Do you live in an ingredient household?
That question is the title of an article that popped up on my phone the other day and I saved it because I thought it would be a fun thing to discuss with you guys!
Apparently, this is currently a hot topic over on TikTok, an app I do not have (because I do not even have time for Instagram right now).
TikTokers are saying they hated growing up in an ingredient household ("Mom, why don't we have snacks??"), but now they've turned into adults with ingredient households.
What IS an ingredient household?
It's a home that stocks mostly, well, ingredients, instead of ready-to-eat foods.
Like, instead of oatmeal packets, you might have jars of oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and there's milk in your fridge.
You can eat oatmeal for breakfast, but you do have to make it.
Instead of bottles of coffee, you have coffee grounds, sugar, and cream.
Basically, if you open the fridge and pantry, there's not much that you can just grab and eat.
You know those restocking videos we chuckled at a bit ago? In some of those, people are restocking their fridges with nothing but packaged snacks and bottled beverages, and that is the polar opposite of an ingredient household.
Is it better to be an ingredient household?
I have not watched the TikTok discourse on this, but I'm guessing that there is a sense in which we all sort of feel like we should be an ingredient household.
So, I would not be surprised if ingredient-house people are doing some humble-bragging, while non-ingredient house people are feeling a little defensive.
(Again, I haven't gone down this rabbit hole. I'm speculating!!)
I mean, you probably do end up eating healthier when you tend toward stocking ingredients vs. ready-to-eat foods. And it generally is cheaper to buy ingredients.
But as I was reading the aforementioned article, I was thinking....very few modern people actually live in true ingredient households when compared with people from the past.
I mean, people who classify themselves as ingredient households are still buying pasta, cereal, bread, mayo, peanut butter, and so on.
It's sort of like how when we say we cook from scratch, we don't mean that super strictly.
We will make a dinner that includes dried pasta, a sauce based on canned tomatoes, topped with a sprinkle of store-bought Parmesan cheese and still consider that a from-scratch meal.
Most of us aren't making our own pasta or Parmesan. 😉
Also: are we counting things like bananas as ingredients or as ready-to-eat foods? Grape tomatoes? Oranges? Baby sweet peppers?
The distinctions are a little complicated, methinks.
My house is in-between
All that said, my house falls somewhere in the middle.
I do make my own yogurt from a gallon of milk.
I brew my daily coffee and add sugar and cream.
I make my own granola.
I've made lots of applesauce over the years.
I've made countless breadstuffs from scratch.
And my fridge usually is filled with things like milk, fruits, eggs, and vegetables.
But on the other hand, I currently also buy:
- bottled salad dressings
- mac and cheese/ramen for Zoe
- some cans of soup
- cereal
- cheese (is cheese an ingredient? Or a ready-to-eat food? I DUNNO. I kinda think it's both.)
- frozen sweet potato fries
- occasional frozen pizzas
- frozen ravioli
- jarred tomato pasta sauce
- rotisserie chickens (and I use the bones to make broth, but then is the broth actually from scratch, or does it only count if you make broth from home-roasted chicken??)
- granola bars
- potato chips
- tortilla chips
- crackers
- pretzels
And as you know, I've been buying some Dinnerly boxes here and there of late to help me get through these very busy few weeks.
(Dinnerly boxes are full of ingredients, and you do have to cook them, but I don't know how you'd categorize this!)
In conclusion, I think I lean slightly toward being an ingredient household, but I am definitely not strict about it.
In the future when I'm an empty nester and I'm done with this super busy little phase of life, I might veer a bit more toward the ingredients-only side of things.
But who knows? I've never tried being an empty nester before!
What about you?
How would you classify your household on the ingredient/ready-to-eat spectrum?
As a reader of the Tightwad Gazette during its original run, I recall Amy Dacyczyn passing on this anecdote from a reader: The reader's sister walked into the reader's kitchen one day, looked around, and exclaimed, "How can you cook in here? There's nothing but ingredients!" Amy added that the sister, according to the reader, had "a great sense of humor about being domestically challenged."
Me, I'm about where Kristen is on the ingredients vs. processed foods spectrum. And, as in so many other things, I think it's possible to be frugal at various points along that spectrum.
Its funny how things we take for granted become trendy. Most of my pantry is ingredients, and the older I get, the less convenience foods I purchase, mainly to save money, but I'm also leaning towards really wanting to know what's in our food. Health is becoming more important as I'm in my 60s and DH is in his 70s. When I was a young mom, convenience was definitely more important, I had cream of chicken soup as a staple for recipes, tater tots in the freezer, and my now adult kids poke fun at all of the Velveeta they ate growing up!
Kristen, I made that teddy bear bread all the time when they were little, that brought back memories. 🙂
@MommaJo, we are in the same place in life. I apologize routinely to my grown kids for feeding them pop tarts just to get out the door on school days.
It's funny though, my kids love my home made macaroni and cheese but the grandkids all prefer Kraft. Somehow I feel like I'm poisoning them with boxed mac and cheese out.
@MommaJo, this is where I am in life as well as I’m diabetic. I want to know what is in my food.
We are definitely an ingredient household and it really chaps the ass of any teen who lives with you...I think they just want to shove food into their mouth and not have to do anything first, or you know, wait for someone else to do something. But learning to wait and/or learning self sufficiency are both important, so ingredients it is.
@Becca, as a household of 5 (with three teenage boys in it), I can relate to this! Even after just arriving home from grocery shopping...$$$... I still often hear "there's nothing to eat!". I list half a dozen things that would be quick/easy, healthy, tasty to make- but they'd all require an ounce of effort, lol.
Interesting topic for discussion, Kristen! Despite the "there's nothing to eat" comments I receive from the hungry teens, I would consider our household a mix on the ingredients-vs-convenience spectrum. Perhaps skewed toward the ingredients side, but certainly not dogmatic about it. Motivation is both cost and health related. But sanity is a variable too 🙂
@PD - Your description matches my experience perfectly - "skewed toward the ingredients side, but certainly not dogmatic about it." Cost, health, and sanity are ALL motivating factors. As a household of 6 (with three - almost four - teenagers and two working full-time parents), there needs to be a balance.
This discussion reminds me, in a way, of the maximizer-satisficer principle. The old idealistic me who cared too much about doing things "right" (for good and not-so-good reasons) would have felt disappointment about not being a totally ingredient household, and probably would have run myself into the ground trying to make it work.
But I think I've grown quite a bit in that area, and now it's much easier for me to release that expectation of myself. And the peace I experience in this 'good enough' state is pretty reinforcing. 🙂
@PD, "You can't fool me! There ain't no sanity clause." - Chico Marx, A Night at the Opera (1935).
@Becca,
“ Chaps the ass”.lol. I’m definitely going to hold onto that one.
@PD, when I’m feeling leads inclined to buy my teen some packaged stuff, I’ll make batches of something in the fridge; a pound of pasta with sauce, a casserole, I’ll cut up chunks of cheese with pepperoni.
Not perfect, but’s reasonable compromise.
Our household is similar to Kristen's. We try to mostly buy "healthy" processed foods and cook a lot from scratch but do buy convenience foods.
I found this article interesting:
https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/ultra-processed-foods-dietary-guidelines-de00ccaa?st=uxwdodhsiyrk156&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
As a reader in the UK, I am also mainly an ingredients household.
I say mainly as we do buy casserole seasoning mixes, ketchup & other condiments, canned tomatoes & pulses and some frozen chips (fries), fish portions and vegetables.
My hubby isn't very keen on veggies so we don't buy many fresh but I sneak them in where I can (if he can't see them he doesn't realise!). We don't often buy biscuits (cookies), crisps (chips) or chocolate as we both try to eat as healthily as possible.
We don't buy many ready meals as it works out so expensive compared to buying ingredients. It helps that I enjoy cooking and baking.
@Stacey P, dark chocolate is actually pretty healthy for you. The higher the cocoa the better.
@Regina,
Unfortunately I do not like the very dark chocolate, unless in cakes. So my solution is to not eat chocolate on a regular basis. I have become better at declining chocolates and bonbons although I sometimes feel a pang at saying no :-s
@Regina, I don’t mind dark chocolate but my husband will not eat it so if we buy any it is low % cocoa solids
I would be an ingredients-only household if I lived alone. However, I want my home to be appealing to my kids and to their friends. Teenagers love chips/cookies/soda etc and I want them to love being at our house so I buy lots of this non-frugal and not very healthy junk for them. Husband eats tons of chocolate (which I am definitely not going to make from scratch!) so we buy that too.
I still send the token fruit with them in their lunches though...
@SK, I love this comment! I've heard that if you're concerned about what your teenagers are "consuming" socially, then be the house they all want to be at. So... we have chips and pop. I make the cookies from scratch, but my go-to for filling them up is apple slices and buttered popcorn. They sure can inhale an awful lot of that!
