 In this age of farm-to-table dinner adoration and making one's own butter and baking powder from scratch, I rise up in defense of the drive-thru, the TV dinner and the semi and fully-prepared dinners from the grocery store. That includes bags o' salad, minced garlic and frozen pizza. As I return to work full-time at CNN.com, I take this stand for my mother, a single parent just a few decades ago. Not known for her cooking, she sometimes drove me through McDonald's after soccer practice or theater class and served me a Swanson's TV dinner once week. Many more parents today are the children of parents who did not know how to cook, so I applaud any supermarket effort that makes it easier to eat at home - even if it involves opening a chicken pasta combo package and pre-cut veggies. "Fast food and TV dinners did serve their purpose on days when we had one thing after the other or there was no time to go to the grocery store or nobody had clean underwear so laundry had to be done," says my mom. "With the time saved, we could still talk about what happened with a kid harassing you at school, without my worrying about burning something-which I did anyhow, every so often." My mother's own mother had refused to teach her to cook, thinking that it would trap my mother in the home rather than in the world of work where my grandmother thought she should live. That was a radical notion in the 1940s and 1950s, that my mother should have an outside adult life. Once she married and had me, my mother figured out how to cook a few things - we often had nice arroz con pollo (chicken and rice) with platanos (fried plantains). But it has never been easy for her the way it has for mothers who have cooked from scratch since they were little girls. My mother cooked big batches of stew or other dishes on the weekends and punted on soccer practice and theater class nights. That's why I cringe when the foodies make speeches in condescending tones about how parents should try harder and commit more time for cooking at home. In some two-parent families with enough money and time and help, please do turn off the electronic devices and try to cook with your children - and eat with them too. Even those of us with more time or money than our struggling parents have a hard time cooking because we didn't learn how to do it well as children. Dinner prep looks easy in the hands of a pro, can take as little as 20 minutes and tastes delicious. When I'm in charge, it’s harder and takes longer and could involve a TV bribe to keep my kid from amused while I try to cook. Shortcuts allow me to hear about my kid's day at pre-school, talk about the bugs she saw and the snacks she ate, make sure she's learning to share and not getting into any fights. "It’s not only cooking time, but shopping for food," says my mom. "For those of us for whom cooking is not an occupation or a hobby, it takes longer. An expert cook could probably make things faster but they have to concentrate." I'm going to continue to buy the Amy's Pizza and packaged veggies to make sure dinner can be ready in 15 minutes if need be. When I cook, I try to go easy on myself, choosing recipes that are hard to screw up and can be turned into something else the next day. I rarely cook something I know the kid won't eat. And I do try to learn to cook simple good dishes that even parents like me can handle. Here is a fantastic roast chicken recipe that is hard to screw up. (I often place the bird on the wrong side, and it doesn't matter). Easy Roast Chicken Whole fresh chicken (Murray's or Bell and Evans or something tasty) Use Adobo or salt and pepper it inside and outside like crazy. (Usually recipes say put the breasts up but I did it with breasts down and it worked - breasts cook faster so it worked it have them downside). Add vegetables around the chicken in the last 30-45 minutes of cooking to make it a one-pot meal. I usually add cut carrots, quartered onions and cut up roasting potatoes. They soak up the olive oil and chicken juices. Got a quick-fix meal you serve to your kids? Share it in the comments below. Previously - Feeding the beast – Adventures in homemade baby food |
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In today's world, many households have two working parents (if not single parents). Making everything from scratch every day is not very realistic. But I think it is important to find ways to put a meal together quickly while fulfilling dietary needs. I love the suggestion of adding fresh veggies to a frozen meal. A rotisserie chicken in most grocery stores will run you about $7. Pair that with some frozen veggies that you can steam in the bag and some whole wheat rolls, and you have yourself a pretty decent meal at a decent price. If that isn't an option, invest in a slow cooker. Not so good for chicken if you need to be able to let the meal cook for an entire workday, but awesome for beef. I have made some amazing beef stew and shoulder roasts while at work!
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My mom was also a very busy person and, not being very inclined to cook, she rarely brought herself to spend more than 20 minutes in the kitchen. She is one of those people who learned to cook very early on and often tells me about how every Saturday they'd make pies or cookies. She never did become all that proficient at the prep work but what she did do was stockpile very efficient recipes where she could throw everything together, toss it in the oven and go do something else. Did she ever burn food? Sure. But we still ate fresh food six days a week on a pretty tight budget.
While I love cooking and enjoy making all kinds of things from scratch from her I learned how to cook in a pinch. I inherited a lot of her recipes and though I usually take my time with cooking if I'm in a hurry I can still throw together a lasagna, roasted chicken, spanish rice and dozens of other meals together in 20 minutes and move on to something else. And for the record, my wife doesn't cook and doesn't care to. The kitchen is mine and we're quite happy with that!
If you can't tell – I am being sarcastic. As a working mom, I am fortunate to be able to have a flexible schedule and have at least 5 dinners a week made from "scratch" – not even pre-cut/frozen veggies. But we need to be tolerant that many parents do the best they can, and these pre-prepared foods sometimes are the best alternative.
I don't care how busy you are: are people actually buying foods from grocery stores? What lazy parents! You should be ashamed of yourselves! You should be growing your own vegetables, slaughtering your own chickens and milling your own flour to bake breads. What are you teaching your kids? That foods come from grocery stores?
Of course there are times when people need to grab something quick because they are just not home to cook. I do it too. But most meals at our house are cooked from fresh whole ingredients. The one thing that is not addressed here is the significant savings of making food from scratch. I encourage my kids to help me, and sit at the counter in the kitchen. We talk about their day, they learn to cook, and get great nutrition. We have fun, and from time to time a carrot, olive or nut creeps it's way into their mouth. My 5 year old actually wants to be a chef when he grows up. One of the games they all play together is Iron Chef.
Just boil the piss out of some chicken. Make some quick soups, salads and sandwiches.
LAZY AND SLOW. That's what I see a lot of today. When I was a teenager in Puerto Rico my mother worked the register at a department store, ran a boarding house and cooked rice and beans or pasta with baked chicken, fried fish, pork or onion cube steak with side salads or veggie escoveich on a daily basis for 20 years. She was fit and happy and would ask me to drive her to have fun on weekends, she also taught me the value of learning to cook, take care of myself and be organized, not to waste time and to be handy with many things, she would ask the neighborhood shop owners (mecanics, carpenters, masons) to take me in during the summer and to let me learn. Today I come home from work, fix my own cars, do my own home repairs, do my own laundry and cook full meals for my family in about 20 minutes when my wife is sick or too busy with school work, and I'm a man.
"...and I'm a man."
Meh, sort of ...
yawn, so what...
Ohhhh boy. There's a lot of anxious parents that need to snark about how other people eat dinner just so they can feel better about themselves tonight, aren't there!
My goodness. Listen up. I'll give you what you all so obviously need: You're doing FINE. You're a great parent! Your kids are going to turn out healthy and happy, and you are doing the best job humanly possible. Keep it up!
I'm gonna go have a bowl of Lucky Charms for dinner now that the kids are in bed.
mmmm lucky charms. When I was little, I would eat out the marshmallows, wait...my mother must be a HORRIBLE parent for letting me have Lucky Charms...I better go tell her how dissapointed I am with my upbringing.
I don't care how busy you are, there is no excuse for serving kids processed foods. Good nutrition is the building block of health. Processed foods will set your kids up with a lifetime of health problems. It's that simple. Simple, healthy meals can be made in bulk and are not expensive. For example, I have a great rice cooker, and cook 10 cups of brown rice at one time that can then be refrigerated and served over a week. Make a little effort, and your kids will be healthier in the future.
Since this is turning into a household hints blog, here's one: the freezer is your friend. Right now, turkey is dirt cheap. Buy a couple frozen ones and chuck 'em in the freezer. Cook one and you'll have lunch and dinner for four for several days, and you can make a couple gallons of soup from the carcass that can also be frozen. The time involved is almost entirely oven and unattended stovetop time – actual kitchen work for the above is probably about half an hour, tops. If you like, you can also portion out the bird and freeze individual servings so you don't have to eat turkey day in and day out for days on end.
You know why food is a problem in our society? Because we can't slow the F#@& down! You work endlessly to pay for a new car, a huge television, school loans for a degree that won't get you anywhere, some designer clothes you don't need, and other piles of crap stacked so high you don't have room for it in your 3800 sq ft suburbian house you can't afford. Do you realize how stupid everyone is for not having enough time to feed themselves!? Wake up people!
I agree. People need to slow down and realize what's important. Small homes are actually nice and cozy...and quicker to clean!
Amen, that's why I'm going to sell out and move back to the Caribbean, where I spent my youth, as soon as my last kid clears college. Being a born in NYC and doing the rat race thing in the Southeast has been enough for me; I want to spend my last days where folks mean it when they smile and say 'buenos dias' , and where you can pick seafood, eggs and the ingredients for the day's salad off the back of a stake truck that drives by your house every day...
OK, 'pre-prepared' is redundant, but I guess we're stuck with it. I don't see any problem with it; I like to cook, but not everyone does, and fwiw i did lots of me own 'pre-preparation' leading up to Thanksgiving so I only had to spend maybe an hour in the kitchen on the day itself. Even though a lot of this prep was done well in advance – probably longer than the prepared food you buy in supermarkets has been sitting around – it was just fine, and no one would be able to tell the difference if it had been slavishly prepped just moments before cooking.
My phone has no spell check, my high school is the poorest in the state, and I have at least four seperate learning disabilities, so I apologize for anything I say incorrectly in my posts. But my spelling and grammar isn't the point, can't you at least see that much? The attitudes I'm seeing in you all reflect in your kids, my peers. You're brutally critical of things that can be talked out rationally and calmly, and I can't remember the last time I saw a polite post. I'm truly worried for the future.
