What’s truly homemade? If I buy a pork butt at the store – a pork butt that I have no idea what it was fed or what kind of additives or preservatives it’s had, and grind it myself, and then use a purchased packet of seasoning mix . . does that constitute homemade sausage? I don’t know. In my mind, I feel better about cooking that kind of “homemade sausage” than about buying a roll of sausage in the store.
I so often think about the way things were in my grandparents’ days. They would have raised their own pig, fed him (or her) scraps and other things (not even sure what pigs eat!) that they grew. They may or may not have purchased pig feed in a feedsack, which my grandma would have made into an apron once the feed was used. I don’t know. Does growing your own pig without any antibiotics or other medications/hormones make it more healthy? I don’t know. I do know that I don’t believe, at least not 100%, everything I’m told about what’s safe, healthy and nutritious.
It isn’t that I fear the foods we buy are going to make us sick or unhealthy but any time I can have more control over what we eat, that’s the route I prefer to take.
For breakfast yesterday this morning we blueberry pancakes and “homemade sausage”. The sausage tasted so much different from the sausage we buy in a roll on the store. Of course, the seasonings were different but the texture was different too. I added a bit more than the recommended minimum amount of fat and not a drop of fat cooked out into the pan. Makes you wonder how much fat is in the sausage we buy
At the table, Vince and I began talking about “then vs. now”. He remembered when TV dinners were first popular and even though they didn’t taste so great back then, he said his parents still bought them and they had them about once a week. I don’t remember my mom ever cooking them.
What kinds of foods are we eating because they’re convenient . . not because they taste good or are nutritious but simply because they’re available — quick and easy?
What kinds of things can you think of that your mom or grandma made from scratch that you never consider making from scratch?
For the longest time, I bought refrigerated pie crusts because I really couldn’t tell much difference. I’ve gone back to making my own but mostly because I so rarely make pies and therefore don’t keep a crust in the fridge.
Sandy says
Mom made donuts from scratch! Yum! Fresh cake donuts! And donut holes! I’ve never made donuts and I don’t think any of my 4 siblings have made them, either.
Claudia Wade says
My experience is very different than yours. I am in my 60’s and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. My parents, their parents, and my in-laws all grew up in Chicago itself. Unfortunately we didn’t have any of the good-cooking genes you get sometimes in cities from ethnic groups. We are plain vanilla caucasians and nobody was a good cook. For good food you went out to a restaurant.
I do remember the original tv dinners in the aluminum foil trays and we had them when we had a babysitter when my parents went out for the evening.
Now, my dh and I have become foodies and he does most of the cooking. Since I did most of the cooking for the first 30 years of our marriage (and didn’t particularly enjoy it) and we are now both retired, I said I think it is his turn to cook, and he enjoys it. We watch a lot of the Food Network and Cooking Channel and like to try recipes that are featured there. Also, he makes a version of Julia Child’s hamburgers that are to die for.
I do have concerns about mass produced food and we try to buy as local as we can when buying meat and produce especially.
JudyL says
Claudia, aren’t you glad you’ve turned into “Foodies”. We don’t enjoy going out to dinner much — we’re usually busy at home til late and then we have to clean up and drive to town and then we don’t have a huge selection of restaurants. We also love the Food Network and Cooking Channel too.
Lee Ann L. says
Refrigerated Pie Crust is an excellent convenience and doesn’t have too many ingredients in the list; but, making your own is cheaper.
My Mother cooked a lot of our food. The only things we had that were store bought were like chips, hot dogs, and stuff. we rarely ate out too as Dad was extremely frugal.
My best memories of of Monday nights. Mom always had spaghetti and meatballs on that night with garlic bread. Love. That is comfort food for me. 🙂
Peggy says
I grew up with family background that included much food history. My mother being croation and some of her step mothers had some french in their bring up I was blessed with great home made foods. I can make studel dough (filla) from scratch. We never lived on a farm, but knew many farmers. Our chickens were usually fresh from the farm auctions, then we processed them. We would buy sides of beef and tried to buy the other half of the farmer’s family beef. Nothing better then soup made using beef bones or fresh chicken. We would buy a whole hog, plus my dad would go fishing and hunting. We have made our own sausage, but smoked sausage came from a store named Santa’s on the west side of Cleveland OH where my mother was raised. I can still smell the wonderful smoked products and other sausages. They wanted my mom to learn how to make the sausage, but she was not interested, because that knowledge came with marriage to their son….or so I was told.
My grandmother died from eating pork that was tainted from feeding hogs something that was infected, so maybe in some cases store bought is better.
Marla says
Oh my! I remember frozen TV dinners in the 60’s. Oops. Telling on myself here. TV dinners were such a treat. I think we had them occasionally on Monday nights when Gunsmoke was on! I was a little girl and we lived in Lincoln, Nebraska for a few years. I thought they were so good!
Osagebluffquilter says
Funny . . . we are having homemade saugage for dinner. We even stuffed it into store bought casings! At least the homemade blackberry jelly we will smear on the store bought bread , I know where the blackberries came from!
Linda Buzan says
It is a small world. Yesterday I bought some fresh ground pork to season and make my own breakfast sausage patties. My patties turned out a little bland. I know I needed to put more salt and pepper,but I wondered what other spices you used. I also used sage, a little oregano, a pinch of allspice. Next time I will add red pepper flakes.
