I would be the last person in the world to enter a cooking or baking contest, yet I am capable of cooking good wholesome food on a daily basis and I have to admit that when I read the following yesterday in the Sunday Times, I was ever so slightly amazed.
The article was about families facing big squeezes financially – in terms of increases in the cost of ESB, health insurance and VAT etc and how people can save money on groceries as the supermarkets are discounting aggressively to get more customers (affecting the primary producer of course but that wasn’t mentioned!) but it was the feature on a mum’s cooking that surprised me:
“I cook from raw ingredients at least four times a week because it is cheaper and healthier than buying convenience foods‘. ?Errr, but what else would you cook from? – cooked foods!! Of course the ingredients are raw. What do you want – a medal! ?Apparently for this unique piece of advice and her four-times-a-week cooking, Breslin is an expert and shares her advice for low-cost healthy eating on Siansplan.
And if you can’t manage to create a shopping list from the ingredients in a recipe from the internet or in a cookbook – you can always pay ?4.99 a month for Siansplan to generate a list of ingredients from selected menus. ?Don’t they teach home economics in school anymore? ?Are mums/dads that inept? It’s not rocket science or am I being a bit hard?
Am I missing something? As someone who hated home economics and my decision to return to farming and become a farmer’s wife was somewhat dampened by the prospect of having to cook every day (when we lived in the UK, Brian did most of the cooking), I don’t find it particularly difficult to produce a home cooked meal once a day. ‘Convenience’ food in our house is limited to once every 2 or 3 weeks and will either be ?frozen pizzas as a Friday night treat or something like fish and chips for dinner. ?Breslin recommends cooking at home five times a week with the other two days being flexible – perhaps eating out or having a takeaway! She shops once or twice a week and save about ?50 by doing so. She neglects to say what she spends per week on food but as she hasn’t said she halves her grocery bill, it really sounds like it is closer to ?200 than ?100 a week which is what some familes try to manage on.
Aren’t we in a recession? Yes I know that takeaway food businesses are supposed to do well in a recession but surely cutting back so that you can afford the essentials means eating out once a month rather than every week – be it a takeaway or a meal out. What is so difficult about throwing some pasta in a saucepan and cooking up some veg to go with it? Putting a casserole together? ?I really feel some people don’t know what poverty is. ?Poverty is when you are homeless, when your kids had to walk to school, when you can’t pay the mortgage, when you had to drown piglets because you couldn’t sell them at the mart and you couldn’t afford to feed them. Poverty is not ‘being flexible and eating out once or twice a week’.
I was also amused to see a recipe for quiche in last week’s Farmers Journal, it included bought shortcrust pastry. Now, I’d probably buy puff pastry if a recipe needed it but my 7 year old can make shortcrust pastry!
Must go now and check on that raw meat I put in the oven and put on some raw potatoes to cook not to mention those raw parsnips I have from the garden and the raw carrots from the supermarket! Judging by Breslin’s standards – I am either due a medal or I am indeed living in poverty. Sorry but I really feel like saying ‘get a grip woman’. Am I being unreasonable? Missing something?
jan c.
I live in Texas, and love reading your blog. Pre-processed foods and takeout are such a big part of most families diets now, that we often see mothers taking their children bags of takeout for lunch at school! No great surprise that many children here are sadly overweight and type 2 Diabetes develops at younger ages now-not to mention the tremendous amount of money wasted on this sort of “food”. Great post and a wonderful blog-thank you!
Lorna
Thank you Jan for visiting my blog 🙂 Obesity is on the rise here too – with kids and grownups and to be honest, I could do with losing a few pounds myself but it is worrying when illnesses such as diabetes are kicking in so young .
Sian Breslin
Hi Lorna,
Stumbled across your post so thought that I’d better add a few words! I suppose I should start with cooking from raw ingredients. What I mean here is cooking from scratch, not cooking with processed foods like chips or a pizza. From experience at my cookery school, cooking from scratch was not something that a lot of my participants did on a regular basis. That’s why I say that we should do this at least 4 times a week. For someone who doesn’t cook from scratch at all, it’s easier, and more realistic to plan for 4.
The two flexible days are to account for our busy lifestyles. Sometimes its not realistic to plan for 7 days in the week. If it is, great, you can plan to cook 7 days. The article didn’t get across the other options available for the flexi days. We would recommend cooking in batch one of the days, with the remainder being used on the second flexi day. We’re just trying to make it easier for people to ensure that they cook healthy meals for their family. I certainly don’t eat out or have a takeaway every week! That’s just not an option for me.
You can sign up to our site for free to plan your meals and calculate your shopping list. We spent the last 3 years in R&D, and are a small mother and son team. We’re also a business trying to employ up to 8 people in our first year, so we need to make money somehow. Thats why we offer premium packages.
I think your commenter Elaine has nailed it perfectly when she says that “people have gone away from cooking for the simple reason some fast foods are cheaper and supermarkets all have great offers on fast foods but not very many on raw foods” and that she “can understand why people would buy fast food if they are in work all day and not home till late you wouldn?t feel like getting a dinner ready but with a little planning most things can be frozen and made in advance”.
