<p>I’m such a sucker for gadgets that I got the williams-sonoma pizza maker for Christmas. I own a Breville bread maker, which has a recipe for pizza dough that is very good. It mixes bread flour and whole wheat flour. It is different than restaurant pizza, but if you don’t live in the NE chances are you aren’t getting a very acceptable to me pizza anyway. </p>
<p>I also make my own broths. I can’t wait to get my garden going to get good veggies - is anything tastier than a tomato pulled off the vine with homegrown basil, mozarella, toasted pine nuts and balsamic? yum…</p>
<p>I actually love instant potatoes. The only real potatoes I think are worth eating are my grandmas, which have cream cheese in them and are off limits! When we have company I make instant when nobody is looking-- at thanksgiving my mom even had my cousin mash them thinking he was just “finishing them up.” Haven’t been caught yet. Someday I’ll learn how to make great ones from scratch, but I’m happy in the meantime. </p>
<p>Oh no, we don’t have anything that’s not made from scratch in our home. I have to sneak in pre-made stuff when H is away on business. H’s mash potato is made with heavy cream and butter, guarantee to put 10 lbs on you. I make meatballs and tomato sauce from scratch. H and D2 like to bake (from scratch). I made brownies one time from a mix without telling them, and they thought they the best brownies. :)</p>
<p>With one exception, I make all my own food…trying new things all the time and scratching my head about what took me so long to make.
Love making breads , but not enough people in the house to eat them all anymore . I am going to try my hand at Limoncello again…tried it a few years back and failed miserably ( I’m going to blame the recipe ) I am always up for a new challenge, whether it be a tried and true food from my great grandmother’s day or something trendy.</p>
<p>I’ve only read the first two pages so far, but I have to ask: Those of you who make a lot of things from scratch - Consolation? - how much time do you spend cooking? Are you incredibly organized? I do a lot of cooking from scratch, but nothing like some of you. I’m in awe.</p>
<p>I would be curious what the correlation is between the amount of scratch cooking and the hours spent in the kitchen and maybe if the cook works outside the home or not. Not judging, just curious.</p>
<p>Mashed potatoes - so many people have a hard time with getting them right. I’ve never had an issue. Potatoes, hot milk, softened butter, salt. </p>
<p>I make everything from scratch except bread, pasta, ice cream and spaghetti sauce. I cannot imagine making mashed potatoes from a box. Oh and stovetop stuffing…that really has to come from a box…the whole family loves it.</p>
<p>No one said pickles yet??? Someone must make them!!! I also thought homemade pudding was impressive - maybe not hard, but I wouldn’t think to do it.</p>
<p>I have never made homemade pudding. I am sure I would love it. If I made it I would be the only one in the house eating it. H eats very little to almost no sweets. Which is what brings me back to the Weight loss for dummies thread. </p>
<p>My mother used to make watermelon pickles. The only pickles in my fridge right now are cornichons. Not made by me.</p>
<p>When we were in Germany I made tortillas too. But I had to make flour tortillas never saw masa flour.</p>
<p>I work at home, so I can get started earlier and keep working, but 90% of the time I start dinner when my husband calls and says he’s on his way home. Most of my meals take under an hour, many a half hour and I always cook enough for at least two nights. Tonight we had chicken cacciatore - it’s a really easy recipe you just throw chicken thighs, salami, bell peppers,garlic, tomato, onions a bunch of herbs some wine and olive oil into a pan and stick it in a 400 degree oven. You give it a stir after a half hour and it’s ready 10 to 15 minutes after that.</p>
<p>There was a time when I was doing all our cooking from scratch while working 40+ hours a week and working out two hours a day. Cooking from scratch, if done in an organized and efficient manner, is not something I found to be particularly time consuming-- most meals were done in under 30 minutes, but eventually I gave up cooking at all and my fiancé resents having to cook things that don’t come in a box. I haven’t cooked regularly in over a year and won’t again unless I work fewer hours. My fiancé gets off from work two hours earlier than me and I still have to hit the gym before I can come home and eat, so he needs to do it if we are going to eat at a reasonable hour. So no more homemade bread for me!</p>
<p>Hummus: we love the recipe from abasket! Quick, easy and disappears quickly here.</p>
<p>copying from a previous CC post by abasket:</p>
<p>"Well, it’s one one of those things where the recipe is not EXACT - my mom makes the best hummus (off the cuff too) so I just try and reach the taste of hers! First of all, our hummus does NOT use tahini - it’s more pure chickpea and a little chunkier.</p>
<p>Basically I drain (saving a little of the juice) and rinse the chickpeas (1 can). Throw in a blender with:
Juice of 1/2 fresh lemon
Couple cloves of garlic
Blend well - will be very chunky.