Danielle, that's why this country is doing as poorly as it is, this is the talk-the-talk generation, infested with critical, snipy, functionally unfit people who are bound to electronic gadgets, can't do a week's worth of productive manual labor to save their lives and become brittle and hostile when they are bested in the workplace by little brown people who can hardly speak a word of English. Don't take it personally, it's not you.
The reason America is and will always stay fat. When did parents stop sacrificing for their children? Convienience food is anything but. It might make your stomach full but it causes more doctors visits because of all the chemicals and salts and other things your body can't process make you sick. Most will not understand this but try having some kids with food allergies and being forced to feed them real food. You have a choice, watch your kid suffer or do the right thing. The media should stop trying to sell these types of ideas and move more towards promoting real food. Unfortunatley real food does not bring in the big money. Stay fat and sick America.
Hey look! The harelip dog is back!
Mark!Mark!Mark!Mark!Mark!
Some of us DO sacrifice for our kids by working umpteen hours a week just to keep a roof over their heads, the heating bills paid, and some clothes on their backs. We sacrifice by using our non-working time to help them with schoolwork, play with them, take them to activities, listen to them unload at the end of the day, or guide them in learning how to help with household chores (including cooking). We sacrifice our sleep to get even the most basic housework done after they're in bed, so that they have clean clothes to wear to school and a reasonable living space to come home to. We get up early in order to get ourselves ready for work before having to get them up and make breakfast, get them loaded up and off to school. Sometimes, in all of that, a home-cooked meal made of fresh ingredients falls by the wayside. We do the best we can with some home cooked meals and the healthiest prepared stuff we can find in the minimal amount of time we have to go grocery shopping. What we need are HEALTHY prepared meals without all the additives, preservatives, etc. I would give my right arm for some good choices along those lines ... or for a cook to make us great meals 4-5 nights a week!!
ooo, someone just saw Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. Bravo.
So Mark, who is cooking up and feeding your child all these from-scratch meals...you or your stay-at-home wife? Feeding your kid something pre-prepared a couple nights a week isn't going to kill them, and it doesn't automatically translate into shoving a Happy Meal at them either. There are a great many healthy packaged foods at the supermarket with reduced sodium, whole grains, low fat and no corn syrup. I know how to read and I use that valuable skill on nutritional labels, as anyone could.
You're wrong if you think any of the pre-packaged foods at a grocery store are a "healthy" option. The ingredients contained within are typically related to corn and soy, the two industrialized foods our government subsidizes farmers to grow and they are not grown in bio-dynamic soils which means they lack the level of nutrients found in organic fruits and vegetables grown in nutrient rich soils. True, no one is going to die from eating a processed food here and there. The problem is that we all rely on them more than here or there. If you walk around a super-market almost 90% of everything in it can be sourced back to corn and soy beans. It's the monoculture that's the problem. We are not eating enough diverse, whole foods. Read the Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. It will seriously rearrange how you think about food in this country.
Kristin, you need to learn about how much hype the organic food movement has been spewing. There is zero evidence that eating organic foods improves health. Please watch Penn and Teller's Bull$hit show on organic foods– they debunk the nonsense.
Reading nutritional labels, carefully looking over ingredient lists, etc, and basing your menus on that information seems like the most important part of all of this. There are plenty of homemade recipes full of ingredients that "can kill you," and there are plenty of minimally-processed or even fully-prepared meals that are wholesome, balanced, low in sodium, preservative free, etc. Rather than trying to decide who's right and who's wrong, let's all just spend some time considering the actual nutritional content of the food we eat. I also think it's important to take from the original article the idea that people are doing the best they can. We are all doing the best we can to raise healthy, happy, well-rounded kids and it is the big picture that matters. There are a million ways to put all the pieces together, and there is no point in trying to crap on other people for sport. For those of you who ARE good, quick home cooks who happen to be criticizing the author, perhaps you could post a recipe or two of your own so that others can benefit? That might be a bit more helpful.
I feed my children dry toast and water for dinner. Am I a bad parent?
Not likely what had they eaten the rest of the day? The term bad parent shouldn't partain to the way parents feed their kids. Unless they are starving which doesn't happen much in america these days or it shouldn't.
Richard, please acknowledge that 1 in every 5 kids in this country currently go to bed hungry–hence your comment was way out of line.
Also, sure Pre-prepared food is easy, yet homemade food is NOT difficult at all, even novice cooks can learn to cook for their families while making memories of time together in the kitchen and fragrant flavors to last for a lifetime.
Prime example is this recipe from the cookbook: LOVE MORE FEED LESS (less prepackaged and previously prepared):
Oodles Of Noodles and Zuckles (zucchini pasta)
Serve 6-8
Preheat oven to 350° F
2 tablespoons combined butter and canola or olive oil butter spread
3 medium-large zucchinis
3 cups of your favorite homemade or bottled sauce Tomato Sauce (pg…)
1-2 teaspoons of minced garlic (if using canned sauces)
6-8 ounces thinly sliced or grated Provolone and/or Mozzarella Cheese
2 tablespoons Parmesan and/or Romano Cheese
12-ounces package Rotini or Penne pasta,
1. Spread the canola based spread all over the bottom and sides of a 9×13-inch pan.
2. Slice the zucchini into 1/4 inch slices and layer all over the pan. Pour the sauce over the
zucchini, and then very gently mix the garlic only into the sauce. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
3. Prepare the pasta, according to the package directions.
4. Remove the pan from the oven and cover the entire top with the cheese. Return the pan to the oven and continue baking until the cheese has melted and begins to bubble, about 5-10 minutes.
5. Serve over the warm pasta.
Better than toast and dry water!
*like*
Better than fast food.
Ok I was going to read some of the responses to this but you all like to write today. Anyways pre-prepared foods are not a problem, McDonalds, and other fast food places are not a problem. Americans want to blame our fatness on someone else. I am not going to lie I go out and eat fast food alot and thats because it is 'fast' food. I am 22yrs old and I can cook pretty darn well I think, healthy meals or not, I am from Tennessee we like to eat in the south especially on the hilltops of VA, NC, KY, and TN. I know how to eat healthy sure but alot of the time I just want to fix something that is fatty because it tastes good. It is better to know that moderation is key, most of the time I will try not to eat as much as I can but sometimes its just too hard. Its so good. But anyways I will jump off of my soapbox now. Any comments, or questions?
Hooray, Richard! You are a voice of reason! First, personal responsibility for what we do, and how we eat. Second, moderation is key in all things. If I rely on prepackaged meals, I try to do it in moderation and cook when I can. When we go to "town" (60 miles away) we do the drive-through both for the speed and convenience in a full day of errands and because it's a treat. Third, we need to teach our children TOLERANCE for other ways of doing things and for other opinions, FLEXIBILITY in the way we live, and MODERATION in all things. Amen!
JEEZ. There are some SNOBBY people on this forum. My husband and I have two kids, and we both are enrolled in college full time and my husband also works a full time job on top of that. Depending on the hours of my classes, I can plan meals for my family, but there is NO way in hell I would point my finger at these so called bad parents for making one night a little less hectic than usual for popping in a pizza or hopping through the drive through. You people should be ashamed of yourselves for all the nitpicky behavior. You know what a bad parent is? The woman who drowned all 5 of her kids in a bathtub, or the one who drove her car off the side of a bridge into a river or better yet, the mom who microwaved her newborn. How about the parents that duct taped their 3 year old, videotaped it, and then laughed when they yanked it off her skin. How about that 19 year old dad who shook his child to death? Seriously. You have NO idea what a bad parent is. No, I don't go to McDonald's on a daily basis, I use it as a treat for my children, but don't bash parents who can't live in your Normal Rockwell nightmare you call a life.
Courtney I agree with you 100%. People are snobby. And college is hectic, it makes you do things you sure aren't proud of, food wise that is. Anything that can make life easier I go for, so the pizza in the oven, good thing for many college students. Or anyother frozen thing that is quick to make, if people just pay attention to what they are eating in them they can be worked into a diet that isn't really that bad for you. Everything in a diet works together. People you don't get fat from eating any particular food, it the entire diet that must be assessed.
No excuse, popping stripped chicken breasts and bag veggies (frozen) with mushroom sauce and bacon bits in the oven takes as long as a pizza, and is ten times as good for you and your family (more protein, more vitamins, more minerals, more flavor) and since when does it take that much time to eat strawberries with sugar-free whipped frosting or pineapple? Face it, you just have bad eating habits.
Honestly – we had 5 kids in 10 years. I made dinner every. single. night.
My kids were amazed when they left home and found out that soup is sold in cans.
I made tons of hearty soups to fill them up – but I put up the soups the night before, after the kids were in bad.
Then at dinner time – presto! instant supper.
...and you were a stay at home mom, correct?
What makes u think that a stay-at-home-mom has it easy? Taking care of five kids is HUGE even for a full time care giver.Los of moms are at home because they CHOSE to do so and not because they weren't smart enough to get a job.Having a baby leads to changing one's priorities.Now on to the main issue in question- Pre packaged meals once or twice a night is no crime-believe me stay-at-home-moms do it too.
I'm a single father (full-time) of a ten year old son. We cook every day, 2 or 3 meals and eat 'out' for a treat. The reason? We make time for this because we value it.
You obviously are fortunate enough to not have the sole burden of supporting your family. When I was able to stay at home, I also cooked. Now I am a single mom, who also cares for a sickly parent. I dont always have time or energy to cook. I try to do make-ahead meals on the weekends, but even then, my weekends are full of chores and errands I didnt have time for during the week.
Anyone serving their kids anything but a purely holistic, vegan diet is both criminally negligent and a lousy parent.
anyone serving only vegan, holistic, organic meals to their family must be extremely wealthy
So, what you are saying, is that anyone who lives any other way than your way, is a criminal? Are you willing to come to my house while I am hard at work, or caring for my ailing parent, or helping my kid with homework, and not only prepare, but pay for the more expensive foods you speak of? We all do the best we can with what we have, but people who are as opinionated and rigid as you are really have no idea what it is to struggle. Let those who are without sin cast the first stone.
