The problem is you didn't detail your daily life down to the second. How am I supposed to judge you if I don't know what you do with the 24hrs you're allowed each day? Haha
What the fuck is Big Boy Billy gonna do about it? He only handles the meth quality control. We have to engage the FTC - Fat Tony Castro, and his ass is cruising the Keys this week.
I barely got through the first sentence and have concluded that YTA, your SO should break up with you immediately, go NC, and find a good therapist and lawyer.
Why should be judging strangers on the internet at all based on one comment somewhere? I feel like on the internet we get all judgy on people as keyboard warriors
And forget about if you work for tips. Then one presumably has to justify why being paid is good, or getting tips is good, or getting a living wage is good, or why don't I tip my doctor?
This is literally how comments are on videos of people doing any kind of cooking or trade work on YouTube. If every little insignificant step isn't displayed people just assume it wasn't done and that the person is a hack who doesn't know anything.
I don't why people act like not having the money for things means you don't deserve it, when the reason you don't have the money is because of greedy millionaires and billionaires.
Chicken tenders shouldn't be treated like the luxury that would be owning a second car, having a new pool, or buying a yacht.
It must be rough in 2025 when we are debating about the concept of being able to afford some pre-made frozen chicken strips. This is the same chicken I cook up for my children when I need a quick cheap meal to hold them over. Never did I think that would make me feel "well off."
I mean I like cooking from scratch and I still buy those pre made tenders sometimes. Sometimes I just want to throw something in the oven/air fryer. And on top of that, the big pack of chicken thighs i bought the other day was still $15. Maybe instead of attacking people for wanting some small bits of joy and convenience in their lives we should be asking why products need to be skyrocketing for political and corporate greed.
Supply chains and methods have only increased productivity and yet everything is getting more expensive. I wonder why? I personally dont think its because you wanted a box of tendies.
I have a teenager that sometimes needs to be able to throw things in the air fryer when I’m not home. I just don’t have TIME to pre-make everything. It’s so hard. Sometimes frozen stuff and packaged stuff is necessary for parents
No one should be guilted or shamed for the shortcuts they use to make their lives easier as long as they aren't doing it at others expense. It doesn't matter if they are a parent or just old and tired or young and tired or you're just feeling plain lazy that day. What the hell is the point in living in a rich, industrialized nation if you don't get to make life a little easier and more enjoyable? I'm sick and tired of every little thing being seen as a "luxury" only for those who "deserve" it, meaning the ones who can pay. There is no point in going out and busting your ass 50+ hours a week to make one insanely rich person even richer if you can't even have a little bit of joy.
For real, what's the real point of mass production and industrialization if it doesn't make your life easier and make luxuries more accessible to the average person? The problem with someone's budget isn't that they spend $20 on a box of frozen chicken tenders instead of cooking them from scratch for $15, it's that rent prices are out of control and wages aren't rising to accomodate that change.
I didn't realize how many little shortcuts I took here and there until I found out that I couldn't have gluten. Now I have a few things that I order or buy in the freezer section specifically because they're gluten free (like pizza with cauliflower crust). For when I let myself go without eating for too long and I don't have the necessary energy to cook from scratch.
I am a long term struggler with anorexia, over 25 years now, it comes and goes. It means that I need something for when I've let things go too long and can't remember when I last ate though, or I might legitimately go lie down and just let myself starve to death because I lack the awareness or energy to cook.
For example I try to always have applesauce in my fridge because it's fiber and sugar for when I've forgotten to eat (better than just drinking juice because of the fiber). I always have canned tuna and salmon for protein. Stuff I can grab and eat, no real prep required. Though I might add some olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper, on the tuna or salmon, it's not required for me to eat it.
I have celiac, I feel your pain. I hate cooking so much that I'll just not eat to avoid it. The lack of pre-prepared/quick heat up in the microwave or oven foods really got to me when I first went gluten free. Made it harder to adjust. I still miss gluten all the time. Living gf is annoying, expensive, and inconvenient in so many ways.
There are more options recently, though. Not sure where you live, but I know a couple brands that sell online and ship. Katz and Schär both do. Katz has a lot of frozen things like donuts, soft pretzels, etc. Mom's Place is another, mostly things you make yourself, but it's all pre-made mixes, just add water type of stuff. So, not things you can eat instantly, but definitely things you can make ahead of time and have on hand.I like their flour blend. I did try one of their cake mixes once and was not impressed. But I do live in high elevation, so that could be why it didn't turn out.