@SK, Agree with you wholeheartedly!
Since we have to be so. careful about sodium and healthy fats for my husband’s medically mandated diet, I’d say we are 90-95% ingredients, with a few easy things like frozen ravioli hidden away for the rare Apathy Dinner (TM). I try to head off apathy nights by planning ahead and relying on my crock pot, but crazy days happen. For snacks, we always have cheese, and popcorn. We’ve a glut of homemade pasta sauce right now thanks to our neighbors being so generous with their tomato harvests, but I also have a stack of plain canned tomato sauce for assorted recipes. All soups get made from scratch in big batches so I can freeze a few portions for future Apathy Dinner options. When shopping for my husband’s work lunches, I lean toward dried fruit and low sugar granola bars, with the main course being leftovers from the night before.
@N, I am now adopting the phrase Apathy Dinner!
@N, Just curious: bagged popcorn, microwave popcorn or kernals to air pop?
@JJ, Feel free! 😛
@Bobi, We don't have a microwave, so we use a combination of kernels to pop on the stove top and seasoned bagged popcorn (Lesser Evil brand, usually) when I catch a good sale. Also, I don't know how fruit disappeared from my snack list, but we go through an obscene amount of fresh fruit!
Another in-betweener here. I do not churn milk into butter and buttermilk, for instance, nor do I make my own ketchup or feuilletee dough, or even bread.
But I like to have a variety of staples in the house and prefer to use those for cooking. Cans and jars are for the busy weeks or for ingredients that I cannot produce myself (coconutmilk, tomatopuree - not in our clime).
And although you might say that you have a wider choice in what you cook that way, we are not that adventurous in our cooking and the main benefits are health and financial.
I went back to work full time recently and we went from being an ingredient household to more of a ready to eat food household. I no longer have time to make all of our bread. I love cooking and baking and miss the time I used to spend doing those things. We are still trying to avoid so much processed food and making dinner every night, but it is much more based on chicken breasts and frozen vegetables vs whole chickens and fresh vegetables.
The part that feels impossible is my kids lunches. My older son is an athlete on the school team and has practice almost daily. He can’t eat dairy and won’t eat eggs. I don’t know how to get enough food into him without relying on things like granola bars. Also both kids are in school and eating actual food is not cool. Bringing leftovers is embarrassing. They want sandwiches and everything else to come prepackaged, which makes me crazy!
@Tarynkay, Peanut butter helps. Incredibly calorie-dense and can be eaten by the spoonful. Also, I don't know what sorts of foods you like to cook, but active kids can--and, in my opinion, should--eat lots of fat and protein. That means red meat usually, with the fat on it or the meat fried in fat. Things like pork ribs, brisket, lamb. Lots of butter. I don't like to eat this sort of thing--and I know it's really expensive to buy--but it's what my very active sons crave.
@kristin @ going country, My son around age 12, played ice hockey 4-5 times a week, skinny as anything, was heating up two frozen croissant sandwiches with eggs, sausage and cheese. Former father in law told him that was "too fattening." My son pointed at FIL's bowl of muesli and said, "That's too thinening!"
@Tarynkay, much like Kristin's active kids, my athlete son likes meats but lucky for me he will also eat nutrient-dense foods like seeds and nuts. So I do subscribe to things that are treat-like, on purpose for him. Trail mix and beef jerky come in packets and it's a perfectly reasonable way to get that nutrition (and this is way better than protein powders, imo).
@Karen., we get homemade meat sticks & jerky from local meat market that they make in house with their meat from their farm. 🙂 It is about same price as dry store bought. Luckily not something eat everyday but healthier alternative than other snacks.
Our house is a mix. Because of food allergies, I make most of our food from "scratch." I use canned goods, store bought cheese, and foods like that. But the less processed foods are safer for my family.
We also buy some snacks, but they are hard to find, have little variety, and gluten free convenience foods are expensive.
I grew up in both an ingredient house and a house with snacks in it. And now? So many ingredients--some of them still running around in our pasture at this very moment :-)--so few snacks. I hear this allll the time from my children: "There's no FOOD in this house!"
Simultaneously annoying and funny.
But, as you said, not everything in my meals is made REALLY from scratch, and I like it that way. I like buying cream cheese and butter. I have made both, but I do not want to have a dairy cow and be constantly making dairy things.
@kristin @ going country, P.S. I didn't get a chance to comment yesterday, but I hope you're feeling things are less pointless now after reading so many encouraging comments. You can add mine to those.
@kristin @ going country,
I recognize that! "Do we have anything good to eat?" "Oh no- we never have anything good to eat" (meaning cookies, crisps, and other snackware).
Meanwhile the fruit basket is heavy with fruits - but no, not the prewashed, precut kind. Poor kids -
@kristin @ going country, re: "There's no FOOD in this house!", you can always tell your sons who hunt to go shoot another elk. 😀
@A. Marie, we always allowed our kids to have chips, popcorn, cookies and the like. Just bake it, fry it, make it. I think when they where about 5 , they made chocolate chips cookies and peanut butter cookies without looking at the recipe. There was no starvation at the house.
We are definitely a combination household. I make pizza crusts from scratch, but we use storebought pizza sauce. I shred the cheese, but obviously I don't make the cheese from scratch. Instead of chips and pretzels, we make popcorn.
However, I use instant coffee, because I'm the only one who drinks it regularly, and it seems a waste to have a pot to clean and a grinder and whatnot for one person. Occasionally one of the kids will make a cup, but not habitually.
We don't buy desserts, I make them, mostly because we don't eat sugar, and sugar-free storebought things are icky.
Here's a story of my "homemade is always better" humbling that I had: For years I made our Thanksgiving stuffing from scratch, with a really good recipe I found in a vegan cookbook years ago. Oh, everyone loved that stuffing! It involved cubing bread days ahead of time, shredding carrots, chopping mushrooms and celery, and smelled and tasted fantastic.
Then one week DH was planning dinner and wanted to have stuffing as a side. I protested, saying that was a lot of work, and he said, "Nah, I'll get some boxed stuffing."
Well. Everyone LOVED that boxed stuffing, and one child who will remain nameless (because I can't remember exactly who said it, honestly, they may all have) said: "Mom, this is as good as your stuffing!" Well, that canned it. Every year since then on Thanksgiving we just buy the turkey flavored stuffing in a box and call it good. But I make the cranberry sauce from scratch!
@Karen A., priceless! And as I used to say, if you made it in your home, its homemade (:
@Gina from The Cannary Family, Ha! That makes me feel a little better.
@Karen A., That's hilarious! I would do exactly the same-buy that stuffing!
Reminds me that when my kiddos where young, I we were an "ingredient" house, mostly to save $$. Now, my kids absolutely prefer the pre-made convenience foods. They turn their nose up at homemade bread! I'd be offended, but the husband assures me I'm a great cook and it's just a matter of wanting what you couldn't have!
@Gina from The Cannary Family, Yes! Truth!
@Karen A., I use more canned goods at Thanksgiving then the whole rest of the year combined. I tried the homemade versions of cranberry sauce and the green bean casserole and got such pushback! I do make rolls and stuffing from scratch and they LOVE them. I also make my own pies.
My daughter complained about living in an ingredients house a year or two ago. My first reaction was guilt and I tried to compensate at the grocery store. Didn’t last long as I realized that meant buying so much ultra-processed food. Since then, I have been more conscious of the type of food I buy. I readily buy processed (bread, frozen veggies, etc) foods to save precious time/energy but try to limit the ultra-processed to a rare occurrence.
We’re both. It’s better for my sanity! Dinner tends to be an “ingredient” meal that is safe for everyone’s allergies. Other meals and snacks consist of leftovers from “ingredient” meals, convenience foods, and stuff like fruit that is an convenient ingredient. Those meals also give everyone a chance to eat their own preferred foods, like wheat, dairy and nuts for me!
@JenRR, This is very much like us! You said it very succinctly. Not many of us eat breakfast, but when I do, it's oatmeal (ingredient!) or eggs. Lunch is nearly always leftovers or sandwiches for those who eat bread. And dinner is the big ingredient meal.
I think of an ingredient as a food in its simplest form. Therefore fruits, vegetables, and meat are technically ingredients. I try to eat as few highly processed food as possible. However, I realize that in today’s society nearly everything we eat is processed in some way. Milk is homogenized and pasteurized. Spinach from the grocery store is tripled washed and ready to eat. Frozen corn has been cut off the cob and so on.
I would say that I have more of an ingredient-based kitchen. However, I do buy yogurt, bread, butter, mayo, mustard, ketchup, almond butter, pasta and cheese.