Add olive oil and extra chickpea juice to thin out to preferred consistency. Add more lemon or garlic if desired. When consistency is reached, add 1/2 tsp. or so of sea salt and blend just till mixed. Throw in a tsp. or two of chopped parsley at the end as well if I have it."</p>
<p>I don’t spend an extraordinary amount of time cooking. Hubby cooks as well so we each take 3 nights cooking, 1 night out. I plan our menu a week in advance and go get the ingredients we need for that week. I own a business so my hours and location vary. I use a lot of recipes and currently love Ina Garten. You can throw rice in a rice steamer, steam veggies and bake a chicken breast in no time. I’ll say enough time to have a glass of wine. I also make soup or things you can put on in the morning and eat at night. Or marinate the meat or chicken before bed and ready to cook the next day. </p>
<p>If you own the right tools and are organized I don’t see how it even takes more time than eating something out of a box. I think the trick is knowing what you’re going to make, having sharp knives and knowing how to use them. A bread machine pretty much does all the work for you.</p>
<p>We have a tradition of eating at the table most nights for dinner. I even made sure we bought a house where the kitchen was not open to the rest of the house. I also keep a lot of extra everything on hand, shop at a restaurant supply shop and have a husband who worked his way through college as a meat cutter.</p>
<p>Necessity is the mother of invention. When we lived in Texas, I never made TexMex - it was cheaper and easier to eat out. Now, in London, there is no reason to make Indian food at home. Our local takeaway is better and cheaper than I could ever prepare at home. However, other than fine dining, most of the restaurant food here is kind of bleh - so I cook at home (in my shoebox kitchen) more than I ever did in the US. </p>
<p>“I would be curious what the correlation is between the amount of scratch cooking and the hours spent in the kitchen and maybe if the cook works outside the home or not. Not judging, just curious.”</p>
<p>Abasket - I have done major segmentation analysis for all sorts of blue-chip food clients (household names). This question is asked repeatedly - does it link to whether a woman is employed out of the home or not - and the answer is repeatedly shown to be - not really. Either someone likes to cook from scratch, finds it relaxing and thus makes time to do it – or they don’t like to do so, in which case they could be home all the livelong day and they’re still not going to exert the effort. In that regard, it’s rather like cleaning - either it’s something you enjoy and you make time to do, or you don’t. Put another way, women don’t stay at home BECAUSE they want to cook - they stay at home for other reasons, which may give them more time to cook but they won’t do so if they don’t want to. I get asked this question repeatedly by all the twenty-something clients who believe that women who stay at home are fundamentally “different” from those who work, and it just ain’t so on this dimension!</p>
<p>“If you own the right tools and are organized I don’t see how it even takes more time than eating something out of a box. I think the trick is knowing what you’re going to make, having sharp knives and knowing how to use them. A bread machine pretty much does all the work for you.”</p>
<p>To me, it’s about clean-up. Honestly, what I make / eat is also partly predicated on the ease with which I can clean it all up. Which means microwave over stove whenever possible, and cooking / storing in the same container. Something like hummus - I don’t even get why you would make it, when you could buy it - but I’m also not a foodie and don’t particularly have a discriminating palate, so nuances of taste are lost on me. </p>
<p>I make dinners and prepare eggs for breakfast every day, even when we are on vacation in HI (I always rent a condo where I can make food). Dinner leftovers become “boxed lunch” the next day. Most of the time it is not a huge effort, since a lot of what I cook is simple. The other day I came home from work around 9 pm to discover that Mr B had not had a bite. I pulled broccoli and boneless organic chicken out of the fridge and in 20 or so minutes we had a nice homemade dinner. The key to fast, healthy meals is to have ingredients on hand and to not be afraid to experiment if something is missing. Also, having a grill is a huge help. Did you know that scrambled eggs take about a minute to cook, otherwise they become rubbery? :)</p>