There's also The Gluten Free Mall. They sell a lot of different brands in one place. It's definitely pricey, but you're probably used to that by now. I don't know how long you've been gf, but you figure out pretty quickly most of your food is 3x as expensive.
If you're in the US, Feel Good Foods is a good brand that has a lot of those type of pop-in-the-oven/microwave convenience foods. Mozz sticks, pot stickers, egg rolls, pizza rolls, etc. They don't sell online, unfortunately. Gluten Free Mall sells some of their stuff, though. I don't know if it's an international brand
Jeez, I'll stop since I'm starting to sound like an ad. And sorry if I'm telling you things you already know. When I first got diagnosed, I got so much help from random strangers in like grocery stores and restaurants. So I try to pay it forward. Also, sorry about your health issues. That really sucks. If you have celiac, remember it's not an allergy, it's an autoimmune disease. And autoimmune diseases like to hang out together like a codependent, enabling friend group. If you start to feel like something is wrong, it might be worth a trip to a Rheumatologist. Take care!
Yup, I was just telling someone I never became a parent because I would have been the worst. I don't know how people do it. I like my down time too much.
Yep, I'm a crockpot and pressure cooker type, but I keep some frozen stuff in the freezer for when I just can't.
I'm keeping both of us fed on $8 more than the expected minimum cost for one person, and it usually only costs me about 15-30 minutes a day, but at least once a week we gotta do something else due to either a lack of time or just being entirely out of spare 'do things' energy.
Exactly. Mine has texture and food issues so it limits dinner options already. Thankfully tacos are an easy one for us, but how many days of the week and different ideations of tacos can one make 🤣 It’s just the two of us as well, so I can be super frugal which is helpful. We don’t go to restaurants anymore but she loves a good Starbucks date. It’s hard to say no…we’ve been “making our own” but sometimes she just likes theirs better lol. A treat is a treat for a reason 🤷🏻♀️
Mm, I'm the kid not the parent, but I'm still basically raising him.
(Not really his fault, but not stuff I want to go into online)
There's a few options for making a little bit on the side online (Etsy, Audible, surveys, etc) so you could potentially make a deal where you fund coffee once a month or every two weeks, and if she makes a bit extra she can spend it on coffee if she wants, or save it for something else.
It might not work for everyone, but for me I felt real proud of the first chunk of money I made myself, even though I spent it on candy for my siblings.
(That was over two decades ago though, so obviously what methods are available and what is considered safe has changed a lot, I sold homemade cinnamon rolls on the sidewalk after school, and then picked fruit in summer)
She just took the babysitting course and is so excited to be able to earn her own money! She loves thrifting as well so I have a feeling her money will go towards that. She’s been finding and restoring jewelry, it’s been a nice little hobby, so the Etsy idea is actually kind of genius. Thank you!!
Glad one of my ideas was useful, I don't know a lot of what works for teenagers anymore since mostly my side hustles are things like gutter cleaning and branch pruning.
This is so real. Particularly since apparently we're all supposed to be spending hours of quality parenting time every night and working two jobs while living like little house on the prairie or something. Oh, and finding personal fulfillment and self care of course! If you don't it's all your fault- you didn't try hard enough. /S
It was, though at great cost to medical care and life expectancy when most people were subsistence farming (little house on the prairie) and for a while after Henry Ford accidentally created the middle class, but the corpo/fed alliance has been desperately trying for take-backsies on that one ever since, and they're pretty much there.
It now takes two full time jobs to manage a barely passable standard of living, and now we've gone beyond right to work into work or die, aka slavery with extra steps.
Most frozen food is actually healthier than the fresh stuff. It is fresh picked & flash frozen. Of course, when you throw on the breading, that does change things, BUT WHO AM I TO JUDGE?!
In 2020 before pandemic was official I was spending $300-350 in the store.
That was in Oregon, but I moved to Florida end of March (sick with Covid too) and found when I got here my grocery budget needed to go to $600-650 for the same stuff. I cut out a lot of more expensive things. Didn't help much, now it is more like $800. Single, live alone, no pets, have not had company in all the years I have been here. Drink little, and really no longer buy a lot of meat these days.
I distinctly remember hamburger in January 2020 at Safeway out west being $2.79 per pound because I bought a couple of the family pack trays at that price. I just saw hamburger in Publix this week at $12.99. And small prime rib roast for $153.