I have made all of the items listed above from scratch at one time or another, and some of these are a lot of work to make. However, I rarely use any kind of seasoning packets, pre-made salad dressing or sauces. When I do, I look for items with the fewest additives as possible. I discovered 10 years ago after a long illness that I was allergic to wheat, so I read labels.
When my kids were home, I did buy snack foods but not a lot. They did grumble about this as teenagers, but there were always plenty for them to eat such as hummus, raw veggies, fruit, leftovers, chicken salad, egg salad and even the occasional frozen pizza. As adults, they all are wonderful cooks and follow a healthful diet.
I think I have always tended towards the ingredients household side - lessons learned from my mother. I do purchase convenience foods now and again, including most of those you mentioned. My 25 year old son will open the fridge, then sigh and close it. But there is always opportunity in there! Make a sandwich!, have a bowl of cereal with fruit!, enjoy some pretzels and peanut butter!, make an omelette! And as of yesterday, $200 worth of opportunity because I went grocery shopping and YIKES. I don't know anyone who can afford not to be and ingredient household, I guess because we don't move in the same circles...
I grew up in an ingredient household -- IF we had cookies and milk after school, the cookies were homemade. Can't really remember any packaged snacks, and soda was a rare treat. My home is like Kristen's -- most cooking is done "from scratch" but i don't milk the cow or make the cheese, and my vegetable garden has not been much of a success this last couple years 🙁 Snacks are fruit/nuts/popcorn and desserts are homemade.
I like you am somewhere in between. We have cereal. Animal crackers. Generic triscuits. And pretzels almost always. Everything else is homemade. I do love a good frozen pizza and bagged salad during a very busy week!!
Many years ago, my son said to me, "Mom, I'm hungry." Me: "So make something to eat. We have plenty of food." Son sputtered: "We don't have plenty of food! We have plenty of....ingredients!"
Peg Bracken in the I Hate to Cook Book:
"Actually, you can't trust the word "quick" any more. Some cookbooks, when they say "quick," mean that you needn't grind your own flour. Others mean that you can pour a can of tomato soup over a veal chop and call it Scallopini.
We must face facts. If a recipe calls for eleven different chopped ingredients and cream sauce and a cheese-topped meringue, you don't call it "quick" if you hate to cook. On the other hand, that tomato soup on the veal chop will taste remarkably like tomato soup on a veal chop, and you can't call it Scallopini. "
@Rose, One of my favorite Peg Bracken quotes!
@Rose, My grandmother had that cookbook and sadly she was one of the worst cooks ever. One of her favorite recipes (not sure if it was from that cookbook) was a horrible casserole of sliced potatoes and hotdogs in mustard (not mustard sauce, mind you, just mustard!) It looked and smelled disgusting but my grandparents seemed to love it.
Oh my word, that sounds terrible!
Perhaps it's an acquired taste. lol
@Bobi, I've actually found some recipes I quite like in it! Like Wolfe Eggs, from a Nero Wolfe short story. Fry two slices of bread in butter, spread with liver pate or deviled ham, slide a fried egg on top, add Parmesan and slide under the broiler for a minute. I love it.
I think that casserole is beneath Peg, more of the tomato soup on a veal chop type. One of my other favorite writers, Betty Macdonald, complained about horrible cooking back in the 40s and 50s. She went to a baby shower, but advised her husband beforehand that if he was going to make "any extra good sandwiches like peanut butter on dry bread" while she was gone, to save her one, because the food was likely to be disgusting.
@Bobi, your grandmother's recipe has me thinking that you need to get hold of The Gallery of Regrettable Food, by James Lileks. It's several years old, but includes descriptions and photos of things that are even worse than that recipe.
@A. Marie, Sounds fun. I'll check it out. Thanks!
@Bobi, My mother once made something she called "hotdog stew." Once.
@Bobi, Bad recipes can be lots of fun! One of my worst was a Weight Watchers dinner I served to my brand new husband: Liver sauce over green beans, instead of chili over spaghetti. It was really awful and we both choked and then went out to Chinese dinner. Bless my DH, he still laughs.
Oh my word, that is a wild combo!!
I am primarily an ingredient household. Ingredients give you more options than pre-made. I have a large garden and preserve most of it, we have our own meat (I have processed it myself, but I prefer to take it to a locker for processing). Home canned beef was my fast meal food. I have found that you need to be creative when you have ingredients and they need to be used. I like to bake but still buy bread. I worked full time, we farmed full time and had young children and I was still making most food myself. I remember many years that I would be in the combine for harvest and step out long enough to put a turkey in the oven for Thanksgiving. Sometimes life circumstances dictate what you need to do and the options that you have. Sons are grown and I still make most things myself.
As I read thru all the comments, I can picture some point in my life! Its amazing how we age and how our thinking changes; from being a kid with processed food, thru being an adult and being able to choose what we eat.
Years ago, my husband would always say, buy the ingredients as its cheaper in the long run and healthier. And its true as the ingredients can be used in other recipes too. The ingredients could be categorized as staples and those staples could be considered convenience. Sometimes staples need to be used as ingredients.
@Maureen, But sometimes that's not true. For example, boxed cake mix is cheaper than the ingredients used to make a fresh cake. Or a Costco two-pack of three-pound lasagnas is $14. I can't possibly make that much for $14 with ingredients.
I guess you could skimp and use dumb cheeses (like cottage cheese and Velveeta or something) but I'd get thrown out of New York if I did and my mom would say she had no daughter if I used a cake mix.
Oh, I had not heard that about boxed cake mixes! That's interesting. Most times when I've done price comparisons, the "from scratch" option is cheaper. But I suppose if you made cake with butter that would drive up the cost as compared to a cake mix that uses hydrogenated vegetable oil for the fat.
I bet angel food cakes are legit cheaper than homemade because of the dried egg whites being cheaper than fresh eggs.
Rotisserie chickens from warehouse clubs are often cheaper than a home-roasted whole chicken.
But as a general rule, I agree with Maureen; most of the time, it's cheaper to cook from ingredients.
Right, rotisserie chickens are usually a loss leader, especially at places like Costco. (Costco actually processes their own chickens now to save money.) At my local supermarket, they're so tiny now, they're more rotisserie pigeons or something. I haven't compared, but I bet pound for pound, a home roasted Perdue chicken is cheaper than my local rotisserie birds.
I buy both, actually. I love all the meat on a home-roasted bird, but you can't beat the convenience of a supermarket chicken sometimes.
My local Safeway has pretty small chickens too. The ones from Sam's Club are way bigger and also cheaper!
And of course, some homemade meals aren't better for you, if they're made with highly processed ingredients like sugary pasta sauce or canned soup or fake American cheese.
I used to be snobby about canned soup as an ingredient in meals, because my mother never used them, but one day I thought, "You'll open a can of Campbell's soup and eat it, but you won't use it as an ingredient? That makes no sense."
To sum up, I have a lot of thoughts and all of them are random. Biscuits are super easy to make, but I'll buy a can of them if I'm really tired. No one's died of scurvy in our house yet.
@Rose, I disagree about boxed cake mixes. I stopped buying them specifically because I can make them cheaper. My homemade 9x13 costs me about .50, of course, I buy all my ingredients on sale. 😉
That cost does not surprise me, because I discovered that homemade bread beats even the $0.99 storebought bread, including the oven time.
I love that you figured it out! A reader after my own heart. 🙂
@Bobi, You must live where stuff is cheaper. No way I can get even enough butter for 50c where I live, forget the eggs and other stuff.
I’m somewhat in the middle too now that we’re empty nesters. I had to laugh at the title of this post. One of our favorite cute memories of our oldest son is when I had just finished putting away groceries and he opened the pantry door and said to me, very disgusted “There’s nothing to eat here. There’s only ingredients”! He was about 10.
Interestingly I was just talking with 2 women last night on this very topic.
I was saying cooking from scratch or semi scratch was way more time consuming than cooking prepared things.
And that spurred the discussion what exactly is scratch cooking.
I did say I shop around the outside of the grocery store. Once in awhile going down on aisle. Mostly the baking aisle.
We are a 95% ingredient household. It is not uncommon for me to come home from the grocery store, unload and put away all of the contents and hear the phrase 'there is nothing to eat here.' I do buy some snacks for my kiddo who is 8 and I swear is constantly hungry. I buy soups to cook with, breadcrumbs, tomato products to supplement what I grow and can, condiments, and frozen bread dough. I could make all of these things and there are weeks that I bake my own bread, whip up granola, and make my kiddo all the homemade snacks. I find that time is the constant variable here. My main motivation in stocking my kitchen this way is health. After that comes the financial benefit. In my experience it is always far more healthy to cook at home then eat ready made foods. I also find homemade food more tasty, nutritionally dense, and more satisfying than other options. I don't knock others doing it differently, that is just how I roll. I love to cook and bake. It is sometimes a chore to me but mostly it is a creative outlet for me and how I love on my people. I should note that my household also includes two diabetics and I have found that homemade food is far more beneficial for them than anything premade.
