It’s time to get real

Last week, my daughters made a chocolate cake and frosting (from scratch, natch) for their grandfather's birthday.

The other day I was talking with someone who spoke with great pride about how she had recently made dinner from scratch, including making a box of “really yummy rice with herbs.”  I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything — and those who know me know how hard that was — but today I want to talk about this a bit.  Call it therapy for the way I repressed myself, if you will.

Cooking from scratch does not mean opening a box mix and whipping it up.  What it does mean is mixing together ingredients and creating a fresh, delicious dish.  In the example of the herbed rice box mix, what would have been more delicious, not to mention healthier and less expensive, would be if the person had made some basic rice and then added the flavors she wanted.  Now THAT is cooking from scratch.

But the fact is, there are a lot of so-called convenience foods out there.  In general, they’re more expensive and less healthy than they should be.  They almost always contain high amounts of sodium and hard-to-pronounce ingredients that you really don’t want to ingest.

It seems like it would be easier to whip up rice or pasta (or cake or brownies) from a mix, but it really isn’t all that much faster or simpler.  With mixes, you always have to add other ingredients, so why not make something truly delicious?

All that said,  I know that people are busy and that it would be hard to convince everyone to give up all convenience foods.  However, if I can convince you to give up anything, here are three things that you should never waste your money on:

1. gourmet frozen vegetables — Buy plain frozen veggies and doctor them up with herbs, spices, olive oil, or butter (but not too much).
2. flavored rices and pastas — Buy plain rices and pastas and add the flavors you want.  To boost the flavor of rice even more, substitute broth (chicken, vegetable, etc.) for cooking water.
3. spice mixes — The first ingredient in most special mixes, grill seasonings, and rubs is usually salt.  A lot of it — more than the average human needs.  Instead, make your own custom combos for a fraction of the price.

My daughters (9 and 11) are learning to cook and it has been interesting to see things through their eyes.  Yesterday, we made oven fries, which is just a simple matter of chopping some potatoes, tossing them with olive oil and a little kosher salt, and putting them in the oven.  Seriously, prep time is five minutes from start to finish.   I used to buy bags of frozen fries, but the flavor was lame so the fries never tasted good.

So here’s my challenge to you:  As you’re making dinners this week, try something new.  You’ll be surprised at how easy it is and you’ll love the flavor!