This is the reason that there is a need for our plan, and for the most part we have had a very positive response. Sure, some people don’t need our help to manage their meals, and good on them. I know that my plan works for me and for my family, and it also works for others.
I really hope that I’ve managed to clear up a few things, and I can assure you that I have a firm grip on reality! The 1 gold and 2 silver medals in cooking with raw ingredients that I’m looking at on my mantlepiece can confirm that.
Happy cooking!
Lorna
HI Sian,
Welcome to my blog and many thanks for leaving a comment and engaging with the other commentators. Unfortunately, the article put across the impression that you and other people are eating out/getting takeaways once or twice a week by leaving out your options for the other days. Yes, I interpreted cooking from raw food as just that and our ‘convenience’ meal once a fortnight or thereabouts consists of frozen chips/pizza etc.
As I work from home, I do have the advantage of being able to prepare a casserole during my ‘lunch hour’ and I fully appreciate that for those people who are out of the home from early in the morning till late at night it is certainly not so easy to prepare meals although I do have a friend who uses a slow cooker to great success, cooking things such as a roast chicken surrounded by veg and it is ready when she walks in the door in the evenings.
I totally agree with your point about using leftovers to create another meal. When I worked away from the home, I often cooked big enough casseroles etc to last a second day.
It just seems that more and more recipes are suggesting shop bought foodstuffs, even that recipe for quiche in the Farmers Journal included shop bought pastry when it really doesn’t take long to mix together some marg and flour.
I’ve put the paper into recycling now so don’t have it to hand but it does sound as if it left out some of your important information. It also seemed to vary from the Celtic Tiger days of eating out weekly to trying to skimp on foodstuffs but trying to do it all at once if you understand what I mean. I guess the word length just wasn’t there to cover all the angles and I apologise if we mis interpreted your intentions.
From comments others have made, it does seem that some people really do need the abc of preparing vegetables and cooking simple meals.I wouldn’t describe myself as an able or good cook by any stretch of the imagination so I guess I feel that if I can do cobble a meal together, most people would be able to.
Your article certainly got people talking though 🙂
Many congrats on your medals and I wish you well with your business. Many thanks too for your comments.
Kind regards, Lorna
Sian Breslin
Hi Lorna,
Thanks for your reply. I think that we’re all on the same page here really. It certainly means that cooking from raw ingredients is newsworthy, as it should be! We have a new member to our blog who will focus on slow cooking. He’s a young trainee chef and it’s fantastic to see that interest in our youth today. Unfortunately not enough of us are cooking with raw ingredients. There are people who are so busy, but that want to cook from scratch, and it’s them that we want to help. Meal planning on a weekly basis does that. Oh, and I used to spend ?130/week on food and now I’ve cut it down to ?70.
Thank you for your well wishes and keep up the good work!
Sian
Lorna
Thanks for clearing that up 🙂 just starting to follow you on twitter.
I still find it incredible that cooking from raw ingredients is newsworthy though, I mean, with all the advances in technology,, we really have gone backwards in basic food preparation but I guess I’m just out of touch. Foodie bloggers are doing a great job of promoting the cooking of food and how easy it can be.
M?na Wise
I have been ‘internetless’ all day and dying to chime in on this one. I read the article and feel the same way Lorna. I think that it is just laziness. I know plenty of hard working families that come home late every evening and still eat ‘raw’ food cooked fresh every day. I also think that if people actually spent a half hour planning their grocery shop and weekly menu they would discover that it is so much quicker and cheaper to ‘eat raw’ not to mention the health benefits. I really want a little button to put on my blog that says ‘we cook raw food daily’ …. Sheesh! No, Lorna. You did not miss the point at all…but it appears many are.
Lorna
I do admire the way you and Ron plan your weekly menu and grocery shop. I don’t even make a list unless I am cooking something that specifically needs ingredients that aren’t generally in the cupboard. I did come home without the YR sauce last night but we’ll live without it for a week 🙂
The article just seem patronising and ridiculous as if they were trying to show people who were tightening their belts financially how to do it but yet they weren’t in the real world at all. Thanks for chiming in Mona 🙂
Donna OShaughnessy
Funny Lorna, We live on an organic farm and raise and eat all our own raw milk, butter, plus pork and beef . We take it for granted, cooking up meals often. Today got aletter from our nephew in the Marines who stated how much he missed our farm now that all he gets in service is processed! Powdered milk and eggs, bacon he said was from “an unidentifiable animal” and chicken that tasted like wall board. Pathetic is it not that our own service men must eat such garbage!
Great post great blog. Love to read you from over her across the pond
Lorna
Aw thank you for the compliment Donna, really enjoy your blog too. I would have thought they would have been trying to keep their soldiers etc healthier with as much fresh produce as possible.
Chantelle
This has made me laugh! Some people just do not have a clue about poverty and hard times. It reminds me of a day in work during the summer. I asked a customer has she been away on holidays this summer. She replied no, no holiday just been in the holiday in West Cork for a month! To me that sounds like a pretty nice holiday but she didnt agree because they had not left the country! Nuts!