I'm definitely a both sides of this topic. Some days I am closer to one side than the other (either way). 🙂
I try to be more fresh ingredients but have been lacking in that area last few years since going through becoming unmarried. But we do have canned/frozen versions of some of the fresh ingredients---does that count??
Honestly there ate some ready to eat things I would not have time or intrest in making from scratch that we buy---Arbys curly fries and pizza rolls for teen & potato salad (I know how it's just easier to buy), Reese's peanut butter cups. Then there are other things I would always make from scratch--- apple crisp & giant sugar cookies. 🙂
I do think that kids should learn some basic cooking skills---not just turn on oven & insert _____ for ___ minutes or microwave. I know too many adults that seriously lack those basic cooking skills that do not even know how to make pancakes, eggs (most forms), grilled cheese sandwich and cook any kind of meat. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for them. But then again maybe it's just easier to buy already made food/restaurants for people than to cook for themselves.
Usually the ingredient people don't meal plan, but use any fresh food in the fridge plus ingredients on hand and then they consider the day's schedule. They plan the meal the day before and don't go to the store for special items. That is how I interpret it anyhow. This is how I've always done it before there was a name for it.
@Carole, That's me. I don't meal plan at all. Usually I take some meat out of the freezer in the morning and work from there, based on what needs to be used. And I certainly don't go the store (90 miles away) for special items. 🙂
I always have plenty of food in my freezer and fridge. I am an empty nester and have been since my youngest graduated from college and moved out of state; she’s 36 now. I still cook from scratch at least 4 days and eat leftovers the other 3. I don’t mind eating the same thing for lunch or dinner and even occasionally breakfast. I made a cast iron pizza yesterday- own dough and tomato sauce and lots of fresh veggies. I’m plant based so eat little meat. I didn’t make my own cheese though! In the fridge, I always have cheese- love Aldi- and plenty of vegetables and kraut which I love. I’m not real fond of fruit but I try! I have almond and oat milk and lots of different mustards, olives and chutneys:jams. I also get a farm share delivery weekly- my treat for self care.
That is so interesting that you enjoy veggies but not fruit! I always think veggies are slightly harder to love than fruit.
@Kristen, I am the same way: finish all of the veggies at dinner, even as a child, but needed to be convinced to eat an apple or orange. I eat all the fruits now due to knowing they are healthy, and have grown to like them.
I had always put it down to having the savory taste buds instead of a sweet tooth but who knows.
I wish I preferred savory things to sweet things!
Love this thought. We are definitely somewhere between. We tend to cook 3-4 days/week (leftovers the rest of the nights), but if we are expecting a super busy week, dinner may be something like baking up breaded chicken & serving that over a bagged salad. Is it an ingredient meal? Definitely not. Is it healthier & cheaper than takeout, probably yes. We have two teens who are very active, and do keep snacks on hand. I do make homemade protein bars, muffins & breads when I can, but we also keep grab & go snacks for other times (jerky sticks, etc).
Another in-betweener here. I cook most of our meals at home but they include things like pasta, pasta sauce, milk, cheese, etc., that I do not make from scratch. As I was trying to feed just myself last night, I was kind of wishing there was something easy in the freezer to make.
We lean more ingredient-heavy, but I don't believe in being dogmatic (we definitely have Goldfish crackers and store-bought frozen pizza on hand!)
I think there's a lot of moralizing that happens with food, which stinks. Everyone has different amounts of money and time, and different priorities, dietary requirements, and tastes. We all come to different compromises and conclusions about how to eat.
For example, we like to eat mostly whole grains. In January, the price of bread got the 25 cents a SLICE, so I decided to bake our bread. While it was delicious, I work long hours and we have a toddler; it just wasn't working. So we bought a bread machine. I would say that the bread is not as good as an expensive bakery loaf, but as good as a cheap bagged loaf. It's 100% whole wheat, with a modest amount of honey, salt, and canola oil, and we go through 2 loaves a week. It suits our needs for now: we are working parents of a toddler; we could afford to plop down money on a bread machine in the hopes of saving money long-term; we don't mind that the bread is not stellar; and we really value the nutritional profile. Certainly not the choice that everyone would make!
Agreed on the moralizing. I'd be interested to learn more about the history of this; I'd guess that this level of moralizing is an indicator of our relative economic privilege. For a lot of history, food was in shorter supply, choicer were fewer, and I have to imagine that people were a little more interested in, say....not starving!
@Kristen, Food has always been a class and status marker. And it still is.
@kristin @ going country, Yep.
I'm very interested in food history. For example, last night I comfort re-read an Agatha Christie before bed. The cold collation after the funeral of a very wealthy was "ham and chicken and tongue and salad." Good old tongue again!
Chicken, too, was a luxury for a long time, until Americans started chicken ranching around 1900 or so. Remember Hoover promising a chicken in every pot? That was luxurious.
Celery too, even! Such a status symbol Victorians put stalks on the table in their own celery vases.
Also, somehow people think that canned and frozen food are recent inventions, which they are not.
@kristin @ going country and Kristen,
I see the term "morally-neutral" more often in food-as-wellness discussions so maybe the moralizing issue is becoming recognized now.
@Erika JS, the people saying food is medicine. Or "organic food is cheaper than cancer." It's magical thinking. Well, actually, the whole wellness scam is magical thinking and people are finally waking up to it.
I've been thinking about this as I make my way through nursing school; one of the responsibilities of nurses is the education of patients when it comes to managing their conditions with diet.
It is true that patients with wounds need higher protein diets to help their bodies with the healing process. It is true that patients with high blood pressure can help lower it by avoiding salty foods.
So there is a sense in which diet does affect our wellbeing. But on the other hand, there are limits; you cannot stave off every possible disease simply by eating a nutritious diet.
@Rose, it's all so complicated, isn't it? Like on the one hand, eating a diet that suits your own health needs and getting enough sleep and exercise can be helpful, and at the same time, so many "miracles" are promised by companies and influences are hot nonsense. I guess you can't sell products with "It's nuanced."
And so much of it revolves around issues bigger than the individual. It's scary to think that living at the north end of my old city increases one's risk of cancer, and that our own government didn't care enough to regulate it, and mostly the people in that neighbourhood couldn't afford to live anywhere else. It's much more comforting to think that drinking some influencer tea or eating only organic food would help, rather than acknowledging our own neighbours are breathing in industrial waste and can't escape.
@Meira@meirathebear, you're so right ... "well, that depends" is as good as saying to a buyer "nah, you probably don't need this, but I sure wish you'd buy it anyway."
We lean more towards an ingredient household.
I would say I lean toward being an ingredient house out like you do. We decided if I was going to be able to stay home with the kids instead of working away from home that there would be some things I had to do. For example, no more convenience foods like Hamburger Helper and Rice-A-Roni. Most of the things I make and have in the house are a result of specific ingredients. I’ll admit it’s nice to have jars of pasta sauce and cans of soup at the ready. We’ve also found that what I make tastes better and is healthier, not to mention a lot cheaper. If I had the space for a large garden I could take the ingredient household even farther.
Two teenage sons, back in the day, were allowed to snack on cereal or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so milk and bread were always on the grocery list. Thirty years earlier, when I was a teen in a family of seven, I was allowed to eat saltines with jam or butter as a snack. Or an apple, but sometimes those were saved for lunches. Today I am an in-between. I'm cooking for one person but I refuse to pay for a frozen bag of dinner that includes rice or potatoes or pasta, even though it would be convenient. That's a lot of money to pay for frozen rice when you can make it from "scratch" in 20 minutes! PS Are potato chips an "ingredient"???
Interesting discussion! I am in the middle. However, this reminds me of the conversation I had with a friend an acquaintance a few years ago. She was saying her son wanted something special for his birthday, and how expensive it was because she had to go buy the ingredients to make it-including flour and other common baking items. It was the first time I realized there were people who don’t cook, or at least not regularly. I was a little shocked, but tried not to show it. I also realized how different my experience is because I grew up and still live where there aren’t a lot of grocery stores, bakeries, or even many restaurants. I think that affects what you keep on hand also.
We are definitely more of an ingredients household but I do have convience items like canned soup, pasta, condiments, granola bars on occasion as well as other snack items like pretzels, chips and other quick things for kid lunches.
We do a lot of popcorn snacks for at home or salsa (homemade) and tortilla chips (not homemade).
I grow a largish garden where I can get the most of our pickle needs met along with our tomato products for the year except for Ketchup and tomato paste. This year I've made Rotel, salsa, enchilada sauce, pizza sauce and tomato sauce. I like having these on the shelf ready to go cause I'm a part time working mom and some nights I need grab and go to make a quick dinner.