Gotta love the delusional vegans!
not all vegans are delusional. I'm a vegan, but I respect others views just as I expect them to respect mine.
Boy.... lots of judgement out there. And lots of people missing the point of the article. Some of us not only don't have much time (like those of us who are full-time working single moms), and would prefer to spend it interacting with our children rather than pushing them away so we can get a home-cooked meal on the table in the half-hour available between getting home from work and the store and starting the bedtime routine.... some of us look at all those ingredients and just can't come up with what to do with them. I have a shelf full of cookbooks, I learned to cook as a child, I can make wonderful meals if I really put my mind to it... but I simply am incapable of coming up with a well-planned, healthy meal on a daily basis without a huge amount of thought and effort. I also live in a very small town where ingredients are not always available and the store actually closes in the evening. So yes – I rely a certain amount of the time on prepared meals and every now and then (gasp!) on pizza from the convenience store (we have no McD
s here). I am not a bad parent. I am a GOOD parent because I teach my son to do the best we can, and more importantly, that I value time spent with him, that I am available to help him with homework or listen about his day, that he can participate in activities even though I have to work a lot, etc. .... The real answer to this issue is for food companies to make, and stores to sell, truly healthy pre-packaged meals for people like me.
One approach to this problem is to do most of the week's prep on a single day, say Sunday. Of course, what you'll wind up with is a large pile of 'pre-prepared' food, but I guess there's some strange difference between food you pre-prepare yourself and food pre-prepared by someone else.
Seriously, I just don't see what the problem is here. If it's easier to grab a handful of pre-shredded lettuce for a salad and it means the difference between having a salad and not having one at all, grab that handful and enjoy it. You haven't done anything wrong.
I was lucky enough to be raised in a household where my parents did, in fact, cook fresh and healthy meals for our family most nights of the week. I am now lucky enough that I have a job that allows me to cook nutritious meals most nights of the week. I think it's important to remember, however, that some are not so fortunate.
There is a significant health-wealth gradient in our country today, and food plays largely into this picture. Many children are raised in single-parent households, and in order to keep a roof over their head, clothes on their back and food in their belly, parents have to work long hours that often don't allow for entirely homemade meals. In todays economic climate, even living in a household with two parents far from guarantees that there will be someone around to spend time cooking, as oftentimes both parents have to work. And yes, it would be ideal to cook on the weekends and freeze this food for the week, but some parents have to work on the weekends as well, just to survive.
Hungry individuals are looking for the "most bang for their buck", so to speak. If you're forced to feed a family on a very tight budget, high caloric content paired with low price is this "bang". Yes, it's sad that high sodium ramen costs merely cents while salad fixings and lean meat cost significantly more, but such is the current state of affairs. Additionally, many cities have zoning regulations that result in poor areas filled with fast-food restaurants but no supermarkets. If transportation is an issue, it's no surprise that dinner often comes from the nearby McDonald's rather than from the Stop and Shop miles away.
We should not condone eating prepared or fast foods, but we certainly must take into account other factors before we condemn it.
Beautifully said. A tip of my hat to you.
Very well put, a big part of the puzzle that a lot of people overlook!!
Go to rural places in any country. They are lot healthier with less doctors. They eat natural foods and it is as simple as that. Even in America, talk to older genetaiion. They will explain you what they ate.
There are recent studies that show that many rural areas, particularly in the south, have poorer nutrition because there are fewer transportation options, smaller stores with much worse selection of healthy and fresh foods, and yet still the preponderance of fast foods and convenience stores. Obesity rates are higher in the rural south than anywhere else.
Well, there are certainly fewer doctors and health care facilities. The people living there, though, are typically either a lot more UNhealthy than their urban counterparts, or they're prematurely dead.
This issue has nothing to do with one parent feeling superior or better than another. It's quite simply an issue of the deterioration of our food culture and the industrialization of food. If you look at the French, the Italians, the Greeks they all spend significantly more money and time shopping, preparing and eating their food. They are all demonstrably healthier than Americans with lower rates of obesity and cancer. Relying on fast food and prepackaged meals is a cop out. It's a cop out because we as a society need to fundamentally realign the way we think about food and eating. Don't pull the tired, working mother card. There are millions of tired working mothers who make it a priority to feed themselves and their families well. It just takes a bit more planning and organization. It's well worth putting in the time at the outset rather than paying more in health care costs and premiums down the road.
Those cultures also have shorter work days than most Americans, have more sick/family leave time than most Americans, and come from strongly family oriented cultures where there are many generations of the same family living in the same house. These factors allow them to have healthier, more frequently home cooked meals because their entire culture and society supports it, unlike in the U.S.
It's not laziness or a cop out when you're a single parent working two jobs just to make your child even has food to eat and making sure they have everything else they need.
Ive been a vegetarian for 5 years and both my husband and I worked very busy jobs in higher education. Every Sunday afternoon I'd prep and cook for the week so we were eating healthy lunches and had healthy dinners when we came home. We don't go out to eat that much or buy anything pre packaged food. If I want Mac and cheese I don't use a box, I make it from scratch. But these are my choices. When my daughter starts school she will be running circles around all the McDonalds babies. You want to love your kids? Don't give them TV, video games, cellphones, etc. My daughter sits in the kitchen and cooks with me. My husband helps. It's a family thing, as it should be. Buying frozen veggies, packaged salads, precut carrots is no big deal. Buying chef boyardee or tv dinners is. Make a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread before you zap on of those frozen poison bricks
Kristen, You want to 'love your kids?' How about NOT bein' a hater. That goes for the person driving through mc ds everyday not hating on other family units who choose to make every meal together to the vegan fam getting over the fact that not everyone lives like them. Honestly people, from the begining of time every parent thinks they are right and every parent after them will think their way is better. I don't even want to write this comment anymore honestly its disgusting to read the nit picky crap people bicker about. Especially when the point of the article (at least to me) is to each their own. Anyway, I think a good baked mom style mac and cheese recipe is always simple and come on, who doesn't like cheese? Even the government 'cheese food' is dank!
Thank you Katie! I couldn't have said it better myself! Live and let live. My days start at 6am and don't end until well after midnight. I dont only have work and kids to take care of. I have a high needs ailing parent to care for. I have no spousal support to pick up tasks while i cook. Some of us simply have to feed our families anyway we can sometimes. It doesn't mean that I disagree with fresh foods being more healthy, just sometimes I don't have the time or resources. Kristen obviously isn't a single parent, so has help with the daily activities from her spouse. Until someone walks in another person's shoes, they are in no place to put judgement on them.
I was with you until you said "poison bricks". Stop the judgment and hatefulness, and downright false statement. Frozen microwaveable foods are not poison.
Sorry, but if you feed your children McDonald's more than occasionally and give them TV dinners (Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine, etc.) several times a week, then, yes, you are a bad parent. If, however, you COOK using minced garlic, canned tomatoes, frozen (unseasoned) vegetables), boxed rice (preferably brown), etc. like this author mostly suggests, then you are a normal, concerned person. I have no kids, but my husband and I cook regularly, mostly using fresh ingredients but sometimes using canned or frozen. We stay away from fast food (except on occasion, like last night) and boxed meals because they are LOADED with sodium and other horrible preservatives, hydrogenated oils, etc. An easy and quick meal, however, doesn't have to be unhealthy. We love bagged salads and making our own pizza with fresh veggies. We also make DELICIOUS and NUTRITIOUS soups from canned beans, canned tomatoes, low sodium "stock in a box," and a fewfresh ingredients–and lots of stuff (healthy chilli, red beans & rice, etc.) can be frozen. Be sensible. The closer to natural it is, the healthier it is (generally), but it's OK to substitute SOME canned/frozen/etc. ingredients. And pretty much anything (even typically unhealthy stuff like hamburgers, pizza, mac & cheese, fried chicken, etc.) is better for you when cooked at home rather than bought in box-shaped chain "restaurant." Tips for busy parents: cook meals on the weekend and freeze them. Or invest in a crockpot!
gimme a call when you are juggling 2 or 3 kids. how impressive that you manage to make dinner for yourself and your spouse like a grownup. try doing it 7 nights a week with kids running around that require supervision and there may be the occasional shortcut needed.
Sorry ..., but I only take tips for busy parents from other busy parents. Or even just parents.
You don't even count on this forum. Sorry you wasted so much time typing.
It's so amusing how people who can't handle scheduling their life with kids always want to b*,?!h to the people without kids how hard it is! Boo f-ing hoo, you made the decision to have children, deal with it. I work more ot a week because co workers have to leave to go take care of their kids so those of us without kids are constantly picking up the slack. I somehow manage to juggle a full 60+ hour work week, college classes, flight classes, skit trips, fishing trips ect ect and still manage to come home and cook almost every meal. There is nothing wrong with the occasional grabbing something fast here and there and by all means get your kids a pizza once in a while, but really, your kids are that much that you can't cook dinner??? That's the sad slope America is going, excuses for everything! My parents lived their lives very much the way I do now, with both of then working full time, one in school too, all well running our family orchard and raising 3 kids, it probably worked so well because they planned ahead and made us part of their lives and activities, and a large part of that was helping to cook!! I see so many people who pick there kids up from school or daycare, bring them home, and let them park it format of the tv or some video game, instead of having their kids help them. You wanted to be a parent,grow up and act like one instead of acting like the whining adult who uses having a child as an excuse for everything. And stop acting like your life is so much more hectic then the rest of ours, its not, you just choose to make it that way with your attitudes!!
Erica - it's so wonderful that your parents spent so much time cooking you healthy food. Too bad they didn't spend more time teaching you empathy and manners, though. Which I guess is the whole point of this article, isn't it? Good parenting is more than cooking from scratch.
I feed my kid healthy meals every day and provide him with everything he needs. The only difference between you and me is that I do it WITHOUT thinking that I'm better than everyone else in the world who may not do everything the way that I do it. Nice of you to consider me lazy without even knowing me. I was commenting on the fact that you think you are better than everyone else, but now I can at least see that I must be better off than you since I don't see the world through s**t-colored glasses.