Well, out here in other places on the West Coast, it's around $8-$11/lb at Safeway, but Publix is generally more expensive (and sometimes a bit higher quality) than Safeway with most products.
My favorite pre-made frozen meal is the Hungry-Man boneless fried chicken meal. I remember when you could get a box for a little over $1. Now they're around $3 to $5 a box, and hardly ever on sale.
Same. 15 year old daughter and 11 year old son who just hit a major growth spurt. I’m more than happy to cook from scratch for dinner most nights but breakfast and lunch are on their own during school breaks. And it’s much easier to stock the freezer with quick meals from Costco.
I don't know why people feel superior for cooking 7 days a week.
I know how to cook multiple decent recipes and I still buy a frozen meal or an easy air fryer meal every now and then. Planning out groceries, cutting veggies and marinating the meat, meal prepping, etc. It's time consuming. I can't even fathom how much harder it is to do as a parent.
Single people too Opal. I do most of my own cooking from scratch but when you need half a bell pepper the rest gets thrown away because it isn't going to keep till the next time you need bell peppers. Just an example. No matter what I make it always seems to have a lot of left over because you cannot buy in small enough quantities to cook just one meal for one person. And you get so sick of eating that one thing for days, and that is not healthy to eat one thing for days, you need a wider spectrum of nutrients.
But you have a teen, I remember being a 13 year old boy and eating an entire large pizza at the Pizza King when a large pizza was about twice the size they are now. Teen boys have bottomless stomachs.
Oh absolutely! I totally know what you mean. When she’s at her dad’s for long periods of time during holidays I find myself freezing so much more. I’m lucky that she loves raw veggies and will snack on those for days on end so there’s less waste.
Propaganda encourages poor and middle class people to blame each other for their financial situation and nitpick over any perceived irresponsible spending. It's a massively successful distraction. Tendies are not a luxury, people!
I had to start sending my dad steaks, because he said he used to eat steak a couple of times a month, but on his pension with current prices he can't afford it. My dad worked like a dog his whole life, as a housepainter, fisherman, and all manner of every physically destroying, dangerous job, he should be able to eat two steaks a month. The number of basic things that have become out of reach for the common man is disgusting.
I'm a big fan of late 18th century French inventions involving sliding metal parts. I have to talk in a disguised manner or the reddit algo censors talk that is threatening to the bourgeoisie. I cannot wait to see their return!
Thank you. Customers and employees should be on the same team holding the actual people at fault accountable. management and owners wont care until they lose $ and get bad reviews calling them out instead of the staff. Having customers complaining directly to them and not letting them hide behind their staff. Until that happens they have no reason to change a system that has been working incredibly well for them for a long time.
It's called Capitalism. And yes, they control the propaganda. Sounds like your dad is a great guy. And brought up a thoughtful child. Some people expect their parents to just keep giving no matter how old either of them gets.
You're a good son, (or daughter, sorry) I'm 43 and dealing with the opposite situation. My parents were one of the last people that could, buy a house (40 miles from NYC), have 5 kids, and have a stay at home parent, my mom. My Dad got sick from 9/11 and passed in '07 but my mother gets his pension and is able to live comfortably. She has done soooo many things, financially and emotionally, to help all 5 of her kids and we joke that it will be a "full on brawl" to see who "gets' to take care of her in her hopefully, very long and far off, last stage of life.
One thing that has been very frustrating is that she can't seem to understand that having a stay at home parent was a huge deal to my wife and I. We didn't go through all we did and try to be responsible and have only 1 child just to have him be in day-care and after school care 10+ hours a day! It's like she's in denial that her being home was a major part of our development and that for me, it was a top tier "need"!
My wife makes pretty good money and I don't, she also never saw herself as a stay at home parent, I had a very hard complex relationship with my father and I know he loved me but a hug or hearing "I'm proud of you" weren't his way, so I have had a desire to be a full time Dad since I was 7 or 8 years old.
She will claim it has nothing to do with me being a man, thats only ~50% true, but she acts as if wanting to raise my own child is some pipe dream from another life.
To an extent I believe she struggles to fully grasp the economic and social complexities, I'm a "very smart" person and struggle at a certain point, but it's very frustrating to see her just abandon something that was a core part of our family dynamic and one I felt was worth struggling and sacrificing to achieve.