As usual I just love your take on this question. Kristen, you are a pro at sniffing out false moral superiority! And I commend you for not feeling morally superior about that--LOL.
My guess is most households probably fall somewhere in the middle like you and I do. Even my husband's college apartment had bananas and the "ingredients" to make spaghetti. I'm also thinking about folks like the Kardashians, who have entire pantries of packaged drinks and snacks, also have pantries of the ingredients their chefs need to make their lunches.
I am also mainly an ingredients household, but it's just the hubby and I so I think that makes it easier. I almost always make yogurt, broth, granola, soup, beans, tomato sauce/salsa(canned from the garden) bread and desserts from scratch. Somethings I gave up and went back to convinience: salad dressings, croutons, pasta (made all of it ourselves for 1 year - ton of work), chips, and tortillas. Finding a balance as we get older is getting easier. I just try to focus on things that have the fewest ingredients and not stress when I make a frozen pizza or eat crackers. I remember my Oma (grandma) said we could eat anything in the world and stay healthy as long as we made it ourselves. Gives you something to think about because I guarantee I am not making my own bacon, pepperoni or brats!:)
We’re mostly an ingredient household because I LOVE cooking from scratch. We also have our share of frozen pizzas, snacks for a teenager, and items to make life easier (pasta sauce, frozen apps, mac and cheese, that really good thing we sampled at Costco). And of course, the ingredients to make Tater Tot Hot Dish because we live in MN, most of which are non-ingredients!
I try to freeze leftovers to avoid buying frozen meals and planning crockpot meals on busy nights has been helpful in avoiding the need for ready-to-eat meals but that still requires a little planning on my part. In the end, ingredient or ready-to-eat, fed is best.
I grew up in an ingredient household for sure. Family of ten, raised on a farm, huge garden, raised our own beef cattle, hogs, chickens. Had a milk cow. Churned our own butter, ground our own wheat, made our own bread (mostly - we thought Roman Meal bread was a real treat).
Every summer: canning and more canning, pickling, freezing, making jellies, jams and syrups, sauerkraut, chili sauce, tomato sauce, ketchup. Mom rendered our lard and ground our sausage. We cooked huge meals for the hay help. Food production was a big deal, and we all learned to love good food.
BUT Mom would let us have sugared cereal once in a while (oh, how I begged for Captain Crunch!), and cake mixes. We thought store-bought cookies were awful and never asked for them. And "boughten" doughnuts weren't like Mom's!
When I moved away from home, I tried Hamburger Helper (yuk) and frozen pizzas (ew). Commercials lie! Realized how good I had it growing up, and put the cooking skills I learned at an early age to good use.
Now I am MUCH older, and still cook mostly from scratch. I don't make my own yogurt anymore, but I do love Kristen's granola recipe! I do buy pasta and cheese, and our local bakery makes great 100% whole wheat bread.
So: to each her own! Whatever works for you is what you do, and women shoulder the lion's share of the burden of household work. You gotta feed the family! So, no judgment.
That said, I highly recommend the book "Ultra-Processed People" by Chris Van Tulleken. It will make you think twice about ultra-processed food.
@Janie H, I, too, recently read “Ultra-Processed People”. I thought I knew a lot about ultra-processed food but this book was an eye-opener for me! It’s one of those books I think everyone should read and it’s definitely pushing me more toward an ingredient household.
This sounds so interesting. Perhaps I can read it over break. I haven't read a thing for fun since school started!
@Maddie, Kirsten and Janie H. The other book I really enjoyed was Fiber Fueled by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz. It is a nerdy book that explains the science in a way that I can grasp. It, of course, doesn’t make me an expert but the “whys and hows” behind the “eat your fruits and vegetables” makes me more likely to do so. I found it a really interesting and enjoyable book.
@Maddie, thanks for mentioning this book. I just put it on hold at the library.
@Janie H,
"Boughten doughnuts " reminds me of my maternal grandparents. But in their case is was boughten bread, cookies. My father's parents referred to them as "store bought", and my grandmother had fudge-o cookies and dad's ginger pantry cookies on hand all the time. Thank you for giving me the reminder of them today
"boughten" is also familiar to me; I have midwest roots so maybe it's a midwestern thing?
I grew up in a ingredients household, have one and my kids too. As a child, nothing not made into the house entered our kitchen. I buy corn tortillas, gluten free bread( can seem to find a decent recipe ) pasta, and cheeses. My son, 26, cooks 95% of his meals and his well know for his corail lentil humus( we all homemake tahini ). I think eating kosher on a small island forced you to be that way. But I cook 365 days a year without trouble. We I drive by a Mac Donald or kfc , the smell makes me gag.
I am of a "make the bread, buy the butter" mindset. We buy a lot of ingredients. Our freezer, pantry and bakibg cupboard are packed with healthy ingredients. I don't make too many condiments, but buy healthy stuff. The only sweets I keep in the house are graham crackers and mini ice cream sandwiches, which are small enough to hit the spot but don't add to anyone's weight.
@Ruby, sounds as if you've read the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter? That was a good one.
@A. Marie, I love this book. I don't agree with all of her conclusions, but it sure is fun to read. And the recipe for cream cheese is delicious.
@A. Marie, I read that book years ago because of food sensitivities - I can't eat corn, soy or wheat. I still use the ketchup and mustard recipes.
Other than chips/crackers, condiments, and sandwich bread....we are pretty much entirely an ingredient household.
ack...forgot dairy items. Sour cream/cheese/cream cheese/butter. I buy those.
No one here has mentioned health and energy of the cook when it comes to feeding our families. ROSE DOWNER HERE. I honestly don't remember if I like to cook and bake. I think I used to, at least I used to cook everything from scratch in college because I had $10 a week to spend on food, but I've been ill for 34 years now. And lately, we've been eating a lot of take out because I have so much stress, anxiety and depression, I can't move out of my comfy living room chair. If I manage to get up, I have to psych myself into it. "It won't take long, then you can sit back down and do nothing else all evening." I do the best I can, but I constantly don't meet my own standards.
Another factor: time. And resources, such as access to stores, not to mention places to cook and store the food.
Also: not everyone knows how to cook with ingredients. I was lucky enough to grow up in a home where I learned that, but not everyone does.
There are lots of privileges that go into cooking from scratch at home.
@Kristen, the recent discussion of what to donate to a food bank or drive and why touched on all these points: the time, resources, and knowledge available to those in need. I learned quite a bit from that one.
@Rose, downer or not, energy level is a constant reality. I hope you will toss your standards out the window, at least during this season of life. As a very judgemental 40-something, I watched my unwell mother completely enjoy a bowl of microwaved Campbell soup. At the time, I thought she had abandoned her standards. Thinking back on it now, I am grateful that she showed me how she adjusted her expectations and enjoyed her meal.
@A. Marie, the food bank back home used to always ask for dried beans because they were cheap and easy to store, but people having trouble paying their electric bills can't spare several hours running the stove to cook beans. I always gave canned beans.
@Rose, For me it has all been about what season of my life I am in. When I was (more than) 7 times in the puking for months on end season followed by the must feed and diaper baby, meals were less ingredients. Now, I have more energy and more time, so I do more ingredients. And sometimes, I do more ingredients just because I want to put some tunes on and cook in the kitchen.
Our internet went down just as I hit "post." If this shows up twice, sorry!
This is an interesting topic!
I don't milk the cow but I drink raw milk from cows milked by the farmer from whom I buy it. So is it a true scratch ingredient? I don't know!
I was raised in a house in which store-bought snacks were rare treats and I raised my kids that way as well. Yes, I heard "there's nothing to eat here." For many years I have kept a fruit bowl on the table, still do, and my family would grab fruit for a snack. So fruit is an ingredient to me, but more often it's a snack in my house.
I don't buy: mac n' cheese mix, canned soups, jarred pasta or pizza sauces, ketchup, stuffing mix, cake/cookie/brownie/pie crust mixes, canned cranberry sauce, gravy mix, frozen pizzas, taco mix, tortillas, pancakes, jelly, biscuits or rolls and maybe more. Most of that is because I can't have some of the ingredients, and I don't mind making them anyway. I do buy things like mustard, gluten-free bread, mayonnaise, some pickles, dried pasta (but I make my own egg noodles) and cheese, and I'm sure, more I haven't thought of.
This has reminded me of a dear friend, now passed on, who had the busiest life I knew. She and her family were always on the go. One day I ran into her in the grocery store and she had in her cart a package of those cookies that are pre-made cookie dough, already sliced into round cookies and laid out on a disposable baking pan, so all one has to do is preheat the oven, slide the pan in it, and get it back out before the cookies burn. She pointed them out, laughed and said, "Look - my family is not going to believe I'm actually making cookies at home tonight." She was serious; to her that was making homemade cookies. I sure miss her.