Why is it that when I try to reply to to a particular poster it puts it at the top instead of the troll I meant it toward?
I think the confusion here really is about if we're taking the shortcuts on prepared otherwise "healthy" food (e.g. the bagged salad) or if we are really making the choices that include only fast food, and heat-and-serve foods.
A lot of things fall somewhere in between... I almost feel like you can balance the "evil" of a marginal time-assist food with other items. For instance, we might choose to do frozen chicken nuggets one night with my 2 year old. To offset the assumed additional sodiums and whatnot from using that convenience, I'll serve with steamed fresh vegetables, and maybe a rice or noodle (not a packaged, sauced variety). Do not follow with dessert every night. All I can say is that so far this kind of thinking has steered us well; none of my household is overweight or unhealthy.
Prepared foods are a criminally bad choice.
Quit whining and fullfill your duties.
If you are unwilling to prepare proper meals for your children, you should not have them.
You know the difference between a bagged salad and a frozen burritto, so don't try an BS your way out of your job.
Either focus on your family or don't have one.
You CAN NOT have it all, and it seems you don't even deserve it.
High horse riders like you are the reason I'm beginning to lose faith in humanity.
And lazy mooches like yourself give me the same sentiment.
Condoms cost a quarter so making babies you can't handle is not my problem
Either feed your kids or eat them, its no skin off my teeth
LMAO! WIN!
And lazy people like you should remember wearing rubber when making love.
Now you're just trolling
@ Wiliam Demuth
You sir, are my hero.
ALL foods are prepared.
Katia, not only do I understand the challenges you face everyday, even as a cookbook author, I experience similar real life challenges of the weekday time crunch, hungry kids that need to be fed fast in 5 minutes on the way to soccer, or not having time to prep something completely from scratch. The first thing we moms should scratch off the list is our guilt – that we're not good enough or doing enough for our families. Your child will remember the time you took to look her in the eye and talk about her day at school more than she'll remember the fact that you started the chicken recipe from scratch.
I just completed a new book on this very subject of using shortcuts in our healthy cooking for families. The Speedy Sneaky Chef: Quick, Healthy Fixes for Your Favorite Packaged Foods offers 85 healthy meals in a hurry! I show people how to add healthy and homemade touches to the better packaged foods. For example, take that leftover canned pumpkin from Thanksgiving and add it to Instant Healthy Grain Cream of Wheat with milk and cinnamon; top with crushed graham crackers and you have Pumpkin Pie Hot Cereal in 5 minutes! For more, go to http://www.amazon.com/Speedy-Sneaky-Chef-Favorite-Packaged/dp/0762443294/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322661406&sr=8-1
Oh, Missy, I *heart* you! My mom got me one of your cookbooks for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I love it. I recommend it to everyone. Easy, practical, nutritious. Thanks for doing what you do.
your cookbook is great. i use the orange puree in lots of quick foods to give my daughter vegetables or fruits. even a brownie mix can be healthier with some sneaky fruit puree mixed in
For my part, I think buying some precut carrots or salad bags might not doom the entire household. Further, heck, a jar of store-bought spaghetti sauce just might pop open at my house on any given week. I get it that it's "not hard" to make sauce from scratch, but when I leave the house at 7:30 am, return no earlier than 6, and have tiny children to contend with when I do, let me know if it's a sin I didn't stay up till midnight to make it, and chose to try to interact and play with my kids instead. And as they are both under the age of 3, getting them involved in the cooking right now is rather limited at best- perhaps not even wise when we're talking about hot stoves being instrumental! As a matter of fact, my husband and I take pains to cook nice meals on weekends and have become quite the weekend foodies. So judge not during the weekday marathons, because not everyone is blessed with the close commute or extra time to do everything perfectly. Some of us are just trying to get by the best we can!
Thanks for this article :)
sometimes I eat pre-prepared food too. But still there is nothing can be compared and better than food cooked by a wife or mother...
Hmm I missed food cooked by my mother :)
Ariko, Jakarta – Indonesia
Keep Sharing
Yes... you are a bad parent if you do not cook/bake for your children from scratch. Processed food is ok on an occasion but if you have not noticed... the kids and people in general are getting fatter which is not healthy. Teach your kids something so they can function and not be depended on thier parents and the government forever. It is time for America to wake up. Stop being lazy. Stop using the excuse that you are "busy". It is laughable.
There is no such word as "pre-prepared". It is patently redundant. Who proofreads this stuff?
Clearly not you.
Our children are in the kitchen every night with us and THAT is our priority. They are 4 and 5 and can be quite helpful and learn a lot in the process. Have them get ingredients from the fridge or spice rack. Have them line up items according to size or sort them by category. They help count and measure. We think of rhyming words. We learn and talk and it is my favorite part of our evening together. This is our CHOICE.
I originally pulled this up to print off some quick meal ideas...most people just wanna complain, but I did get 1 or 2 ideas and for that I thank you, Commenters!
Our weekday dinners usually consist of one frozen skillet meal (frozen veggies, noodles, chicken, and some random sauce), on day of veggie burgers/fake chicken patty sandwich with fruit and baby carrots, one day of spaghetti with frozen meatballs or precooked chicken and mixed veggies, one day of veggie pizza and cut fruit, and one day of a random frozen meal with veggies. Yeah, not great, but every meal has a serving of vegetables, every day has a serving of fruit, and I use whole grains when possible. We make up for it with breakfasts and snacks that are more wholesome.
I'd love to have more time.. We get home around 6, bedtime is at 7:30- I want the time we have to be spent playing board games, talking, joking, going for a walk, whatever. Meaningful time after a long day. Not spending every evening cooking a fabulous organic dinner and then hand washing pots and pans.
One can also not help but notice you are up at 3am, likely being unproductive. It doesn't take much to prepare healthy meals. I'm in my mid twenties, and pack a lunch every single day for myself and my boyfriend. There's no reason to be buying overpriced processed crap, when it just takes a bit of planning. Dinners can be a little harder to be creative, but again, there's no reason to be buying frozen processed chicken and beef. You can buy all those things fresh, give them a nice merinade, throw em in the pan and you're ready to go in less than 20 minutes. Pre-cut your veggies at 3am since you're awake anyway, and you won't need to be using flimsy frozen veggies, which also cost double the price. There's only 24 hours in a day, and you choose not to feed your kids healthy food because you'd rather be playing bored games?
Please learn to write and spell like an adult before you decide to post. Every time a commenter writes something like you just did, it takes away any possible credibility that you may have had before someone reads it...
Regardless of the time zone from which you are posting, CNN posts the time on all comments in Eastern Standard (or Daylight Time. Nika could have been posting from England which would have made it 10pm. Regardless, the judgmental nature of your initial sentence completely discredited the rest of your rather lengthy post.
I'm downhearted thinking that you don't see the precious opportunities slipping away by not allowing your children to learn to cook along with you. Sad as well, that you are bribing them with TV, rather than demonstrating patience for them to model. Or, better still, making the most of that time so that you all don't miss the chance to be together, for learning/practicing fundamental math skills while measuring and combining ingredients, for introducing them to other cultures and traditions, helping them to learn how to take care of themselves and others by crafting delicious and nutritious meals, and perhaps, most importantly, letting them learn from your example how to gracefully – even humorously! – accept a situation when it doesn't turn out as you have hoped. Not to mention the mmmgoodness of eating healthful foods that were prepared by your own hands. I do wish you happy, memorable time together, however you endeavor.
please repost this-
1 big can of diced tomatos
1 big can of plain tomato sauce
put them in a large saucepan on simmer
add some basil, onion powder, 3 times as much marjoram (REQUIRED, this why it does taste like tomato sauce) and a hand full of sugar (there is sugar in spagetti sauce) -stir it and put the lid on
put some olive oil in a frying pan, add minced garlic jar, diced white onion, mushrooms. push it around until the garlic turns brown. add a pound of hamburger, cover it in onion power. fry it until the liquid is almost gone. cover it in worcesrdrshire sauce. cook it till the meat is done and add it all to the sauce. stir it, out the lid back on. you should be in to this about a half of an hour. let it simmer another half of an hour. it is done. this is tbe sauce your great grandmother made. it only takes an hour.
my grandmother most likely never ate tomato sauce in her life. I can tell you with certainty that she NEVER served spaghetti when I ever was around. Brisket, turkey or chicken, with boiled vegetables. That's all.
Pinch of sugar – NOT A HANDFUL!!! This is why we are getting FAT. Everything sugar, salt... the worst combination you can give to your children. Make it as much natural and pure as you can. My husband is Italian and he would die if he sees someone putting this much of sugar. I learn from him how to cook pasta sauce, and believe me you do not need more than a small, tiny pinch of sugar. And onion powder? -just choped small onion and sauté before putting tomatoes in it(does not take a long -5 min.)- you will see – will melt in your mouth!
Gramma had really small hands!
Grate some carrot into the sauce for the needed "sweetness". I agree ~ our Italian family never puts straight sugar into the sauce.
You growing your own tomatoes too?
...Or you could open a jar of Ragu and add it to the cooked pasta (yes, I do use whole wheat mixed with the whole grain so it doesn't taste like cardboard)...no hour there, much cheaper than all those ingredients you listed and more time at the dinner table to spend with the family. I honestly don't have most of those ingredients you listed, and spices run $3 – $4 per jar. Ragu is a buck and a half. I simply don't have the time or money to spend on all those ingredients, then cook the sauce from scratch. I will however, add onion and bell pepper to the sauce. Maybe a can of tuna and some olives to the spaghetti.
Not pre-packaged-pre-prepared, please excuse me.
If I may ask, can all of you adults please stop bickering? It's a bit worrying, frankly.
I AM 17, but I think I'm rational enough to have some say here...
First of all, while I understand all the points being made here, she didn't say anything about having processed food every day. She was defending pre-packaged foods, which is really very different.
Second of all, just because a parent can't, for whatever reason, cook actual meals daily, that doesn't mean in the slightest that they are bad parents–it means that aspect of parenting is a skill needing improvement.
