Ready-made goodness!

Apparently people imagine me spending most of my time behind the cooker and never buying anything ready-made!

I guess it's partly true: I do like to potter around in my kitchen at the weekends and I do spend a lot of my free time making or preparing food. I also enjoy the challenge of making things myself rather than buying them at (often) extortionate prices. But that's only half the story, because I'm often quite lazy and I'm heavily into comfort eating which, I find, is better if you don't have to cook first!

For a start, see my earlier post about pancakes. I don't see buying ready-made pancakes as a terrible thing even though they weren't anywhere near as good as my own ones. I never have much time for breakfast so I often resort to little pancakes I can sling in the toaster or cereal bars I can eat on the train.

I'm also a huge fan of oven chips. Well ... any chips, really!! But having had a deep fat fryer and having made my own chips regularly at one time, I know full well that it's not worth the sacrifice of the whole house smelling of oil just for fresh chips. The oven-ready variety will do just fine (and they're far healthier) with a pie (ready-made) and baked beans (from a tin!) in the evening when I get home from work.

I'd say it's all about getting a balance: some things aren't worth the effort of making from scratch when there's such good ready-made versions available at a good price from the supermarket. I enjoy cooking but I don't want to be spending all my spare time pickling onions or rubbing flour and butter together for the 'perfect' crumble mix or boiling chicken carcasses to make stock. I have other pastimes - such as writing this blog...!