According to a very sad and disturbing article in the January issue of Food Technology, about 75% of us eat dinner at home, while only 33% of those eating at home actually cook from scratch.
The other 42% use restaurant take-out. I don’t know if drive-thru windows count in this category—the article didn’t distinguish the difference. Is this where we get down on our knees and hail Appleby’s for car-side service? I think not, judging by their totally uninspiring menu.
I’ve actually gone to an Appleby’s and had trouble selecting a dish, because nothing in the menu turned me on visually or descriptively. I probably should’ve given up and gone home, but we were meeting old friends.
With so many people making the unconscious choice to sacrifice time, energy, and personal health for money (they call this “working”), it’s no wonder so many eat from sources other than home! Money conquers all, it would seem—even good judgment.
I’ve been told by someone in the baking profession that some people who claim they can’t cook actually don’t WANT to, and I can believe this. For me, it isn’t the cooking that’s so distasteful and tedious—it’s the cleanup. The cooking is where I thrive with imagination and freedom to throw whatever I can grab into a pot, food processor, or salad bowl, and the sink is where the dead soldiers get tallied and loaded into a seemingly too-small dishwasher. Wash, rinse, and repeat day after day.
But I have taught myself that a sinkful of dirty dishes means a cooking job well done. Now, if I just had a 12-year-old to load the dishwasher…but I digress.
You can definitely count me as one of the 33% who do cook from scratch. I wonder if anyone has done a survey of those who cook EXCLUSIVELY from scratch, and what that number is. Whatever the numbers turn out to be, I bet the 33% are mostly frugalites, and the exclusive scratch cookers are all frugalites.
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I know that cooking from scratch is a lost art because when I was in the checkout line at the grocery store, the clerk was asking me what I was planning to cook "with this strange stuff." I said, "Oh, I cook from scratch and I'm cooking....." The woman in back of me did a little shriek. I stopped to look at her. She pulled out her checkbook and offered me a job as her personal chef. Yikes! Although I still have her business card in my possession, but I now know I could start my own business! But, what should I call it – Cheap Momma’s Good Eats OR something classy, like Miss Mary's Homecooking?
Don't ask me how it took this long to stumble across this post and comment, but:
1. I'm surprised that the study only mentioned cooking from scratch and takeout. What about instant meals like hambeurger Helper, etc.? Because if that's scratch, I'm Bobby Freaking Flay.
2. Restaraunt food is for when you EAT OUT. 'Nuff said.
3. Did the survey break it down by age? I wonder what the ratios would be like then. I suspect a lot of younger people don't cook from wcratch because they DON'T KNOW HOW. I was blessed with two parents who were not only good cooks, but knew enough to encourage me to help in the kitchen and to teach me the BASICS of cooking -- temperature control, seasoning, etc. -- so that I can cook from scratch without having to bury my nose in a recipe.
Brian--
The original story was clearly a case of what I call "out the window" journalism, and I told the reporter as much. She went to her window, looked out, saw what was happening, and wrote about it. Clearly, she lives in a heavily-urbanized area, and this is what she's experiencing in her locale. There must be lots of Appleby's and Boston Market to-go bags carried around in her neck of the woods.
Take it from a non-heavily urbanized woman who has lived on both coasts and in the middle of this country, worked and not worked: Hamburger Helper is NOT scratch cooking! It does get to be considered daring gourmet, though, within the "I'm too stupid to cook" set.
Here's a friendly tip for you: when you break down the cost PER SERVING of hamburger Helper vs. true scratch meals, cooking completely from scratch is cheaper by far. When you purchase the meat, the macaroni, and the tomato sauce separately, you end up with far more homemade "Helper" than one of those little boxes can hold, and for far less cost per serving. For the record, HH and the like don't really save you any time in the kitchen like the commercials say--you just get to use one less pot when you make it up.
Just for fun, look on the back of the HH box and see how much(or how little) makes up a serving--I'll guarantee you'll be surprised. Last time I looked, it was something like 1/2 cup--paltry to say the least!
HH wasn't meant to take up half your plate as some families like to dish it up--it was meant more as a colorful blob to accompany your own salad and biscuit or dinner roll.
Otherwise, an entire box worth could be easily consumed in one sitting by any average Joe or Jane if eaten alone (and the sodium in those things will kill you!).
And don't feel bad about being late to the party--lots of people are late. I get comments on stuff I wrote last year by people just now finding me.
As far as the survey goes, what I wrote is what I got from the original article--no other breakdowns or information by that author.
I blame the invention of the microwave for our nutritional and survival woes. When I took Home Ec in high school, we were all dying to learn how to microwave--now, they don't even bother teaching TRUE home economics skills, like purchasing decisions based on PER UNIT pricing, calculating COST PER SERVING, learning which cuts of meat are better bargains (for less bone, gristle, and fat waste), or even what seasons certain foods are cheapest and plentiful in.
As it is, I had to learn a lot of this from frugal living sites, library books, and Google--my own mother had learned and forgotten this stuff (having given herself over to convenience), and school never got around to teaching it.
For more of this sort of information, I recommend The Dollar Stretcher (www.stretcher.com), Frugal Living from About.com (no current link here), or just go a-Googling...chances are you'll find something I wrote on it some years back on the Motley Fool.
I cook almost completely from scratch -- baked my own sandwich buns last week -- but it's not from reasons of frugality. I like to know where my food comes from, and I don't like eating anything I can't pronounce.
I really want to learn to make everything from scratch which book or website would be the best??
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