Danielle - you ARE rational. Great post!
Priorities are odd. Everyone has their own value system. My mother admittedly didn't learn to cook until she had to when she married my father. I, on the other hand, decided as a broke college student that I would absolutely have to learn unless I wanted to die a slow sodium filled death to ramen (which, when made the official way, is actually quite good for you! Add miso, mushrooms, a hard boiled egg, good to go, also, dashi isn't hard to make at all). However, as easy as it is to beget a child these days, it is much harder to care for one. and *gasp*, did you know you can decide whether or not to have them?! And when?! Holy kitty litter batman! I think the best we can do for the future generations is to remove ourselves from the agricultural system as it stands now. Grow our own food, cook with the food we grow. It's not hard, but it requires space, money, and time. Something most people don't bother to put in place before popping out a few. Just sayin'. I eat well, and if/when I choose to have kids, they will get their hands dirty growing their own food and be learning how to cook and enjoy it at a young age. Just because everything is urbanized and grocery-store centered doesn't mean kids should forget where food comes from, the joy that comes from watching it grow, imbibing it with your own positive energy, and then getting to imbibe that energy back tenfold with the food that comes from it. I don't own a microwave and I'm proud of that.
Just wait until mountains of laundry come your way when you grow those veggies with your kids – sure, you want mud on your carpets and furniture as long as everybody eats what they grow. DO NOT JUDGE THOSE WITH KIDS UNTIL YOU HAVE YOUR OWN.
you know, Cella, when I 'popped out a few', I was married and in a position where I could stay home to raise my kids. We had a fairly successful home business. I was able to cook good meals. What your idealistic view doesn't include is when a marriage dissolves, or a spouse dies, then there is only ONE parent to do everything. It affects finances, emotions of both kids and parent(s), as well as time factors. I for one, have wanted to start my own garden for the past two years, but I dont have the money for it, or the time to prepare the small amount of yard I have. Please live a little more life before you make blanket statements like that. By the way, I dont own a microwave either, but that is personal choice, and I dont condemn those who rely on them.
I've written about this topic before after hearing a food blogger say that the Food Network was "ruining food in America" because of shows like Semi-Homemade. Now, Sandra Lee freaks me out, and not in a good way, but really, how quickly they forget. In a lot of ways, convenience foods did more to free women from the drudgery of forced domestic work in the 1970s than all the legislative posturing in the world.
All of that to say, yep. Agreed. Do you best.
Do not do your best at spelling, though. YOUR. Good Lord.
case in point ur healthier eating a pork chop and a salad than u are eating a can of spam and canned spinach and though it doesnt make u a bad parent to every now and then grab the kids a burger on the go but if u feed them tv dinners more often than u cook u really need to ask urself if ur putting ur own convenience before ur child cuz that would make u a bad parent cuz its obvious u cant trust the government to know whats good for ur child.
Sorry, but if what your parents are feeding you is related to your spelling and grammar, then it is one big FAIL.
Make like a rag and mix in a period.
if u dont think theres anything wrong with feeding kids already prepped meals ur an idiot.read the ingredients on just about anything that didnt come straight out of the ground or directly from the butcher.the majority of ingredients are chemicals that require a phd to pronounce much less know what they are or even do.diet colas still contain sacharin and nutrasweet even though it has been known for 30 years both cause cancer.for the past 40 yrs they told u margarine with all that trans fat was better.is anyone aware the columbine massacre was caused by adhd medication?zoloft to be exact.but they list marijuana as a more dangerous drug than cocaine.they changed the definition of the word drug to fit marijuana in that category.todays definition is a mind altering substance.the original definition is man made medication anything of medicinal value found in nature is an herb.ive never known a weedhead to turn into a homicidal maniac but thats the first side effect of common antidepressants.
I know! Look at the horrible scary big-word ingredients they put in vitamins!
ergocalciferol (vitamin D)
d-alpha tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E)
niacinamide (vitamin B3)
pyridoxine HCl (vitamin B6)
cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12)
aminoate complex (magnesium, zinc, copper, manganese, potassium)
bitartrate (choline)
They could not possibly have isolated compounds from stuff that comes out of the ground because you have to have a PHD to pronounce them!
As someone with 3 jobs and limited time, thanks. I try my best to cook as from scratch as possible, but it that shortcut means 10 or 15 extra minutes of quality time, I'm all for it!
Not everyone can cook thats true, and with the better choices available for preprepared "fresh" foods a quick healthy meal can be made in very little time. I personally could not eat this preprepared rubbish as I do know how to cook and can put together a quick meal in about the same time as it takes to heat a cheese laden sodium filled pizza.
And for emergencies where we run short of time I have several home made TV dinners in the freezer that are far better and cheaper than any bought tv dinner. As an example I have vac packed slow cooked beef cheeks ready to put on top of some pasta, ready in about 15-20 mins and cost $8 to feed our family of four.
Its all about how you view food, some view it as a function, others view it as a pleasure.
I completely agree with this article. I'm about to leave work and go home, where my husband is probably serving our 18 month old organic breaded fish sticks. Got a problem with that, do you? Well, I don't care. Not everything is a federal case some people make it out to be. My husband at McD's quite a bit as he was raised by a single dad who did cook a lot of wholesome food, but he was also a busy doctor. He's the fittest and healthiest person I know, while I hardly ever eat any of that, and let's just say I've got a ways to go in the fitness department.
It doesn't mean you are a bad parent, it means you are a terrible parent that doesn't care about the nutrition or upbringing of your child. Take a look a TV dinner and tell me how many of the ingrediants you can pronounce. How much sodium is in that can of Chef Boyardee. And then you put it in a microwave and bombard it with long wave length radiation that heats the food by accelerating and breaking up the particles in it. Yeah, you're a great parent. Look up the origin of microwaves, they were originally developed as a weapon by Raytheon at the end of WWII. By the time they were done, the war was over. They needed to recover their R&D money, so they marketed it to housewives to cook food faster.
No, I will feed my family real food, from real sources. You can/will do what you want. Think about it, you get food like this because you can't be bothered to prepare a real meal.
Actually, I've never had a problem pronouncing any word I've seen on a product label...
I didn't get from the article that the author was all about fast food and junk every day. It was more about using the pre cut fresh stuff that's avaliable more and more. What's wrong with buying a rotisserie chicken from the store if you don't have time to roast one yourself?
As a chemist, I so strongly dislike the argument that ingredients you cannot pronounce are bad. Just because you cannot pronounce an ingredient, does not make it unnatural or dangerous. If you take an egg, you can break it down into egg yolk and egg white. But what happens when you start isolating some of the compounds in the egg? They start to get hard to pronounce. The public does not generally care about isolated compounds generally and to giving a common name to every one of these compounds would be completely and utterly ridiculous due to sheer amount there are. These compounds are not given large, scary names to scare the public or keep them ignorant. There is a standard way to name molecules so that, if given a name of a molecule, a chemist can draw the molecule. And, if given the structure of a molecule, a chemist can name it.
On the flip-side, there are many things with easy-to-pronounce, common names that are worse for you than the scientific named items.
If you prefer to eat foods that you can pronounce, that is your perogative. Personally, I look at the ingredient labels on everything. and I will chuck it if it contains things like hydrogenated oils. But to call a parent terrible because they do not buy into the hype/paranoia that a scientific name means you are eating something bad is very rude and ignorant on your part. I will grant you that it is a good idea to know what you are eating, and not having common names for everything does make this more difficult for the average person.
I will agree that sodium tends to be extreme in these kinds of products, but there are options out there that are reasonable. She mention's Amy's in the article, and that is a brand that focuses on organic, natural ingredients.
Here is an article on the subject of food names and perceptions. Link is at the end of the article.
http://boingboing.net/2009/02/09/food-ingredients-wit.html
go Chemist!
THANK YOU. Someone finally explaining this aspect of the "hard" word bit for everyone.
From one chemist to another, you nailed it. Thanks!
Another good article on the subject – telling what you should look for on the ingredient labels.
http://www.realforme.com/self/body/blogs/AM-Ingredient-Label-Secrets
I agree. Anyone who gives their kids vitamins is a TERRIBLE human being. Just take a look at these big scary words in the ingredient list:
ergocalciferol (vitamin D)
d-alpha tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E)
niacinamide (vitamin B3)
pyridoxine HCl (vitamin B6)
cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12)
aminoate complex (magnesium, zinc, copper, manganese, potassium)
bitartrate (choline)
I've even seen these ingredients in FOOD! What are people thinking adding these kinds of ingredients to food?!?
I also CANNOT believe people feed their children food that was cooked in an OVEN! An OVEN! Look it up – Nazi Germany murdered innocent people in OVENS! And people want to feed their children food that was cooked in an oven?!? Ovens heat your food, which causes the molecules to ACCELERATE and BREAK DOWN!
And don't get me started on WATER. Do you know that people have DIED from ingesting water? It is called water intoxication, look it up. Anyone who gives their child water or any food containing water is a MONSTER!
Very amusing, quite clever, and yet sad.
Many won't get the joke – which is a terrible misfortune for their children because it means that they are undereducated in the basics to keep kids safe and healthy.
It's the same kind of thinking that leads people to believe that vaccines can cause autism.
*likes post*
Cooking is not hard or time-consuming, so those who say they don't know how are just using it as an excuse unless they are blind, deaf, and/or illiterate. It's not hard to boil some whole grain spaghetti, top it with pre-made sauce (or even better, chop up some tomatoes and basil you grow yourself), and bake some garlic bread. It's not hard to throw some chicken, fish, or meat in the oven/stovetop/grill/crockpot. Grow veggies in your yard or in pots during the summer. Frozen veggies are cheap and nutritious, too. I don't see how it takes away from your family, either. My daughter loves to help me water and pick the veggies in the summer and is really interested in cooking. During the school year, she sits at the table doing homework while I or my husband cook (sometimes both) when we get home. I like that she sees me preparing food and will be able to fend for herself, plus we still get to chat about her day. That doesn't mean we don't have pizza or takeout from time to time, but it's not the norm.