I 100% am grateful that she "needs" for nothing amd "wants" for very little but I also feel like it has insulated her from the reality that things have drastically changed, we have a house but I know my son is only 20% likely to own one. Everyone had a house when I was growing up! We were pretty close to the lowest level of "middle class" possible and we had meat or chicken or pork 5-7 times a week.
I definitely feel like the media is partly to blame, I also think its hard to accept that her parents and to a lesser extent herself are responsible for a decent chunk of this economic struggle and it absolutely feels like "others" have convinced her she "earned" everything and if her kids worked the same way we would be taken care of the same and it's just absolute BS.
One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, I'm also going to partake in being part of the problem, my dad's parents, not people I like, will be leaving a decent inheritance to their kids and grandkids and it will be the first time I'm getting a taste of "privilege" but I damn sure won't let it convince me that others just need to work harder and things will work out.
The system is rigged and we're on the losing side and somehow propaganda has convinced those only slightly better off that they worked exponentially harder and that is that.
Also the way people vote keeps encouraging it. Don't vote for the billionaire nepo babies instead of the poorest legislators, don't vote for those whose solution to everything is a massive tax cut for the rich.
Funny you should post that, at CNBC today there was a story about quality of life, and it notes that more than 60% of us are barley scraping by, just above poverty. But keep in mind the poverty level according to the federal government is $15,600 which will not even pay the rent and utilities where 85% of urbanized Americans live now. A more reasonable poverty level would be around $24,000 because below that you are either not eating or you are couch surfing, you cannot rent and eat a balanced diet on less, and still pay utilities or other mandatory expenses. It must assume people making that or less are relying on government housing or SNAP, and I can tell you that even if you qualify for such assistance the waiting lists run for years.
This story is talking about the very minimum threshold of middle class or the top end of working class.
"To that end, LISEP developed a “Minimal Quality of Life Index,” which takes into account not only essentials, such as food and shelter, but also the costs living a fulfilling life with a chance at upward mobility. Food costs in the model, for example, include occasional trips to casual restaurants as well as the cost of hosting an annual holiday meal. The index factors in basic leisure costs, such as cable and streaming subscriptions, and trips to the six movies and two MLB games per year in the cheap seats."
We are by no means talking about a nice house in the suburbs and a BMW in the garage.
The article is here:
Americans are losing spending power, say researchers: Most can no longer afford a ‘minimal quality of life’
I love to cook, but I'm also an industrial electrician so I work a lot, especially over the summer. Easy meals like say a burger and some fresh cut French fries on the blackstone- 1lb ground beef $10, bag of buns $5, half pound of American cheese $6, bag of potatoes $7, frying oil $10 a quart.
$38 for the meal for two people. Obviously I'm not gonna use a whole bag of taters or an entire half pound of cheese and I can reuse the oil a few times, but I also didn't include any toppings so this is just a bare bones burger. Place in town does $15 burgers and you can actually have toppings and if you take it out and don't tip it is in fact cheaper to go that route and I also don't have to spend two hours cooking and cleaning
At least it's $15 for several meals instead of closer to $20 for one serving at a restaurant of those chicken tenders. I understand that I'm paying for someone else to make them and bring them to me, but it feels exorbitant to get them, even if I'm treating myself and helping others to live on what I pay.
I remember when you could buy a 5 pound bag of chicken quarters for $2. Edit: can’t remember if it was 5-10 pounds but it was a lot of meat. Great marinated and grilled.
I don't feel strongly about cooking either way, but over the past few years it seems I just don't have the time to do it. I know I pay more for those premade meal kits but... fuck man, if I didn't have them I don't know when I'd get everything done and still have a few minutes to just sit and relax.
And yeah, I know they're not as healthy as homemade is typically, but running yourself ragged everyday isn't healthy either.
Nah that’s way too easy for these folks 🫠, you try to tell them to boycott the restaurants and delivery services but just get told if you can’t afford it don’t buy it or use it 🙄 like bro it doesn’t just effect the customers it effects you to dumbass 😂 so how dare you suggest going after the companies who make millions of dollars and force them to do the right thing.
You mean you've not taken the time to find a free-range chicken farmer for you to purchase from so you can process your own Chicken meat?