JudyL says
I used a package of Mrs. Wages sausage seasoning because it was a free packet in some other things I had ordered. I’m going to experiment with seasonings but you really need to make so much for it to be worth getting down the food grinder and I’m so afraid of ruining 10 or more pounds of meat.
Robin says
I guess it all depends on what you grew up with. My mother only made spaghetti using the Kraft Italian Style in the green box and to me that is comfort food- pretty sad I know but that’s what we ate. She didn’t do much in the way of cooking.
Sharon Spingler says
I grew up on a farm 4 miles outside of town in Ohio. We bought very little from the store. We drank sassafrass tea instead of sodas, kook aid or coffee, mom made our bread, pies, cakes and desserts, we either raised our own meat or killed it (pheasant, rabbits, squirrels) we grew all our own veggies and fruits. We raised our own pigs. Dad would buy 50 gallon drums of leftovers from bakeries to feed the hogs (boy did that stink) . We had lard for cooking and mom churned her own butter. We never heard of tv dinners (we didn’t even own a tv till I was in the 3rd grade) and we grew our own pop corn and made our own ice cream.
I wish I could go back to the way you are living now.
Diana in TX says
I grew up with a PA. Dutch background when it came to cooking. Mom generally made most of the things from scratch. As for meats we would buy a quarter of beef and have it cut, get the pork also from the butcher shop etc. that always entailed a trip to the Amish country as we lived outside of Philadelphia. We always canned our veggies and when we didn’t have a garden would drive to the New Jersey produce stands to get a bushel basket of what ever was in season. The in-laws still were farming when DH and i were married. then we got a half of beef from them, butchered our hog and also put up chickens. I canned and froze the fruits and veggies. I do cheat on some things now-my pie dough always falls apart on me so I use the store bought kind. We do get our venison made into smoked sausage-like it better than what we have made so far. I do like the convience of the mixes and things, but every so often will work from scratch. And it’s awfully hard to pass up some of the things at Whole Foods!
Ranch Wife says
Homemade bread and tortillas! Had a friend say they saw a loaf of bread sitting on the road about 10 m outside of town and it sat there for weeks. Nothing touched it. No critters tore into it. From then on it was homemade bread at their house. LOL. I tend to agree. Nothing like it. We raise our own beef and are spoiled and in the fall we make deer sausage. We raised a pig once and yep, it beats the grocery store sausage by a mile. Like you, the less processed the better.
Terri says
I grew up in mid-Michigan and my mom worked when most mom’s were still stay-at-homes. We didn’t have much in the way of convenience foods though, and we went out to dinner only rarely. There were 5 kids in my family, so eating out was expensive. My mom cooked every night, until I was old enough to help. She wasn’t a great cook, and we ate plain, good food. She make her own spaghetti sauce, which is something I never do anymore. I buy the jarred spaghetti sauce and doctor it up with Italian sausage, mushrooms, onions, and whatever else I feel like. One of my favorite memories was what we called “vegetable soup nights.” There would be a big pot of soup on the stove and homemade bread (both my mother and father baked bread, something I still do myself). We didn’t have dinner at the table on those nights. We just had a bowl of soup with fresh buttered bread whenever we were hungry. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that soup was probably a pretty economical way to feed a family of 7 when payday was still a ways off. When they could afford it, my parents would buy a side of beef. Otherwise, we got our meat from the butcher down the street. We had a milkman who delivered milk to the house every day (in glass bottles). We bought fresh eggs from the “egg lady” who delivered twice a week. She would always stick in a few pullet eggs for my little brother when she had pullets and he called them his “very own eggs.” We ate cereal for breakfast … Frosted Flakes or Cheerios. None of those fancy ones. I learned to make pie crust from my aunt … my mom couldn’t bake a pie to save her life. I still like to make pie crusts from scratch, although I don’t bake pies much these days with just the two of us at home. I don’t worry too much about processed foods because we don’t eat very much of it. Sausage and bacon aren’t on our menu anymore … we’re watching our cholesterol. I still order my meat from a butcher. I tell him what I want, and he calls me a few days later and it’s all wrapped up labeled and ready for the freezer. He took me behind the meat counter once to show me how to cut up a whole chicken, because he said I was spending too much buying it already cut up. I guess I’ve had the best of both worlds, living in a suburb of a small city, where farm markets, butchers, and egg ladies are still around.
Mel Meister says
I remember when Swanson’s TV dinners first came out. My favorite was the fried chicken. Mom had them maybe once a week. But our household was unusual in that my mom owned her own business (hair dresser) and even worked one night a week. Her mother lived with us and would cook, too. Her meals weren’t the greatest though. Nanny would cook a pork chop until it was dried and crusty, like an old shoe sole! Everyone was so afraid of pork back then.
Because I had both a mother and father working, we were considered “rich” (50’s). We ate steak several times a week. It was mom’s “go to” meal as it was fast and we all loved it. I say “we all”, I was an only child. There was just me, dad, mom and nanny.
Mom would make homemade spaghetti sauce, from scratch. I never liked it as she made it very spicy for my dad. I would always say to her “PLEASE, don’t make it so spicy! Dad can add more red pepper at the table” And she would tell me that she cooked to please my father. So there!
My grandmother would make the BEST homemade pies. After she died, I remember my mother deciding that she was going to learn how to bake a decent pie. She baked pies for weeks until she got it right. But she really did. Her pies were terrific.
Wow.. so many memories this discussion is dredging up….