There are a lot of food purists who would consider pre-made sauce a travesty. Such as my husband. And myself, now that I think of it. That's the point; don't feel bad if you can't do everything from scratch.
has decided food and parenting make for angry people. Excuse me while I drink some Gatorade – made by food scientists in a factory.
My supermarket was offering tastes of what they called "5 can soup". Actually, quite tasty and as a bonus, cheap and easy to prepare.
1 can tomato soup
1 can chili with beans
1 can diced tomato with green chili
1 can corn; drained
1 can peas and carrots; drained
–simmer all ingredients together for 20-30 minutes. (I felt I needed to add some water because it was too thick).
Great with grilled cheese!
My other savior is the crock pot. Dinner cooks while you are at work and ready when you get home!
Full of sodium; terrible for you.
Rubbish, eff u.
Super easy and delicious::
4 Bonless skinless chicken breasts
Instant Brown Rice (and water and butter according to box)
Fresh Broccolli Florets
2% Shredded Cheddar cheese (Lucerne is good)
Garlic salt and Pepper
I season chicken both sides with Garlic Salt and Pepper. Put in Baking dish, add brown rice (enough for 4 servings) (and water and butter according to box). Add Broccolli and bake in Oven for at 375 F for about 30 minuetes covered with tinfoil. Halfway through, stir the rice and broccoli. At 25 minuets check for doneness of chicken. Remove foil and add cheddar cheese on top 5 – 10 minuetes prior to removing from oven.
This is super delicous, I don't have kids but everyone I know with kids enjoys this recipe and appreciate how simple it is! I usually serve this with a bag of salad and low fat ranch.
I just printed that out. Thanks for sharing!
We created our artificial preservative free, 10 grain pizza as part of the solution. We have delivery/carryout stores and frozen. The recognition that health, value, convenience and taste can live together. And while the solutions (like ours) and the means are pregnant with compromise, it's worth finding options to help us navigate the complexity of feeding ourselves and our kids in a way that we can afford and live with. Important that we all keep turning this engagement into possible solutions, the best of which, will live by the decisions of the market.
I myself am pregnant with compromise. Genius phrase. As well as a jaunty name for offspring. :)
Pre-prepared meals don't have to be bad. I can think of lots of examples of things that are healthy- rotisserie chickens, salad bars, pre-chopped veggies, etc. So no, people aren't bad parents just because they serve pre-prepared food.
The problem is that many people eat frozen or pre-packaged foods that are heavily processed and contain ingredients that aren't really supposed to go in our bodies. Sure, you don't notice the effects now, but they can cause problems later, like cancer, dental problems, heart problems, etc.
I grew up in a house where my mother didn't work, but hated to cook. However, she made fresh, simple meals every night. I don't think she ever spent more than an hour makiing dinner. I currently work a ten hour day but make dinner every night- I have learned to become efficient about shopping/planning/preparing. A few years ago I read "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan and it changed my life- I cut out most processed foods. In the process I've learned how incredibly easy it is to make lots of dishes from scratch.
I don't think that parents who hate cooking but buy healthful pre-prepared foods are being lazy- as long as what the kids eat is healthy I see no problem with it! I just wish people would stop seeing cooking as being something so awful/scary.
Another idea for very quick, inexpensive weeknight meals – though this one takes a little planning:
Get a bag of individually wrapped, frozen fish filets (like tilapia or salmon). The night before, take one from the freezer and put it in your fridge. It'll be thawed by the time you get home at night (or, you could defrost it in the microwave, but that sometimes starts it cooking). Spray a little cooking spray on your nonstick frying pan, toss in the fish, add a squirt of lemon and some dill or whatever (I like cayenne and lime juice on tilapia), and you'll have a good, healthy protein even quicker than your microwave meal would be ready. Combine that with some leftover rice, or a microwaved baked potato, and some veggies. 10 minutes, tops, and that includes washing the pan.
Come to think of it, I may do that tonight.
Don't forget frozen veggies if you're in a hurry. They're nutritionally just about the same as fresh, and usually pretty cheap if you get store brand. Just skip the kind that have sauce all over them. Canned corn is good, too. (I don't like other canned vegetables, but I guess that's personal taste.)
Corn is not a vegetable; it's a grain.
Wow, anal much?
Agree with OP & the "get over it" crowd. Monday I arrived at work 5:45am & left at 9:30pm, today I started at 6:30am and will be here until at least 8pm. I *love* to cook – but I walk in the door at night with less than 8 hours before I have to walk out again, sorry – I'm going straight to bed, not to the kitchen.
Breakfast is usually a yogurt I grab from home and a granola bar from the box at my desk. Lunch is leftovers from weekend cooking if I'm lucky (again grab&go only) or whatever the cafeteria is serving. Dinner? McD cheeseburger & a bag of apple slices, delivery pizza, etc. Ideal? No of course not. But it is what it is.
I'm lucky to have a job that I really enjoy (no I don't get overtime pay). On the rare weeknight that I actually am home by 6pm, dinner is usually just a bowl of cereal because there's mail to sort, bathrooms to clean, laundry to run, and a thousand other things. I probably only cook two or three times in an entire month.
Meghan, do you have kids, cuz if you do you obviously don't care to see them. This is an article about your food choices being a bad parent or not. We are all proud that you work youself to the bone. Congratulations.
On occasion, I make the $1 8-9 oz frozen meals (Banquet, Michaelina's, Marie Callendar's Chicken Pot Pie bought in 8 packs at Costco) and they're more healthy than typical alternatives like a ham and cheese sandwich with potato chips. If you need to stay low in sodium, Healthy Choice is more expensive, but reasonable, and also healthy.
Poor Man's Chili
2 lbs regular or hot breakfast sausage (not maple)
4 great big cans of ranch style beans
In a large pot, crumble and brown the sausage like you would ground beef. Add beans and heat through. Voila, chili! Serve with a buffet of shredded cheese, chopped onions, green chile (I like 505 brand), tortillas, cornbread, sour cream...anything you and yours like on chili.
I like this recipe because it's fast and the leftovers freeze well. You can also serve over chips with melted cheese for nachos. My husband thinks it makes a great Frito pie...although we differ on the flavor aesthetics of that dish. :) it's also a good last-minute company meal; serve it at that impromptu Super Bowl party!
(I buy the cheese and onions already shredded and chopped. I myself hate serving dinner at 8:45 pm, and I'm not about to miss Burn Notice or The Walking Dead for something so mundane as cooking! :D )
I think that learning to prepare healthy, home-cooked meals is an essential. People shouldn't eat out or eat pre-packaged, overly processed foods all the time. However, for those who don't always have the time to cook something at home, I think it's reasonable to allow room for eating out, or eating a 5-minute frozen dinner once in a while. I don't see anything wrong with having that stuff occasionally, if necessary. But it's important to eat MOSTLY what is actually good for you, and to limit the stuff that's not. So sometimes is all right–just not every day.
I think it's fine to purchase pre packaged foods, but it is cheaper to buy and package yourself. I understand it's about saving time, but a lot of people right now are looking for the CHEAPER way to cook dinner.
Cheaper? Here you go. A pack of organic chicken breasts is $10. A fresh vegetable is anywhere from $3-4. A cup of rice, quinoa, beans or whatever is $2. Total prices? $15. For that, my wife, son and I eat dinner. My wife and I BOTH take leftovers for lunch the next day. So for about $3.50 a serving, we've all eaten healthy from a meal that took me 30 minutes to prepare. I can't even get a #4 Value Meal for under five bucks.
There are other stores to shop from besides Whole Paycheck, er, I mean Whole Foods.
Where the hell do you live?? Honestly. I'm in one of the most expensive parts of the world, and not even I pay that much. 2-3 per vegetable? What are you on?
How about a can of Ragu, $1.50, a box of spaghetti, $1.00, a can of tuna, $0.69, can of olives, $1.69, a prepared loaf of garlic bread, $1.99. That is by far cheaper than your organic food, and feeds my family of 4 dinner, and lunch the next day.. I would love to be able to afford that, but it simply isnt in my budget.
What part of balance don't you get? Not one parent in here is saying that feeding your kids processed foods for EVERY meal is a good thing, what the argument is is that sometimes, NOT ALL THE TIME, it's nice to have a quick and easy fix. I feed my kid fish sticks that I get in the grocery store, but I pair it with fresh vegetables and a healthy starch. Does it make me a bad parent because I don't go and but more expensive fillets of fish, hand-bread them, and fry them myself? No, it makes me someone who uses their time logically while still trying to get wholesome food into my kid. Pretty soon the argument will be, "You don't raise and slaughter all your own meat??? What an irresponsible and lazy parent you are!!!!" Get off your high horse.
A 20pc. chicken mcnugget costs $9.99. Do you know how much actual food you can get for $10? I'm not on a high horse, just baffled by comments such as, "I don't like to cook" or "I don't like to shop." Well I don't like to work, pay taxes, pay bills, etc. etc. We eat pizza once a week, believe me, I understand balance. I'm not slaughtering my own beef in the backyard, I am however saying that it doesn't take excessive time or money to regularly feed your family a healthy, non-packaged or prepared meal.
Sorry, that comment wasn't directed toward you, but toward Observer.
"A 20pc. chicken mcnugget costs $9.99. Do you know how much actual food you can get for $10?"
LMAO! 'Cuz McD's only offers virtual food? I know what you're saying, but that line was funny.
I know some people who raise and slaughter their own chickens. They don't buy it otherwise.
I work 60+ hours a week and yet somehow, I manage to have a healthy, homemade meal prepared for my wife and son 6 nights a week (pizza on Friday) I do all of my shopping within two hours on Sunday and prepare 5 out of 6 dinners in the crockpot before I head out to work one of my two jobs each morning. I'm sorry, but it's laziness to say this can't be done. Don't like to cook? Tough. You're a parent. Take care of your kid and give them the nutrition they need. Don't know how to cook? Get off Facebook and look up some recipes.