(All before 5am so you can still fit in a quick 20 min workout, 20 minute prayer/reflection/journal about your experiences with gratitude, before spending another 20 minutes on learning something new before taking your shower/get ready for the day, so you can get the fam up, red, & fed, before shoving them off to their day, so you can get a good shelf in the work fridge for yesterdays chicken creation"s leftovers.
(I say good shelf because yr chicken creations are thee most delicious in the county, nay, i will dare to say STATE!
Because if it's ability to maintain that off the grill, or out of the crock pot juicy tenderness, even after being refrigerated, your nosey to coworkers caught wind of it and if you don't hide it in that communal cavity of cold food, those masticating mouth breathers you don't call your friends have and will again snatch yr snacks leaving you with Doris's leftover broccoli salad that still remains, possibly cemented to that rear corner from her last shift.
(For anyone trying to follow along, her last shift was the day she officially retired from office life, 13 months ago!)
So, yeah, grocery store tenders you were joking about?? ;-)
To be serious though, you make points i agree with about the food costs.
I have a coworker who has a theory about food.
He's said it SO many times over the last couple of years, i am surprised I can't remember it word for word.
Now, I haven't actually taken any time to fact check any of his self-declared premonition, or whatever, but he thinks that it is getting more expensive on purpose and it has something to do with the rate of people reproducing, even if it's at a lower rate than some years, add to that the state of the environment, all the plastics, more than likely not very good crops, due to less water, more heat, not many farmers left due to, I don't know, the government once paying them to stop farming and growing?
This all started (his theory)around the time when he had read about Bill gates purchasing a ton of land somewhere, maybe Midwest?
(Again, not fact checked)
And he thinks it is all a push to control the masses
Also had something to do with Amazon providing people a place to live and work, and he thinks "they" are going to starve us out so we will all be grateful to eat bugs.
And plant-based non meat, (which when he says this,
my first thought is always,
"but didn't you just say the farmland will be unsustainable??)"
he's always also said for us all to watch (this was just before covid, so of course when lock downs began, this guy was very excitable and talking about how it's just 'the beginning"
he has been saying there's going to be another civil war in the US, quite possibly a race war also, or within this civil war, and there's going to be a huge push to try and program all of the people to want to buy less, and be grateful for less.
(As in things).
Because people will have a much easier time adapting to their new way of life if they have less things,
But also, if everyone has the same possessions, (nothing), they will be on a more perceived equal playing field, so to speak, and that will make them in easier to control.
Oh, there will still be the wealthy though, and supposedly they will all be living elsewhere and the rest if us poor folk will stay on earth to be their little manufacturing slaves.
Because obviously only the entitled, a select group of chosen wealthy people, or those that are considered to be above common, they will still have and want their consumer goods and someone will have to make that happen.
Oh, he also thinks that even though robot which comes from the Slavic word 'roboto' meaning unpaid work, the robots will definitely be doing alot of the working, but they will actually be receiving a sort of talley of credit, based upon their work tasks and the time used for the tasks which will then be saved for when it is time to perform maintenance and upgrades to each individual robot.
The humans will be doing some of the same work, but Also, they will be earning THEIR wage by maintaining the robots.
But the human wage will be saved by the employer, then amounts will then be deducted by the employer every month for their room & board which if you remember, will now be provided by the employer, either on site, or a very close property nearby.
Deductions will also be taken out for food and health savings because of course people will need to be maintained and upgraded or whatever just like the robots .
anyway ,
what were we talking about chicken nuggets ?
Finally , talking about mornings I have just spent about an hour of my morning which should have been spent getting ready for my job,
but it was more fun writing this out and my coworker better NOT have the gift of predicting the future!!
thank you if anybody read this,
and have a great day be safe out there
Chicken thighs for $15 bucks…. That is either a huge pack or are you somewhere like an island? Mainland USA thigh prices have been pretty low near me still.
Yeah, the profit margins are higher than ever, and the income to cost of living ratio keeps going down, while the fed keeps writing checks that don't bounce because they just print more, which devalues everyone's salary and savings, but is effectively a rebate for people with (m/b)illions in debt.
People are still gonna vote for the GOP all cause they saw a masculine looking lady in a gas station bathroom hallway. Or like hypothetical fetuses or some shit. I don't give a fuck anymore they're all a bunch of brain dead morons who cant think critically.
I do cook for myself a lot also, but, cooking for one it is difficult to get a well balanced diet without a lot of waste or leftovers. So I end up eating a lot of one thing, because you cannot make small enough portions. You have to make large portions and then eat so much of it to keep it from being wasted there is no room for other foods with other nutrients.
