When you see the word “homemade” what do you think? For me, pre-packaged is something that does
NOT come to mind….I imagine warmed ovens, apple-scented kitchens, sticky counter tops, and
straight-from-the-flour-bin goods.
The odd time, when pre-packaged cake mixes are on sale for
99 cents, I allow a couple to hide in my baking cupboard ready for
“emergency” situations, but most of the time the cakes, cookies, and muffins
that come out of this kitchen are “homemade”.
And by that I define them as begotten of true, real, actual, raw items
that have never been in a box. (Well,
okay, baking soda and baking powder DO in fact come in containers.)
And I don’t mean this as an affront to anyone using
pre-package items. Time is arguably at a premium. And I work at M & M Meat Shops after all. (Sadly, my freezer has recently embraced a lot of white boxes.) My argument is with the wrong usage of the term “homemade”.
So imagine my distress and annoyance when, in search of a
homemade chocolate cake recipe on allrecipes.com I had to scroll through
recipes whose number one “ingredient” was pre-packaged cake mix…until, finally,
in great exasperation, I simply waved the white flag and went to my
over-the-stove recipe books.
Then...the latest Epicure Selections magazine displayed the
yummiest looking photograph of soft pretzels sprinkled with Maple Bacon Sea Salt…the
caption blazoned “Homemade pretzels never tasted so good!” which, besides being
grammatically incorrect (remember all those lectures on proper use of “never”???),
is an outright lie. The recipe, after
all, calls for prepared pizza dough (“Save time and start with store-bought
pizza dough”).
ARG!
A few years ago when I completed the "Healthy You" series on nutrition through our local family health team we had to keep a diary of what and how much we ate, and how many calories , trans fat, etc. that they contained. (Yes, it was scarier than Hallowe'en costumes.) Fortunately they proffered a website that figured out numerical values. (Similar to http://caloriecount.about.com though I can't recall if this is the exact site!) Unfortunately when I typed in "homemade chocolate chip cookies" the first type of cookie to surface was a McDonald's one and in 6 pages of chocolate chip cookie listings I didn't ever uncover a homemade variety.
What happened to "homemade"? It doesn't take that much time to make a batch of cookies...and our kids love to be the measurers, dumpers, and, especially, mixmaster knob-pullers...How difficult is it to toss ingredients together to make your own salad dressing or to make your own buttermilk? (Place a Tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice in a liquid measuring cup, add enough milk to bring the liquid up to the one-cup line and let stand for five minutes.) www.frugalliving.about.com
"Where is that sweet spot between buying and making? What does the supermarket do cheaper and better? And where are we being deceived, our tastes and habits and standards corrupted?" Jennifer Reese asks in her December 2011 article "Is homemade food always better?" http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/02/is-homemade-food-always-best Interestingly, one thing she does NOT recommend "homemade" is chicken: slaughtering her really-a-male "chicken" Arlene proved to her a level of messy-ness she would prefer to avoid.
But her questions are important. What has happened to our tastebuds? How have we been so deceived that white bread perfectly sliced in a bag is more sought after than a handcrafted loaf of undeniably taste-filled nutrition?
The odour of baking squash (those odd-shaped ones remaining in the garden rescued just before the frost arrived) reminds me I must get my butter, brown sugar, and freezer containers ready...so written as I think about needing to wash out foil containers from our birthday boy Chinese food takeouts that left us with tonight's meal planovers....Yes, yes...a lesson in homemade, anyone???
ARG!
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