@JD, my sainted mother--who was, as I've said in the past, no great shakes as a cook--LOVED the rolls of pre-made cookie dough when they first came out in the 1960s. If she'd lived long enough to see the ones with dough already sliced and laid on a disposable pan, she'd have been turning handsprings.
@JD, One year, a very close friend of mine flew out with her kids, ages 6 and 2, to spend Christmas with my family after her husband left her. We decided we'd have all the kids decorate cookies on Christmas Eve. At the supermarket, my friend grabbed a bag of cookie mix. I didn't even know there was such a thing as cookie mix, but she insisted she'd never made cookies any other way.
Now it's 17 years later, she's redone her identity to be a baking blogger with a huge following (never acknowledges what she learned from me about baking), she's remarried and I was matron of honor, and we're no longer friends since she decided to stay friends with my ex. Life is weird.
Another ingredient person here 🙂
Of course, if I were to compare myself to my grandmother who lived on a farm where they slaughtered their own animals, milked and made their own butter, baked etc, then no.
I would say, ingredients today are basic pantry items that are shelf-stable or don't have added flavorings. If I look at a recipe that calls for a processed item like a canned soup, I don't really feel like I'm cooking (but if I do use a bouillon cube rather than homemade stock, I do).
If I make a sandwich from store-bought bread, no, I'm not really cooking, I'm preparing food. If I bake it, then yes.
Our teens always comment on how many snacks other families have in their pantries. I do buy granola bars and crackers for cheese, occasional corn chips, etc, but that's about it.
While most of my friends were using 'dump' ingredients to make dinners, I took a series of classes at a local culinary institute and learned how to cook anything and everything from all over the world. I grew up in an ingredient home and I took it to the next level of grinding my own flours. I grow and can tomato sauces (marinara, tomato puree, salsa, whole tomatoes in sauce and stewed tomatoes, onion, carrot and garlic) I do not buy canned goods with exception to water chestnuts, coconut milk and pineapple. I make my own yogurt, granola, crackers and some pastas. I do buy peanut butter, crisped rice cereal and the occasional chex type cereal, pretzels and tortilla chips if I'm entertaining. I do not think cheese is a prepared food. I buy local cheddar cheeses and whole milk mozzarella.
When we had a dairy cow we made our own butter, cottage cheese, sour cream and ricotta. I do buy cream cheese. I make my own breads, including bagels and buns. We have not eaten a pizza out in 35 years. We make our own salad dressings, bbq sauces, I do buy Worcestershire and Coconut Aminos. I go to town shopping every 3 weeks or so.
I make the protein balls and freeze them for quick snacks, I have requests for my breakfast cookies that have dried cherries, berries, bacon and a yogurt maple glaze.
It's all about the compromise and being realistic. I use dried pasta, and I have homemade home canned tomato sauce. In a good year, many of the tomatoes are home grown, too. But it's all about being realistic. When the garden isn't cooperating, my mantra is "There's always the farmers' market."
well it seems like another "thing" to make some feel smug while gathering supporters so others could feel less-than..
That's kind of what I was saying in my post: almost none of us truly live in an "ingredients-only" household, and I think this topic has potential to be used for bragging rights.
@brendalynne1, I'm planning to make biscuits and gravy for dinner tonight, with Jones sausage and canned biscuits. I'll put some MSG in the gravy since it tastes irresistable then. Ha!
I have had someone look in my grocery basket a few years back and say “you aren’t buying any food! It’s just like….raw materials.” Well, yes. But I’m no purist! I made amazing whole wheat sourdough crackers during the pandemic. It took hours and they were so good we ate them all in a day. Not a sustainable use of my time and energy. I buy crackers, bread, condiments, sometimes salad dressing, canned tomato products, hummus. I just try to buy the healthiest simplest ingredient list items. Bread comes from a local bakery- yes, it’s more expensive than grocery bread but it’s not full of junk and preservatives.
I don’t like the taste of processed baked goods but my husband loves white flour, deep-fried donuts so he buys them when he shops. Not my body, not my battle!
I can’t think of a processed snack I like better than home-popped popcorn with butter and brewer’s yeast so that’s my go-to when I’m craving a snack.
That was exactly my experience with cracker-making. It's so labor-intensive!
Also: it was easy to burn some of them because it's so tough to roll the dough exactly evenly.
I felt like loaves of bread required way less hours of actual effort.
@Kristen, I loathe making crackers. All that rolling, and I never get them thin enough, and yet, they still burn. This is why I'm happy to buy Wasa sourdough crisps when I can find them, even though I bake sourdough bread every week. We all make choices. 🙂
Yup. I'm happy to let the factories make my crackers!
@kristin @ going country,
You make sourdough bread, right? Have you ever tried making sourdough discard crackers? My husband makes them at least twice a week and it seems to be pretty easy. He microwaves butter, mixes it with the discard, then pours it onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. He reuses the parchment because, of course. Then he takes a rubber spatula and sort of spreads it towards the edges of the pan. Then he tops it with salt and/or spices. He bakes it halfway (like ten minutes, maybe? I'll ask.) Then takes out the pan, scores the crackers with a sharp knife and puts it back in for the rest of the time. These are super easy, use up the discard and the kids gobble them up. They are not at all perfectly even, and the outer edges are crispier (my favorites) while the inner pieces are chewier, but they always all get eaten in one afternoon.
My nieces and nephews say that all the time at my house. You don't have anything to eat, well, things you don't have to make. I'm more of an ingredient house hold. I'm not strict about it but more often than not I say to myself I can make that and it will taste better and I will know what's in it.
We are an in-between family. I would say 70% ingredients and 30% ready to eat.
I do can ingredients to make some things like pasta sauce, salsa and tomato related sauces.
In our house mac and cheese, ramen, and cheese (mozzarella and cheddar) and canned chicken noodle/tomato soup are used by themselves and as ingredients in recipes.
The real convenience foods are cereal, frozen items: French fries, Pierogi, Pizzas, Ravioli, veggies, crackers, some sale cookies, granola bars, potato chips and tortilla chips.
This is a constant battle that lives in mind. I have one daughter who would love to only eat highly processed foods. I grew up in a house with PLENTY of junk food and highly processed frozen foods (it was the 80s) but our cupboards were also full of jars of dried beans, spices, flour, ghee, etc. Mom made us a meal with 4-5 components pretty much every night. When the kids were little, I made a lot more from scratch but as their tastes have both evolved and devolved, and I started working a regular job, I find that I'm leaning WAAAAAY more on prepared foods and quick meals. I'm constantly trying to "get us back on track." I'd say we still lean towards being an ingredients kitchen though. I'm just going to keep trying to lean further.
I'd categorize cheese as an ingredient...my mom is the only person I know who has made cheese (paneer).
@CrunchyCake, mmmm, paneer. I've made fresh mozzarella but that's not very exciting. Cheese is my favorite food so I'd love to make some real cheese sometime, but the barriers to entry are so high (for example: raw milk) I guess I'll just keep buying my favorite Roquefort. mmmmm blue cheese mmmm
I think you are definitely an ingredient household and I am too.I have to cook (WANT to cook!) There is cake or pie when I bake one! Oatmeal when I make it in my small rice cooker (I cook up 3 days of steel cut oats in my tiny rice cooker and refrig.it).. I only bake bread sometimes though. We have homemade soup snacks, fruits,veggies,leftovers.I make lentil and also quinoa salads with white beans and they ast a cupel of days in refrig.My own tuna and egg salad. I am what has been called a “super taster” I have more taste buds or something..and most packaged foods are inedible to me.. waaaaaay too salty or herby or..whatever.I like my own cooking a whole lot!
AND, as we ingredient people know,it saves money.
As a household, we are somewhere in the middle (similar to Kristen, I'd say). In some instances I make things from ingredients (as in grow the food/buy the ingredients, and turn it into some sort of meal) and other times, I buy ready-to-eat food (vegan meatballs, tortilla chips, humus, granola and even some salsa to name just a few).
I think the teen and the adult family member (with physical disabilities) in our house would mutiny if I didn't have some sort of ready-to-eat food. In fact, I know they have both ordered snacks to be delivered to the house because they couldn't turn the "ingredients" into something (either due to handicap or inexperience).
I've felt the stigma against using convenience foods and agree the line can be a bit challenging to pinpoint. I've been shamed before using jarred marinara sauce in my lasagna-not because of environmental reasons, but bc the individuals thought it was "cheating" and definitely far less superior than from "ingredients". I'm not sure why using pre-made noodles (which I also used) were okay (also do not plan to go down that rabbit hole). I do know my family enjoyed it and it took me less than 40 minutes to make it.