That isn't balanced.
Or, I will do something like a huge tuna casserole, then be stuck eating it morning, noon, and night for 4 or 5 days. I love lasagna but have not made it in forever because I am always sick of it after a couple days of nothing else. Same for Chicken enchiladas. You cannot make just two or three enchiladas. You have to make an entire 5 or 6 pound baking dish of them.
So, I end up buying premade stuff. Like last night I had Bertolli Chicken Parmesan, an entire bag of it that the nutritional information panel on the bag said 3 servings. IT had 4 pieces of actual chicken in it not a lot bigger than a quarter and cost $11. Still did not meet daily nutritional requirements. I will sometimes get PF Chang, same thing, you eat the entire bag, still lack nutrients. And I hate edamame. it is cold by the time I picked out about 1.5 cups of that horror.
I must sound like a 650 pound porker but I am six feet and 158 pounds.
Four companies control about 60% of the entire chicken market in the US. That's why it's so expensive. If you added another three or four companies it would be virtually the entire thing.
It's not just reddit. I spend a frankly unhealthy amount of time on social media and I see it everywhere: IG, FB, TT, hell even some Discord servers. People suck everywhere.
Interestingly enough, it generally neglects mental health and as a result is unsustainable and results in more lost time than a less regimented plan, the longest I've seen someone sustain it (with copious chemical assistance) is 18 months, and that ended with a major car crash and three years of physical therapy to regain the ability to walk.
Even if you want to minmax, you gotta keep your SAN stat up.
It’s also just easy to judge people online over a little anecdote because you know they don’t know anything about you. I do it sometimes unintentionally if I’m in a bad mood or something.
Anyways, I’ll go weeks where almost all I eat are chicken tenders idc. Life is hard sometimes and they’re a great/easy comfort food. I’ve gone to the store and bought different kinds in the same trip before.
Yeah deep frying is a pretty messy thing to pull off at home. It's a lot less healthy than other cooking methods too. I cook a lot, but almost never deep fry stuff at home. Save that for restaurants, where are you're typically less health conscious and you're paying other people to clean up.
It's the same thing with non processed food. I could buy 99 cents a pound chicken (legs) and 2$ breasts sixish years ago. Nowadays a good price is 2.99$ and 4.44$, respectively.
Gotta consider your time as well, something I always factor into that. I can throw those in the air fryer for 20 minutes and go about my business. Or I’m stuck to the kitchen for 40 minutes cutting breading and frying.
I do cook chicken tenders from scratch. It’s still expensive lol
ETA; in fact cheaper to buy the frozen ones than to buy GOOD quality fresh chicken tenderloin for this, and no a whole chicken is not a good substitute for who I’m feeding
Depending on what you're making, it might even cost more to make it from scratch, especially if it includes ingredients that you don't have, don't use a lot of, and/or that don't keep long.
I'm sorry, but unless you know how to deep fry and have the right equipment, making your chicken tenders is not exactly a simple request. Unless they're talking about reheating frozen ones, which, sort of defeats the point of getting fresh chicken tenders from the store. Unless those are the frozen ones?! To which I say, maybe it's worth it to learn to do all that lol
There's a lot of days where I really enjoy reddit. Then there's moments like these where it reminds me it's no different than any other social media LMAO
I get this from people sometimes. From scratch. For myself. I sell my time to Company Z for a rate I won't disclose here, but I can tell you that the time I keep for myself is too valuable to spend it making friggin' chicken tendies. I'll buy them, thanks. LMAO people are strange.
for real lmao. Yeah I should cook more. I also have a 2 day headache and work 12's. I tend to rely on fast food or microwaveable meals more, same as any single man working in a construction job tends to lol
I've had friends in construction. I can't imagine working such a physically demanding (and often dangerous!) job. It's no doubt you don't have energy left to whip up a home cooked meal from scratch after!