Lorna
Oh, that is so ridiculous it is almost funny. I remember when we used to spend holidays at home doing DIY but recently that is called a staycation – it has actually been in vogue for years!
ayearinredwood
I so agree with you! Cooking from ‘raw’ seems to be something so few people do! (I’d also notices that recipe for bought pastry!) You can not imagine the questions we get asked about cooking pork, bacon, sausages, etc…. The good news is that my 13 year old nephew was sent home from school one weekend recently and told to ‘cook’ 2 of the following – soup, salad or smoothie – using raw ingredients! He did and thoroughly enjoyed it!
Lorna
Maybe you could write a book, just as Mona is doing 🙂 but with your emphasis on cooking pork
Elaine
I agree with you totally, I think people have gone away from cooking for the simple reason some fast foods are cheaper and supermarkets all have great offers on fast foods but not very many on raw foods . But even with all the special offers I make dinner seven days a week out of raw food , the only time we have a takeaway is a Saturday evening after my days lessons but we would have already had dinner from raw food that day. I can understand why people would buy fast food if they are in work all day and not home till late you wouldn’t feel like getting a dinner ready but with a little planning most things can be frozen and made in advance . It is a shame that people are using so much fast food and you would wonder how it will effect their health in the future . I HATE making dinners I have to admit but I wouldn’t not make them as they are good for me and the lads .
Lorna
I was in Tesco’s tonight and for the first time, noticed the long line of ready meals. Just shows that there’s plenty of people eating them. I always presumed it would be mostly single people but I guess that article shows that families eat them too – must cost a fortune!
Mair?ad
Unfortunately Lorna, it is often cheaper to buy than fresh fruit and veg 🙁 and takes less time to prepare so saves on electricity too.
tanya ci
When i saw the title of this post in my reader I thought it was about eating raw and so I thought ‘well that can be newsworthy’ but when I read that you meant cooking with real food I was all ‘how is that newsworthy?’. It’s so weird that people think it is a huge amazing thing to use real/raw ingredients to make a meal. Seems pretty normal to me. We have all gotten far to used to quick and easy (or apparent quick and easy) and think that a 45min-1hour of prep/food to table is unreasonable. We are mostly scratch eaters in our house; it is preferable (tastes so much better) and easiest (celiac disease makes preprepared for sketchy)
Mairead
No Lorna, you are probably from a different generation that the woman you were writing about. A lot of my (older) children’s friends don’t know what raw veg looks like, never mind how to cook it as they have never been taught how to cook and have pretty much been raised on pre-cooked readymeals and takeaways.
Funny thing is, on my Facebook page (https://facebook.com/cutehoney.ie) this morning I suggested bulk cooking as a way for busy Mums to save time and I assumed it would be cooked from raw.
Lorna
Is that because the school curriculum /home economics has changed? yes, bulk cooking for me is making enough casserole for 2 days or freezing the leftovers for a day when I’m away and it’s easy for hubby to reheat.
Mair?ad
Sorry only getting back to you now. Not necessarily Lorna, not all children do home economics in school, my two didn’t. By missing out on that and having extremely busy parents – both working fulltime – it is often a case of cook what is easiest, therefore readymeals and takeaways win.
When I bulk cook, I cook at least a month’s worth and freeze it. Nearly time to cook my beef stew again 🙂 still have enough chicken stew and shepherds (cottage really) pie in the freezer for a couple of weeks.
Lorna
Well done on the bulk cooking, I always feel that defrosted is never as tasty so while I might freeze one dinner’s worth of left over casserole for a day when I’m away and Brian can have it, I know he never enjoys it as much as a freshly cooked dinner. I made 2 lasagne lately and froze one and it just didn’t taste as nice but that might have been my brain telling me that.
I would have thought that with less families having both people working and with one person at home much of the time, that there would be more of a return to cooking from scratch.
I must buy a readymeal some day and see what it is like 🙂
lisamcgeeNenaghgal
Great post Lorna! We seldom eat out when you can eat so much cheaper at home. Even organically and free range.
I’ll be putting some raw something or other in the oven myself this week. Last night raw fish with raw ginger and oranges!! 🙂
Debs
Well said Lorna, couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately though, people are seriously clueless. They THINK they are too busy to cook from scratch. I can throw together a lasagna and have it in the oven before they are back from the shops picking up a regular one. I think people really are a bit uneducated as convenience foods have been thrown in their faces for so long. It’s not HARD to do what we’re doing, but people feel like it might be because they don’t know any better. All the so called celebrity chefs don’t help either with their gimmicky “30 minute meals” type books. :/
Lorna
It’s mad – even a recipe in the Farmers JOurnal for a quiche called for shop bought short crust pastry (just added that to the post) – my 7 year old can make pastry once I help her to weigh out the ingredients! I’m not particularly quick when it comes to cooking but can cook most meals in 30-45 min preparation time (slicing, peeling, chopping etc)
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