Kudos to you. But I think I'll stop just short of conceding that parents who lack the iron will you have expressed here are somehow damaging their children or the home by bringing home Kid Cuisine frozen meals.
Appreciate it, however, I don't think a few extra minutes in the morning or grocery shopping constitutes iron will. I don't think they're doing harm to their kids, they'd just rather spend that 15 minutes in the morning sleeping or on Facebook.
I get all my chickens, cows, veggies and fruits from farmville :)
On a more serious note, kudos to you. Great healthy meals can be made in crock pots and you are absolutely right about the shopping. I am fortunate enough now to have time to cook nice meals and relax after work but i've been in that same boat. Good for you, keeping your family fed and healthy!
FigureItOut, how condescending and myopic can you be? You clearly are the Chuck Norris of food prep and general parenting. Your sweeping and uninformed generalizations about how others should parent and what makes a good parent are shocking. It sounds like you have one child (hopefully a healthy one) to feed and a wife. My wife and I both work full days and come home to a special needs child (muscular dystrophy) and triplet girls that are 2 1/2 years old. My wife and I spend ten times the amount of time that you spend cooking up your Emeril dishes for your family bringing our son to therapies and doctors and trying to manage raising triplet girls at the same time. Yet according to you, if I give my kids a processed meal I'm a poor parent? Anyone on this board that is criticizing people that you don't know based on some perception of what is right in your mind needs to walk a mile in other people's shoes to see what their situation allows for comparatively. This kind of my way or the highway attitude steams me up (no pun intended, Mr. Norris).
Doesn't even have to be a crockpot meal per se. On Saturday or Sunday I plan dinners for the week and shop. I chop veggies and prep ingredients for the next night's meal after my daughter is in bed (15 minutes?). Usually can have dinner on the table within 30-45 minutes of getting home on a weeknight. I love to cook, but weeknights are easy-cooking nights. As a working mom, I also keep ingredients for go-to quick meals on hand in case planned dinners fall through for some reason or time runs short. A bag of frozen salmon filets from Costco (salt, pepper, butter, broil for a few minutes–bam!); frozen vegetables (we use frozen veggies a lot); whole wheat spaghetti (pre-packaged sauce, but I try to get the low sugar kind); etc. We also typically do pizza once a week, and yes, we do occasionally hit the drive through. My 2.5 year old also loves to "help" me (usually I measure ingredients and let her dump them in the bowl), so cooking time = spending time with daughter. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Seriously. My wife and I cook nearly all of our food. Our crock pot gets a lot of use making healthy stews and soups, and we can easily eat for days just from one batch. We don't have as active a "social" life as a lot of people we know, but our priorities lie in staying healthy and saving money. We have a baby and laundry and all the other chores busy people have, but we find the time. People who say they don't have time to cook probably don't try to make time–they while it away with their social media friends or zone out in front of the TV or whatever, believing those things are essential to their lifestyle and sense of self. If that's not a clear depiction of the infantilization of society, I don't know what is.
Amen.
Yes...because the only answer to the question you've raised must be that people who feel like they don't have any free time is that they are lazy....Could that be the answer for some people? Absolutely. But I would also hazard a guess that others are simply already stretched past the point of breaking, and nothing short of completely restructuring their lives is going to make adding another time cost feasible. That's too bad though, especially considering how much garbage is sold as "food" these days.
I can understand where for people who aren't "chef types" find cooking entire meals from scratch intimidating and time consuming, and cooking larger batches at one time is by far a great way to plan ahead, especially if you know you have a busy few days coming up! I cam also easily say a lot of the people I know that "are too busy" to cook, are also the same ones that pick the kids up, hit McD's on the way home and park their butts in fro t of the tv for hours on end, it's not so much lazy as it is that's the habit if people.
I grew up with at least one home-cooked meal at home (during the school year) and def on the weekends and holidays. My mom worked for a while in the evening and dad was in the military. There was three of us. How did they manage. Easy, as we got older we were assigned dinner duty. We were to provide a healthy meal (veggie, meat, starch etc.) that we either could cook or wanted to try. due to that all of us can and will cook good meals. Now me and my brother love to cook though my sister not so much. I will admit though if I am in a bind, hambrger helper and mac and cheese work well, but they are not every night.
I don't see the problem with the food this author talks about serving. bagged salad isn't any different than buying a head of lettuce and cutting it yourself. Buying garlic already minced is a lot faster than having to peel and chop a clove each time you need it. Amy's pizza is organic, and not that bad for you.
This article is more about prepared ingredients than fake, processed food. I'm a little surprised at some of the very negative responses.
You'll get NOTHING and LIKE IT! How about that?
Amen....and if they DON'T like it, they can have a taste of the back of my hand!
I'm wondering.... everyone who is blasting the author for using prepared foods – how many ever used jarred baby food? Or did everyone make homemade baby food too?
Give her a break. Everyone wants to their best for the kids, but not everyone is capable of cooking a fresh, homemade meal.
Yep. Made it myself, jarred it up or froze it. WAY cheaper than the store-bought stuff. And I made a lot of it from foods from our garden....so I knew that there were no pesticides, etc. Oh, and I had a job and was in a PhD program at the time.
ah, but *I* blew the glass for jars MYSELF...how do you otherwise know if there is any lead in that store-bought mason jar of yours? And of course mined the metal for the lids and forged them myself. Lazy people....sigh.
Sorry but I think this article is pathetic. For years my family ate processed foods and suffered physically because of it. My wife works 60 hours a week and so do I. We have two kids who are in sports and I, the father, still manage to cook meals with fresh ingrediants just about every day. Yes we do eat Mcdonalds once a month and occasionally there is that prepackaged meal. But quite frankly it is a cop out to say I am too busy to cook healthy meals. You have to plan ahead and buy ahead and practice cooking, you will get better over time. The so called too busy problem is why we have so many over weight people with diabetes in this country. Watch less TV, spend less time on the computer and other gadgets. Spend more time talking with your kids, playing sports with your kids and cooking. Stop making excuses and man and woman up!
I love this response!! I completely agree. Many community centers offer weekend cooking classes for whole families. There are also a lot of "Quick fix Healthy Meal" cook books near the checkout stands at grocery stores. Way to many people make excuses or say "I'll start eating better tomorrow". That is just laziness.
Sorry, you don't make sense. You're blasting people for using prepared foods and yet you indicate that your family ate them for years and suffered for it. Are you just better now?
Dear shortsighted people, please get over yourselves. Balance is the key. Please stop beating mothers up for their choices. I believe that every parent makes the best choices that they can in that moment with the information and time that they have at hand. Food choices is obviously a polarizing discussion, beginning when a baby is born. "Breast is best" has become such a rallying cry that mothers who choose not to nurse are almost forced to go underground with that choice because our society has such an attitude of "persecute the parent". McDonalds is not child abuse. A cheeseburger costs a dollar. Organic salad costs three or more. Some parents make the choice to fill their children up with warm food that they can afford... that doesn't make them a monster. When a parent has time to throw ingredients in a crock pot, wonderful. I have two crock pots and numerous slow cooker recipes that don't require a million ingredients. I use these on the weekends to get a jump on the wheek whenever possible. But on the days when I have to work a double shift and my 3 year is screaming because no one will help her put on her shoes and my baby is trying to eat Vaseline and I am doing my best not to scream at my other beloved children "Get in the darned car!", you had better believe that I am hitting the drive thru or the grocery store deli for dinner. You work with what you have to work with. Stop berating parents.
you sound lazy. Perhaps you should have thought your priorities through before having children. Not all are meant to be parents.
That's pretty rude. I totally agree with her. I work full-time and I know exactly what she is talking about. Honestly, I hate to cook and do not enjoy it one bit. I guess that makes me a horrible mother, right? I don't think so. You do what you feel is the best decision at the time and don't look back. You can't tell me that someone is a horrible parent because they get fast food for dinner or bust out the frozen food. There is a lot more to being a parent than cooking a homemade meal at night.
Right...and there's a whole lot more to poor health than obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.
But go ahead and keep rationalizing. You seem to be good at it.
Go to church, get la!d, control your blood sugar, get a job, but most importantly pi$$ off
Actually, Observer, you sound lazy. If you pressed Shift + y, you can capitalize your first word 'You'. And I'm still waiting for you to complete the sentence " Not all are meant to be parents", as that is a sentence fragment missing a subject.
Anyhow, I read that Getoveryourselves is a bit more realistic and functional than you may think. Parenting sometimes involves an active dialogue with what is best for your kid(s) at that moment. Being reactive doesn't mean you are lazy or a bad parent, but that you need to be flexible, and have the best intention in mind for the long run.
I dare you go go to Disney for the day then go back to the hotel to cook an organic, homemade meal mid-day. There is some fun and functionality in eating what is available sometimes –and I'm sure your kids will survive.
Once in a while if you are feeling drive thru-ish then fine. Alot of us feel that way once in a while. It's the parents who seriously rationalize going to a drive thru every nigth because they are "busy". These are the parents with fat kids who play video games and have a high risk for diabetes. Frozen vegetables are a better alternative to canned and actually cheaper! Organic is expensive and I totally agree about not buying all organic because of the cost. But goin to fast food can be more costly per month than cooking yourself. Alot of people seem to think healthy cooking has to be expensive but it's not. Parents need to spend time online looking up "Quick 5 Item Meals". If parents are terrible cooks, that should light a fire under them to learn to cook better so they can teach their kids. Cooking dinner with little helpers is a great way to have fun.