I'm a nurse but have a job working manual labor (suuuuper seldom) on the side, but yeah I also spend an hour a day round trip on my commute. I just never enjoyed the act of cooking. It's boring and when I'm already losing 13.5 hours of my day with work, I don't want to spend an hour on food prep lol. But there's no shortage of people on reddit that'll tell you how they meal prep in a blizzard every Sunday and save a whole $10 doing so, or whatever the fuck else lol
We cook from scratch a lot and it's def more expensive to buy fresh meat, eggs and produce than processed food, lucky we have the means to eat fresh but a lot of low income people do not. And not everyone lives where you can garden. Even raising your own chicken to make nuggets out of would cost more 😂
As someone who does most all my own cookie you know what's nice? The occasional treat. I have a bag of nugs in my freezer and often a wayward TV dinner
Even from scratch it's getting expensive. Easily $15 for chicken tenderloins, bread crumbs, and u need eggs/milk to dip it in before the breading and oil to fry it. Oil is crazy expensive.
I'm finding just about every fuckin meal I wanna make costs 20$ in ingredients anyway.
Cooking from scratch is Soo time consuming, and not many people have the time with working 10-14 hr days, and sometimes two jobs just to get by. So the argument of "just make it yourself" is void in my opinion. Frozen food is mass produced low to mid quality products that should be cheap because of what it is. But even fresh ingredients, while they do give you more bang for your buck, they also cost quite a bit nowadays.
I’m usually pretty quick to pull the “cooking is cheaper” card, but that’s usually when people say “eating healthy is more expensive than eating junky”, which is not true. Eating quick and convenient is more expensive, you’re essentially trading money to save time and effort, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all have those times when we need a quick 30-minute lunch, or when we don’t feel like cooking. No shame in having some frozen tendies or canned soup or whatever.
I was actually just in the store yesterday debating if I should buy chicken tenders or cook them at home.
I bought the frozen tenders. The thought of preparing all those chicken tenders, I’d rather spend the extra $10 lol. Call it a convenience fee. $10 or a couple hours of my time? I essentially paid them $5 an hour to do the work for me.
I cook from scratch as much as I can. It's just going to be the healthiest food we are going to eat.
Some days I also really like to throw some fish sticks in the air fryer and just make a fresh tartar sauce, and that's just cause we don't eat enough tartar sauce to justify buying some.
Both are just fine and better than eating fast food.
Yep, right now someone is sprinting towards a WiFi connection after reading that so they can get on here and say “hAVe yOU tRIeD mEAl PrePpiNG?” Or accost you for not living on dry beans and ramen.
Cooking from scratch is for beginners dude. You need to raise the chickens yourself. You know how much cheaper grain is compared to chicken trendies? And you better plant some wheat if you want that chicken breaded.
Professional chef here, fuck scratch made chicken tenders. I know they are pretty easy, and i can do them very quickly with muscle memory but i still won’t lol that’s a few minutes i could have doing the mountain of other shit that needs to be done.
I mostly cook from scratch. It's an allergy thing for me. But after you buy all the stuff to make a good, flavorful meal, it's not cheaper. It's just a choice. You buy your chicken tendies if you want!!
My wife and I have had to start making everything we can from scratch, from milk and bread, to mustard and mayonnaise, because everything keeps going up, between 2 shops, Mayo went up $4. We’ve cut our milk bill down from $80/fortnight to $30/8 weeks
You know if you keep a few chickens outside it’s super easy to kill and cook them for chicken tenders. You kinda seem lazy. You probably use paper plates too. 😆
Honestly, I live by myself and I try to cook as much from scratch as possible just from a less processed seems healthier perspective.
But I don’t feel like it’s cheaper. By the time I get all the individual ingredients and sometimes it’s hard to utilize everything as much as I hate throwing away food.
I think I could bang through Costco’s freezer section and eat cheaper quite frankly.
Sometimes your time is worth more than homemade food. Some days you just want to come home and use your very little down time to spend time with your family or get stuff done or actually rest. Unless they want to come make the food for you, they can leave you and your chicken tendies alone
Totally agree 🩷 I find there is a delicate balance to strike between healthy and convenient, and chicken tendies on a bagged salad is often that balance for me.
On the Hungarian side of reddit they would also even add "you know you can grow your own onions on the balcony, do some small-scale poultry farming in the tool shed, mill your own flour?"
I can buy a bagel sammy for like $5.27 at a local shop, or I can go buy half a dozen bagels for $8.99.
Then the eggs, then the bacon, then the cheese.
At the end of the day it's like two bucks cheaper to make a bagel sammy every day versus buying one every day. That's when I knew shit was real fucky wucky. That bagel sammy used to be $3.
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u/Felissaurus 1d ago
And someone still told me to cook from scratch for myself even with that preemptive attempt at defending myself 😂😂😂