I buy jars of marinara sauce all the time. I'm on your team! 🙂
I actually dislike fresh pasta. This realization brought to you many years ago after the purchase of an expensive pasta maker. I'd much rather have dried pasta. And my homemade red sauce is much better than jarred stuff, but I still buy jars of Rao's on sale, because ain't no one got time/energy to make sauce all the time.
I guess one more thing is: does the cook work outside the home? If not, whoopee for you if you make your own croissants. At least that's what I told my mom when she shamed me for not making my own ladyfingers for trifle.
@Kristen, Rao’s marinara for the win!
@Diane, 100% but I find that they go bad quickly (maybe due to lack of preservatives) so I try to use them up quickly. The frugal side of me keeps getting the big jars from Costco.
I'm not surprised that most members of this community are either mostly ingredients or a mix household. Few are copping to being a full-on ready-to-eat household, but there is apparently a substantial part of the grocery shopping public opting for the already prepared foods. I just returned from a popular store and was a bit surprised by the amount of family sized frozen boxes of mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, stuffing with gravy packs, etc. This store had literally added extra freezer cases to the meat aisle that were piled with nothing but Thanksgiving side dishes in quantities I've never seen before. (And, no, it wasn't Wal-Mart, it was a regular grocery store.)
I am a mom that works outside the house. I'd say we are in between on ingredients and procesed food. Recently been making more effort to have all cooking be from scratch, minimally processed ingredients, reducing the amount of dairy we eat, and trying to make our snacks. I make our salad dressings, sauces, biscuits, and some bread (we dont eat much). I find if I stick to a meat with veggies or a brothy soup, we can eat way less processed food and feel better.
I have to share this fabulous baked oatmeal recipe. I’ve used blueberries, apples, peaches, raspberries, and pears, and it’s all delicious. Freezes nicely, too.
@Caroline Rose, guess I should include the link! https://cookieandkate.com/baked-oatmeal-recipe/
Interesting, that I would say I was primarily an ingredient household, although I am very devoted to cereal. But now that I have my kindergarten granddaughter every day after school, we do some prepared snacks. She loves them and does not get them at home so they are real treat. Of course, this is on top of fruit and veggies and things like peanut butter crackers. And I love when she asks if she can have a “Welchies” which are the Welches fruit gummies.
Both! More on the spectrum of ingredients but exactly like Kristin with balancing it on some convenience foods where I need them. Canned tomatoes, already made dried pasta, often already made individual cups of yogurt for its 'healthier to go food' option, and chips to name a few. My two main reasons are money and health as motivators. So when I do buy something of the more convenient option, those are the two things I take into account. Is this a relatively healthier option of this category, and cost wise does it make sense. Sometimes you compromise for the phase of life you are in!
This is a super-interesting discussion.
It reminds me of how, as a teen, I was very convinced I was in the wrong time period, that I should have been born so that I could live through the mid-1800s.
But dude. Outhouses. Candles you had to make. Dig a well with a shovel? Milk a cow twice a day? By March eat only onions, apples and potatoes because nothing is growing yet? OH NO NO NO.
So for me, I'm glad to be here at this time of the world. We eat. We eat a good variety of everything, mostly at home. It's all good and nutritious and we are all good.
@Karen., well said!!
@Karen., Remember, even in the mid 1800s, most Americans did not live that way. That's pioneer stuff. All my ancestors lived in New York City and none of them milked cows. (Think "Gangs of New York" for my family, ha.)
@Rose, oh, I know — you are absolutely right. But I live in the fly-over middle and the settlement of the West is the only slice of history that has ever snagged my imagination, so it was distinctly that pioneer vibe that attracted me to the time period. At this point I live less than five miles from the Pony Express trail which is nothing short of exquisite for teenage me. 😉
We are a mix-- I will definitely make cinnamon rolls from scratch, but if I'm in a pinch or I know I can't make them without getting frustrated with my kids for... being kids... I will buy a tub.
I appreciate that you can talk about this without sounding morally superior for the ingredient stuff you do have/use!!
Whew, what a lot of responses. I am all over the map. I have ingredients to make lots of things from scratch and know how to from my upbringing. But if I find a good product that saves me time at this age, I'm all for it. I can make biscuits. Do I need to have what's left of a dozen after eating two? No, so I have frozen biscuits and just fix two. Same w cinnamon rolls (which takes a little forethought). Aldis rolled pie crust makes for an easy tart or quiche, filling of which is ingredients. The spaetzle noodles available during German sales at Aldi makes very good chicken and noodles. I use stock/broth, and chicken, often ingredients, but I have a box or two of both chicken and beef for soups in addition to cutting and chopping ingredients. The other night, I took advantage of Dominoes, buy now get an emergency pizza later deal. And I've been known to spend $50.00 (which is a lot for me) at the store and stop in at Sonic or Arby's on the way home. Like I said, I'm all over the map, simply because I can be.
We did foster care for 15 years. One day there is a knock on the door and it is the licensing person, coming to see us and inspect our house because our foster son had filed a complaint that we did not feed him. This was during a period when I worked from home, so I did a tremendous amount of cooking from scratch. The caseworker inspected our cupboards and asked me if we fed the child differently from us or not. She interviewed the boy last, who said, "She feeds me stuff like homemade bread and soup. They have no real foods in this house, like hot dogs or potato chips." My other food story is when I worked at Head Start and met five year olds who had never sat at a table to eat a meal, as well as children who had been fed mostly fast food and had no idea how to use a fork or knife. We cooked the main meal from scratch and many of the children initially refused to eat from scratch cooking.
@Lindsey,
Your first story: ☺☺☺HA!
Your second story: 🙁 🙁 🙁 So sad, but not surprising....
@Lindsey, I think I've said this before, but let me again: I so admire you for being a foster mom to such difficult cases. I sincerely wish I had the personal bandwidth to do that.
lol at that first child's perspective on homemade bread!
And awww, my heart feels sad for those kids who had never been cooked for.
We're definitely an in between household. I love cooking but am semi-homemade. I'm not going to make my own spaghetti sauce by hand from a garden, but I would buy a sauce and add ingredients. I'm not going to make crackers and chips, but I enjoy them and would buy them. Yea, I'm somewhere inbetween.
We are primarily an ingredient household, but not too proud to buy things that are very time consuming to make like pasta, bread, sauces, canned beans, etc. But most of our cooking is from scratch. This is a choice we've made because 1) It's frugal, 2) we control the ingredients for our health and waistlines, and 3)it matches our tastes--for example, daughter and I don't like spicy things but husband can add spice to his portions.
My husband is retired and does the shopping and cooking (I'm keeping him!) and because he's not working he can go to several stores each week to shop for best prices and quality (no Aldi here). He seems to enjoy the "hunting and gathering" and being creative with recipes where that's not my joy at all. And I'm still working more than full time.
When our kids were in school and asked to bring canned and packaged goods for donations, we often had to go out and buy things to donate since we have very few packaged goods and cans in our pantry.
The other day, I reviewed my Costco shopping list. Yup, it's mostly ingredients (well, except for TP and soap). However, I asked myself a similar question. I've been buying more bagged salads, because they're cheap and they get us to eat more vegetables than I might prepare at once, if left to my own devices. Is a bagged salad considered a processed food? I don't like the amount of plastic, but buying individual ingredients also involves plastic, so I hope it's at least a wash, if not better.
Great question!
P.S. I haven't purchased cereal in years. We eat your granola recipe instead.
In today's terms I think you still qualify as an ingredient household. I also have that type of ingredient household and the sad part is, I have a pantry and freezer full and I still struggle EVERYDAY to figure out what to fix my humans for dinner!!!
I’m definitely leaning more to the ingredients household side of the scale, but if cup of soup is on special I’m going to stock up on them and I don’t make my own bread. I’m a sucker for nespresso pods and I stock my pantry with dried pasta and canned tomatoes.
I'm usually about 65% ingredients but not at this stage of my life. If I buy ingredients they mostly go to waste. Hopefully later I'll be able to get back to cooking.
I used to be a VERY ingredient-based home. I didn't grow or mill my own wheat, but I made all my bread from scratch, I often made pasta from scratch, I grew most of my own vegetables and used them in my cooking. I bought ingredients in bulk at the local food co-op or farmer's market.
Now I have kids and a full time job and I have no time to do that. I buy salads in bags, I buy bread from the bakery, I never make pasta from scratch. I occasionaly make pizza from scratch, but even that has been getting rarer. My daughter loves baking, so we've made some cakes and cookies from scratch, and in general I do cook for dinner every night and it does require some actual ingredients and not all packaged stuff. I still have a veggie garden and still use that when I cook. And we've planted a ton of fruit trees! I think we have 16 fruit trees (includuing avocado), a baby grapevine, 3 pineapple guava bushes, a small herb garden, and quite a few raspberry, blueberry, and blackberry bushes, plus some strawberries but I honestly haven't had a ton of time to keep up with the berries as well as I should.
