Grocery stores are full of convenience foods. Some of them are not any more convenient than making the same thing from scratch. Most of them are more expensive than cooking from scratch, and most of them have way more salt and preservatives than most people would use cooking from scratch. And many of them come with a lot of packaging, which adds to both our energy usage and our dwindling landfill capacity (or air pollution in those jurisdictions that use incinerators instead).
Notice that I say "some," "most," and "many." It may be possible to buy some things (perhaps lasagna) for less money than it takes to buy ingredients to make it. There are whole casseroles that come in a single plastic bag from the freezer section that can be made by heating the whole contents in a skillet for ten minutes. Not only are they more convenient than making the same thing from scratch, there is less packaging in that single plastic bag than there would be for all of the different ingredients.The frugal shopper will be careful to identify and purchase these.
But don’t buy ready-mixed cinnamon and sugar. Fill a clean, empty jelly jar about three quarters with sugar. Add a little cinnamon. Put the lid on and shake the jar until the cinnamon and sugar are mixed together. Keep adding cinnamon a little at a time and shaking the jar until it looks right. Use the same jar over and over for years.
Don’t buy canned tomatoes or frozen vegetables that are already seasoned. You can’t make good chili using canned tomatoes with Italian seasoning or good pasta sauce using canned tomatoes with jalapeño peppers. Why buy every seasoning combination on the shelf when you can buy plain tomatoes and reach into your spice rack for whatever suits what you’re fixing?
Instant rice is not really convenient. Regular rice is a lot less expensive, uses a lot less packaging (one five-pound plastic bag instead of multiple boxes for the same amount of instant#, and tastes a lot better. You have to fiddle with instant rice at the last minute, after everything else is cooked. It takes about 20 minutes to cook white rice and about an hour to cook brown rice. So start the rice and make everything else while it cooks. Make twice as much as you need and put the rest in the refrigerator for another meal.
Grocery stores are full of boxes of stuff that are complete meals once you add some hamburger or tuna or chicken. Noodles from the box and noodles that are just noodles take the same amount of time to cook. It’s hard to control the seasoning with the little packet that comes in the box #which you have to throw out.)
Some people might like the dish prepared with the whole packet, but I suspect I’m not alone in finding it overpowering. And it’s probably loaded with more salt than is good for anyone. So how much of it do you use? Too much or too little, and the food doesn’t taste good. If you make it from scratch, you can choose and measure the spices you use and can control how much salt you put in. You can also dress it up with whatever vegetables you and your family like. It’s hard to get tasty vegetables into one of those boxes.
Of course, you’ll need some kind of sauce, but that’s only marginally more complicated than adding water to the stuff in the box. You might be able to use a can of tomato sauce or part of a jar of pasta sauce. But don’t use canned condensed soup. While the noodles or rice or potatoes cook, make a white sauce. That’s a very basic and fairly easy kitchen skill, and if a plain white sauce is too boring, it’s easy to jazz it up www.ehow.com/how_5264636_jjazz it up. Instead of cream of mushroom soup, sauté some chopped mushrooms in the butter before adding the flour. Or sauté a teaspoon of curry powder before adding the flour. Or add a cup of grated cheese to the sauce after it’s cooked.
This article has not by any means exhausted the ways to make meals that are tastier, more nutritious, and probably less expensive and little if any less time consuming than preparing packaged convenience foods. Nor has it exhausted ways to cut down on packaging by buying staples in bulk. If one or two families adopt these ideas, they will save money. If many families make similar changes, it can have a significant impact on the whole planet.
