter.
Honestly, I haven’t read it yet. I bought it and let my mom borrow it immediately, but when I get it back I think it will an interesting read.
As someone who’s only read the title, I don’t think I’d like this book.
I’ve made bread before, a lot actually. Many kinds with different flours.
But I’ve used yeast for years because I couldn’t have added phosphorus due to kidney failure (which baking powder has in it). I’ve also had other less commonly used raising agents like cream of tartar and yogurt. I also made it by hand because could not afford a bread machine or had the space for it. It’s extremely messy.
That said, if you’re using baking powder and a bread machine, you might as well just get bread from the store. You’re just doing the same as a factory does really. And I’m some cases maybe worse since some factory bread is made with yeast instead anyway.
If you want fresh bread, you can in most cases just go to a bakery section too these days, from what I remember when I lived in the USA. In EU basically every store has a bakery section with bread made daily tho.
Having a frozen lasagne is better than taking the full effort when…
Last month i made two lasagnas in one day and had nine of it. I ch but them up in pieces and froze them into 24 pieces. Now we have home made lasagna for those days where we dont feel like k cooking dinner. It really does not need to take too much time and if you enjoy it, there is no need to not do it.
I don’t know if it’s just where I am in life but I… I just can’t be fucked to do stuff man, I’m too ADHD, depressed, autistic, busy, stressed, whatever I don’t know.
I buy canned tomato sauce from Sam’s Club and meatballs. It’s actually reasonably good sauce, they usually have some decent pasta on offer of some variety. That’s about as much as you can really ask of me at this point in my life.
I also have ADHD and I use it to process a gigantic batch that will last me months. Like making a gallon’s worth of pasta sauce.
Cooking from scratch is excellent… But there’s also an extreme for how far you consider “cooking from scratch” to actually be “from scratch”… For Example: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C76cACZB0oq/
Do you milk the cows yourself? Churn the butter? Etc.
Your way is always going to be significantly healthier. Among other issues I think you’ll find eating food your wife prefers puts you both well over the recommended sodium intake for a day. This is likely to shorten your life due to heart health.
The healthiest way to shop is to stick to the outside of the super market and skip the packaged foods in the middle.
Nostalgia or not, eating packaged food to often is very unhealthy. Maybe broach it with your wife and ask her if you can satiate her nostalgia in moderation. Having someone y she really loves out of a package only once or twice a week.
Salt is rwally the least of tge worries with boxed slop
No, it’s really not. If you read the label you might be surprised how often just one meal puts you over your max recommended daily amount, and by how far.
Excessive sodium has a much stronger and well proven connection to health problems and early death than most of the other crud in boxed slop
excess salt can be washed out by drinking water… 15 ingredients that normal person can’t pronounce correlates with obesity, heart and other chronic medical conditions that people living under “modern” food supply suffer from.
Most of the time I make my meals from the scratch. Exceptions are usually takeaway food; I only buy stuff like frozen lasagne and the likes very rarely, it’s expensive and it doesn’t taste as good. (In fact even a few of my spices is homemade.)
As others said, in your case (provided that you’re the one in charge of cooking) it might be sensible to buy the store-bought pancake mix for the sake of your wife, and then prepare the rest of the food as you typically do.
I don’t care either way, but too many premade meals I have bought in the past were gross and inedible to a point where I had to toss them and just make food from scratch. I just keep the supplies for a quick 1 pot Carbonara in my fridge at all times - it might not be super healthy, but it’s always a predictable taste/texture and only costs about 1,50€ per Portion
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
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.