I also don't have time to prep and eat a lot of the fruit, so I tend to freeze it when it starts getting soft, then make smoothies for the family and smoothie popsicles to keep in the freezer. And the freezer is getting FULL since it's the most useful took I have to manage all this produce. Right now it's full of frozen fruit from the trees, zucchini soup, salsa verde, pesto, roasted bell peppers.
I choose want to plant in my veggie beds based on how easy it is to grow and how expensive it is at the store, so I grow a lot of bell peppers, basil, tomatillos, heirloom tomatoes, yard-long beans, and eggplant.
(in case you're wondering, we have: apricot, two different pears, fuji apple, pluot, orange, peach, mandarin, nectarine, plum, grapefruit, lemon, lime, fig, and a baby pomegranate tree, in addition to the avocado tree, and I'm thinking about adding a Japanese plum or pluot to pollinate the existing pluot and maybe a cherry tree. Our lot is just under 1/5th acre, and we squeeze trees in wherever we can. Most of them are dwarf or semi-dwarf).
This really turned into a dissertation about gardening...
Also. I don't know if ready-to-eat things were that plentiful when I was growing up in the early 80s. Were they? My parents were older than all my classmates' parents, and my parents definitely grew up before ready-to-eat was a thing (my dad was born in 1924! and lived through the Great Depression, so he was definitely not a fan of wasteful practices like lots of packaging).
The main reason I buy ingredients rather than pre-mades is because I am and have always been cheap. Ahem. I mean frugal, of course. In college, I went through a time of smug superiority because I made my own bread, yogurt, and granola. But it wasn't just for the perceived health benefits—it was for the sense of self-sufficiency along with the aforementioned cheapness. Ahem. I mean scarcity of funds, actually. Now that I am in a position to occasionally buy pre-mades, it feels like a tremendous splurge, a treat, a real luxury to just open a jar of pasta sauce or pesto. On the other hand, I feel guilty for adding to the waste. That's right, not buying things in jars or cartons was a big deal to me back in my days of smug superiority. Now it is just ingrained. But oh my goodness, for a bag of Cheetos. . . sigh.
I have a prepared carrot chowder, jar of pickles, cheese, apples, and lots of ingredients.
Ok, reading through everyone else's responses has me second guessing how far I am along the "ingredients household" spectrum! But this is all very inspiring and is rejuvenating my goal to eat more real food so thank you, everyone!
We’re definitely ingredient people. I joined a group on Facebook about a decade ago called October Unprocessed. It still exists but is much less active. Anyway, it’s a month long challenge to not eat anything you couldn’t make from scratch in your own home. You don’t have to actually make everything from scratch but if it is premade it shouldn’t have any “lab” ingredients in it. It’s a fantastic challenge and every year, I learn something new (and become a better cook). Also, reading the book Ultra Processed People is eye opening.
The result is that we are not purely ingredient people but we are choosy about the things that we buy that are processed. Like minimalism, it’s an intentional move based on what works for us.
Very much a mix. And the ratio of ingredients to prepared foods is in flux, depending on the week and what’s going on with work and other commitments. One thing we always try to have on hand is frozen pizza for those nights when things just do not go as planned. And chocolate chips - those definitely count in both the ingredient and snack food categories in our household.
Really interesting discussion thread, Kristen! I’m definitely in between and not apologizing for it! It’s what fits my life right now. I love ingredient kitchens, but there’s some things that are processed that I still buy and like. We can all do better, I’m sure but at what cost? Live where you are, do what you love!
Last year, my adult children told me that they had grown up in an ingredient household. Having never heard the term, I thought it was a mild insult lol!
But it’s definitely a spectrum. We had home made tacos, but I bought the tortillas. If we had burgers and fries, I cut large potatoes into French fries, but bought the hamburger buns,
I've always been predominantly an ingredient household. I've been a stay at home mom since my kids were little so I've had the time to make a lot of homemade meals. There are many things I still buy prepared, chips, canned tomatoes, broth, crackers, condiments, bread. I bake so hardly ever buy store desserts or cookies. One offshoot of always cooking our meals, both my kids now can cook (29 and 26) and have been doing so since college. They are healthier for it as well as spending a lot less than on take out foods. They also have a love of many kinds of foods. Now that I'm an empty nester I'm having even more fun cooking from scratch, I make my own pasta, puff pastry, and salad dressings (wow, I wish I had realized how easy they are to make, I would have made them years ago!). I don't grow anything other than herbs so we get a CSA every summer so I get fresh farm vegetables. All our meals revolve around what I get that week.
Amusingly the general consensus on TikTok is that kids/teens don’t want ingredient households but adults understand why they exist. I haven’t seen any discussion about morality at all, honestly. And, to answer your question, cheese is considered an ingredient and somehow tortilla chips are too. Microwaved cheese on tortilla chips is the #1 snack of kids in ingredient households, followed by a handful of chocolate chips at a close #2. But I think your potato chips and granola bars except you from being a total ingredient household. It’s mostly just about snacks, not meals.
The first time I heard of the concept of "ingredients" vs. "food" in a kitchen was in 2008-2009 when Alexis Stewart had her radio program (Whatever) which mainly existed to poke fun at her mother. Her problem with having ingredients in the Stewart kitchen (or kitchens) was that her mother was too busy to actually cook them for her daughter, or I suppose, to show her how to cook them herself.
I took over cooking early with only a battered cookbook and pbs cookshows to guide me. My mom would drop me off at the grocery to do the shopping so I had to stretch a dollar and think of how many possabilities this item hadto feed our household of 6. So I have always been an ingredient person. A sack of flour can be a million things. Seperate spices and herbs can be combined to make a world's range of flavors.
I will grow, process, and can/freeze tomatoes, but I also have no problem grabbing a can of crushed tomatoes for a pasta sauce. The big thing for me is knowing what is in it, and of course saving a few pennies never hurts.
I did kind of want to put my two cents in here as someone who didn't grow up in an "ingredient house", but had a very good friend who did. It doesn't necessarily mean pre-packaged snacks or meals. Usually it means there are NO snacks purchased or encouraged, and often that they're discouraged all together. There would not be granola or chips, but even things like yogurt and fruit to snack on aren't purchased. It's usually an overarching issue with food wherein the parents treat their growing children like they're absurd for needing or wanting a snack. I very much remember my stick thin friend being put on a diet because her dad thought she looked too big- She was one of the thinnest girls I knew. It's less about packaging and more about the attitude surrounding food. Snacks didn't exist because that would mean kids were allowed to eat at their own leisure, and that wasn't allowed at all. Ingredients only refers to ingredients for MEALS only. Meaning you can't just grab something from the fridge to cook, because it's been set aside for a planned meal. From the sound of your post and most of the comments, very few people here would be considered "ingredient households" because you still allow your kids to snack, they just have to put the effort into making something. I hope this has made some sort of sense, I love your blog a lot but the misunderstanding of this trend rubbed me slightly the wrong way since it's usually a discussion of unhealthy eating patterns pushed by parents with their own issues.
It seems like you wrote this post so you could link to a bunch of your other posts. I see you, and I'm not clicking on any of them.
This is crushing news indeed.
Mainly ingredients here. Quality & value over convenience (especially when convenience becomes, "can't be bothered" laziness). I also like to know what I'm eating and I've gotten less gut-tolerant of "fast" foods. You'll ALWAYS find me looking for the marked-down meats/veg/cheeses, etc. I never make "menus-lists" because that = "you must pay whatever the price is on the tag." With markdowns, THEY become the star and I create meals based around them. Our household dinners/next day lunches still cost somewhere between $3-6 AUD, per person, in our 4 adult home. I have dozens of spices & make sauces, gravies, marinades, & dressings. All delish, I might add. I tend to buy a 10 liter water jug w/spout rather than individual bottles- that way I can also have it ready for meal prep. Speaking of that, I consider prepping veg with music playing as the cheapest therapy there is. Ditto the "hunting & gathering" and the brain work of putting meals together in my head, prepping for three days of meals and knowing how to do it. I don't make my own hard cheese, but I do make cream cheese when the milk is on clearance. Yogurt is a frequent markdown. A simple bread is easy & cheap. A markdown chicken becomes dinner, next day's tray of enchiladas, bones become broth/becomes tomato soup. Sales on fresh veg = bulk-buying & blanching for the freezer.
When I go through the check-out at the shops I watch the person in front of me with all of the processed foods pay for 2 bags what I pay for 5-6 full bags of mainly fresh/marked down stuff. Today I snagged 2 packs of free-range chicken breast marked down from $13 kilo to $3. I know where the markdowns are located in the six closest shops and when they're most likely to have them. I've always shopped like Mom taught me, and doing so allows the savings for splurges when they present themselves. 🙂