The 'my mom used to do it, and I turned out ok' excuse is getting awfully tired. Let's face it; our parents also smoked and drank when they were pregnant with us, and let us ride without seatbelts in the front seat. That doesn't make those things safe or healthy in modern times. I certainly lay no blame on our parents' generation. We know more about healthy living and eating these days than they did a few decades ago. With education comes a responsibility to do better by our children. As a full time working mother, I take serious umbrage at the 'I'm too busy" attitude that excuse-makers give. Yes, it takes away from my personal free time (NOT my time with my family, I am willing to make the 'me-time' sacrifice) to shop for healthy food and learn to cook it. Yes, I have to budget carefully to afford decent, fresh food. Yes, I very occasionally turn to convenience foods. And yes, sometimes I turn on the TV so that I can finish making dinner, but more often than not, I have little hands to help me prepare it. It can be done. It's not rocket science. It's hard work, and it's a choice.
The title should read 'Serving pre-prepared food doesn't mean your a bad parent but rather that the health of yourself and your kids is not high on your priority list.'
by which you really DO mean "means you're a bad parent" – right?
People in this country need to get back to wholesome cooking and wholesome family values. I cook three meals a day for my family while home schooling my children.
You must not have any bills to pay. Most of us have a JOB
Congratulations on living in your own little slice of 1950. I work because I have a mortgage and *gasp* my kids attend a public school. We make it just fine on spaghetti, Hamburger Helper, canned vegetables/fruits, frozen biscuits, and the like. I buy things that are quick, easy, and good because time is short around my home. None of us have any health issues or problems. It works for lots of families.
Since when did women like you learn how to step out of the kitchen and use a computer? Sorry to break it to you Miss Sally Homemaker, but most households have adults that do have jobs that not only contribute to their family's well-being but also to the economy, instead of producing children with no exposure to normal childhood social circumstances before the age of 18. My wife and I both work to provide for our son and I still make him fresh meals at least twice a day (3 times on days that he isn't in daycare). Your kids may be eating fresh meals slightly more often, but at least I can sleep well in knowing that my kid is going to know how to act in society from an early age and probably less likely to off himself once he realizes that the world isn't just like the perfect little cocoon that you have falsely created for them.
or more likely protected their children from bullies like you...kudos to anyone who prioritizes their child's education rather than pushing them out the door to fight for a teacher's attention with 30+ other kids. Socialization is EVERYWHERE you don't have to get it in a public school.
Ummm, how is "I can't cook because then I won't have time to talk to my kids" a valid reason?
My step-dad was a jerk about 70% of the time, but I still have fond memories of standing on a chair every afternoon to help with making salads from the age of 5 or 6, and we had plenty of time to chat. I even learned how to cook fresh easy food in the process!
involve the kids where you can and you'll have time to talk. make it a learning experience and they will appreciate the process more (the dead family dinner).
My mom is a crappy cook, and didn't really teach me anything either. So as an adult I rarely made real food at home. In my late 20's I gradually gained weight and decided that enough was enough, I was going to start eating better. I started out with simple, 5 ingredient recipes. Through trial and error I can cook decent meals. However, if I hadn't practiced in the kitchen I would not be as proficient as I am now. Cooking takes practice, and if the author would look at it that way instead of seeing it as a "chore", she could learn how to be more efficient in the kitchen. No one is asking OP to be a professional chef, just learn to throw together some quick, healthy meals that don't come from the freezer.
Also, why could she not share the time prepping meals with her kids and "catch up" on their day then? Her kids would learn to cook AND have memorable bonding experiences with their mom. Stop whining and do what's right for yourself and your kids, instead of what is EASY and FAMILIAR.
I totally agree with the practice part, Kim. When I first got married (11 years ago). I hated to cook. I did a lot of 'convenience food' meals (i.e., put convenience foods like jarred sauce together to make something). Gradually, I started to like cooking more and more and made it a goal to learn new techniques. What a fun challenge! I did more research and we started to eat healthier - whole foods (even though neither my husband nor I have a weight problem, cutting back on sodium and the like is good for anyone!). Now I subscribe to cooking magazines and usually try to try one new recipe a week and I get excited about new kitchen stuff and I find cooking to be a blast!
Most excellent! Plus, there's the added benefit of cooking new meals–you build up an arsenal of spices and seasonings! After a month of cooking your own dinners from scratch, you'll have lots of spices on hand to be able to "throw together" something on the fly.
Cooking meat was my biggest challenge. I've gotten great at cooking burgers on the grill, sauteing or baking chicken (boneless or whole), searing steaks, etc. Thanks to a digital meat thermometer and reading lots of cooking blogs, lol!
All you food Nazis need to chill out. Sometimes parents just don't have the time or don't have the skills to whip up a homemade meal. Serving pre-prepared food isn't that bad as long as it's balanced with something fresh, like a salad or fruit for dessert. I'd prefer kids eat that way than eating a fast food meal.
All you food Nazis need to chill out. Sometimes parents just don't have the time or don't know have the skills to whip up a homemade meal. Serving pre-prepared food isn't that bad as long as it's balanced with something fresh, like a salad or fruit for dessert. I'd prefer kids eat that way than eating a fast food meal.
We all need parenting skills kids should be a investment not a curse.
My parents either don't know how to cook, or don't have the time... So they always give me this stuff. Frozen chicken fingers, pre-prepared meatloaf, frozen vegetables that are soggy and gross when served... It's not healthy, even the vegetables. The food is full of nitrates and sodium; I've read the labels. There's no such thing as frozen or pre-prepared foods that are genuinely as healthy as fresh food. I'm 17 and really don't want to grow up on this garbage.
If you are 17 years old you should be helping prepare the healthy meals. Why not make a list of healthy foods you would like to prepare and go to the store with your parents and select the ingredients and then help with the preparation. This would take care of two issues: 1) you have the healthy meals you should have and 2) you learn to plan and cook and when you are on your own or have a family it will be second nature.
You are plenty old enough to cook. Watch some youtbe videos, take a class, get some cookbooks out of the library. Also, frozen vegetables are quite healthy. They are not technically as healthy as vegetables fresh out of a garden but they are often equally as healthy as vegetables from the grocer. If they are soggy, they're being prepared poorly.
He's only going to learn how to cook for himself if he has no other options or grows up. Speaking of not growing up, I know someone who is over 50 and claims he'd live on delivery pizza if his wife didn't cook for him. He is dead serious! He has no physical limitations to keep him from the learning basic cooking skills. He's just lazy and pathetic ... and yes, she enables him.
I think i's great that you are recognizing that there is unhealthy food out there. :) Even in this day and age there are 17 year olds who do not "get it". I like part of a reposne above. Go grocery shopping with your parents. Pick up a "quick and easy" cookbook. When I was 17 I cooked all my dinners, and I Loved it! Especially when I started using new ingreients and herbs i learned abotu in teh cookbooks. :)
It's too bad cuz I was fortunate enough to enjoy several semesters of Home Ec in school where I got to cook some really tasty things in jr high and high school. My daughter's school has a new home ec area that they have not had the financing to use. It's so sad to me when I think of all the opportunities that aren't there anymore.
Eating for the Americans is a way to fill your stomachs. It is not an art or a way of life. Fast food, fast buck is the norm. No wonder why so many Americans are obese. They eat food filled with sodium who holds the water in your body. I worked all my life, and there was always a home make cooked meal. Do not tell about the time, it is just a matter of time management.
Serving pre-prepared "food" to a child, certainly DOES mean you are a poor parent. Borderline criminal actually.
The problem with you American women is that you do not learn refinement like Europeans do. Hence, your American obesity epidemic.
And do not even get me started on your manners.
I don't disagree that many Americans are obese! But there are a few of us who work full time, and cook healthy well rounded meals every night of the week. I love to grocery shop and my 6 yr old picks things out with me and helps choose the menu so he can learn how to cook and what healthy choices look like.
Obesity is not confined to Americans. And, as evidenced by your post, neither is rudeness.
Talk about manners. . .so should we American women take our cue from you and stereotype all European women as judgmental and ethnocentric based on just your repsonse?
Balance seems like a good concept here – balance time with your kids, healthy food and timesavers. No one is perfect, but we do what we can to make sure our kids get the nutrition they need. We don't love our kids less if we don't chop the carrots by hand.
Get over yourself. Prepackaged food is cheap and fills a belly so homework and laundry can alos be done.
Is that why every time I'm in Europe I see more and more fast food and casual food restaurants popping up on every corner?
I agree with needing to feed healthy options to kids but DO NOT AGREE WITH YOUR ATTITUDE! You European women need to learn how to act like respectful individuals and not walk around with a European stick up your ass. Get off your high horse and please keep your "European" thoughts to yourself. Manners, Ppphhhfff, you're definantly not one to talk.
Simmer down, xenophobe. Europeans are extra fluffy these days too: http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/obesity Women and children worldwide are best served by women coming together to support, encourage, and teach each other- not to spew snark across the pond
I'm with you – to a point. Using the supermarket as your sous chef for minimally processed foods: good. Indulging in premade food every so often, whether it be McDonald's or in the freezer case: fine. Justifying a steady diet of ultraprocessed food: that's what it sounds like you're doing, and that's where you lose me.
Part of the problem is Americans have come to believe that cooking is more difficult than it actually is. I have a five-ingredient microwave recipe for scratch macaroni and cheese (admittedly not health food, but w/more protein & calcium than Easy Mac) that takes 10 minutes from fridge & pantry to table. You can make unbelievable meals in the slow cooker with maybe 4 minutes of prep before work. Searing a steak or chop and opening a bag of salad takes less than 20 minutes. Admit it – roasting a chicken, while not rocket science, is pretty daunting for someone who needs dinner on the table five minutes ago. Easiest of all – don't cook! Buy veggies from the grocery store's salad bar and eat them raw!
Yes, by all means, pick foods that are easier to prepare – but let's not confuse treats of takeout or TV dinners with the kinds of foods that should be the biggest part of our diet.
Also, if you're intimidated by (or don't have time for) roasting a whole chicken, just get some chicken parts and bake them instead – you'll be done in less than half an hour. Plain with salt and pepper is fine. Add some herbs if you like. Even Shake&Bake isn't so bad! It's better than getting spongy chicken "nuggets" shaped like dinosaurs.
Well put! I wish the author had considered these points when making her argument. As it is, it falls flat and sounds more like a rationalization than a good reason to feed your family poorly.