AIBU a generation that can’t be bothered.

Yep.

Perhaps the journalist should have been accompanied by a home economist.

OPhere I will not apologise for either thread.

Firstly the one regarding the best meal was literally that, a sandwich on top of a hill or a gourmet experience.

I did have the meal of a lifetime and it was expensive, It was our Xmas gift to each other.
Food and cooking is my passion,what is obscene about that?

This thread has provoked discussion isn’t that what this site is all about?

GSM I seem to remember you telling us about an expensive car you once purchased, did you think about all the people using food banks then?

I think the issue here is that people should have choice. Some people enjoy cooking and others don't. Both of those things are ok.

These days, those who don't enjoy it have other options that were not available in the past. Those options may or may not be to everyone's personal taste, but for a busy parent who works full-time, doesn't have a car and doesn't have the luxury of living next to a market with cheap fresh fruit and veg, they may be a godsend, and that's ok.

When it stops being ok is when people start to judge one another for their choices, or for what circumstances dictate that they do - sometimes choice doesn't come into it. I mentioned my friend upthread. She could make a cheap and nutritious meal easily, but getting her hands on the ingredients was a challenge. If you are feeding three under fives and 20% of your food bill would go on a weekly taxi to the supermarket, or on a bus every other day, so that you can carry the bags home, you are more likely to fall back on the local shop, even if it is more likely to sell frozen chicken pies than fresh chicken and vegetables.

As for people spending large sums on eating out - IMO that is entirely irrelevant. Unless we all lived on the same basic budget and any surplus had to go to a fund to feel the 'less fortunate' we all make choices about how to spend any extra money we have. It is no more or less ethical to spend on restaurants than on bibles or anything else. In a capitalist society, the vast majority of us has more than we strictly 'need', and it's hypocritical to pretend otherwise or judge others for spending on things that we might not buy - we will be buying things of which others could judge us, too.

In happier news, my friend's life improved over time, and she likes nothing more than eating in expensive restaurants when she can - she went to The Ivy for her 60th birthday celebration .

Sago

OPhere I will not apologise for either thread.

Firstly the one regarding the best meal was literally that, a sandwich on top of a hill or a gourmet experience.

I did have the meal of a lifetime and it was expensive, It was our Xmas gift to each other.
Food and cooking is my passion,what is obscene about that?

This thread has provoked discussion isn’t that what this site is all about?

GSM I seem to remember you telling us about an expensive car you once purchased, did you think about all the people using food banks then?

That car was bought was 17 years ago and I still have it and intend to keep it until I can no longer drive. Why dredge it up now Sago? It was a good while back that I mentioned it. What a good memory you have. Why are you being so unpleasant? Because I didn’t join in your ‘best meal’ game? It’s like being back in the school playground.

When I was first married in the 70s I didn't have a clue how on earth I was supposed to produce a meal. We lived on tins of potatoes, boil in the bag meals and tinned meat balls etc for the first year!
My Mum had never shown my sister or I how to cook and we weren't interested. I cringe when I remember how young and unworldly I was!

When newly married and very hard up, I worked full time, husband was a very busy farm manager working long hours and needed his dinner fast so he could go out again.
I ran a 2nd hand chest freezer (remember Bejams?) I planned the menus for a week or more, shopped to the list and then never had to think about what to do for a meal because I batch cooked the basics at weekends: lots of mince for example, portions frozen down in flattened plastic bags for quick thawing, and then you could do a 5 minute transformation into cottage pie or spag bog.
Cooked chicken for curries, lamb and beef for stews and goulash and more curries. Whipped out of the freezer the night before, veg also pre-prepped and ready for me coming home.
We also shared bulk purchases with friends - so if someone had been to the Fruit Market and bought a stone of ripe tomatoes, we would split them and they would be cooked down to a pulp and frozen.
Ready meals then were awful - Vesta curries, anyone? And as for Angel delight or instant Whip - ugh: shades of Sundays at boarding school when the cook was off!
Whilst my mother brooked no helpers in the kitchen and delighted in telling me I was doing it wrong, I did learn to make a (disgusting) veg soup at school and rock cakes; they also taught the invaluable life-skill of smocking!
It wasn't until I was a student that I began to teach myself to learn to cook. I didn't even know how you bought potatoes let alone cooked them so would probably have chosen ready-mashed!

i think this is all related to the decline in religion or religious practice.
value judgements that once would have been about serious sins are now smugly put upon those notorious and evil livers, > pun intended<, who dare to brazenly purchase grated, i say grated !
cheese in full view of their neighbours, to the scandal of all the upright.

Past posts are being dragged up here. I have just been castigated by maggieme for doing such a thing and told it was against GNrules.
It strikes me there is an inner circle on Gransnet who back each other whatever and change or try to change the rules when it suits them.
How has a post about shopping turned into one about cars?

Yammy further back you said you regret contributing to the Meal of a Lifetime thread because some people are relying on foodbanks. I also contributed to that thread and don't regret it - it wasn't about foodbanks or budgets so there was no insensitivity or boasting in my opinion.

Many posters talk about how their huge garden is too much for them and they now have to employ a gardener; or their 5-bedroom house is too large and they want to downsize - is that insensitive to those who are renting poky flats with not even a balcony?

And are we not to have threads about husbands who make a mess in the kitchen because there are members who are widowed or divorced; and no talk of holidays or weekends away as some are living on pension credit?

We have to talk about something, unless it's all to be about grandchildren, as lovely as they are!

That’s fine but I do object to a poster deciding to ask if I thought about reliance on foodbanks when I bought my last car - a post written ages ago. Had she just been waiting to give me a poke in the eye? Sheer pettiness.

Yes, I think it should be open to all discuss what we want,though perhaps we should put a bit more thought into what and when we do it. To post about a meal of a lifetime costing £200+ only to complain that people are getting lazy and wasting money a few weeks later so that it is still fresh in our minds is cutting it a bit short in my opinion. Which I am allowed to have.

Indeed you are Yammy.?

Yammy The point of my thread was that this was a JOURNALIST trying to see if she could feed a family of four for a week on £60 yet she bought foods that saved time but cost more!

I was amazed she didn’t plan the shop better to provide more nutrition for her family, I put it down to the fact that even though this was an experiment for just one week she couldn’t be bothered to peel, chop, grate and mash!

I thought the journalist was pretending she was a married woman with two children, consequently had no clue but of course - she might be in RL.

I’m just gobsmacked that a journalist on a local paper can afford to feed two kids at all. The pay is…not good.

She's probably about 18, AmberSpyglass, and was sent out on her first assignment alone.

who looked after her children?

I admit I haven't read the whole thread'
But I judge my adult children by different standards.
Mainly, they work longer hours, food/ meals are in a different category of needs from ours in the last century.
It's like apples and oranges -we can't compare.

Sago

Yammy The point of my thread was that this was a JOURNALIST trying to see if she could feed a family of four for a week on £60 yet she bought foods that saved time but cost more!

I was amazed she didn’t plan the shop better to provide more nutrition for her family, I put it down to the fact that even though this was an experiment for just one week she couldn’t be bothered to peel, chop, grate and mash!

I hope you complained on the letters page in the rag.

Good attempt to backtrack Sago but unfortunately it is too late to unwrite your thread title and there is only one way to read
AIBU a generation that can’t be bothered

Not a “journalist” but a generation.
When in a hole……..

I honestly couldn't afford to buy ready prepared vegetables or meals
As a pensioner living alone on a very limited income I do the best I can. Everything is cooked from scratch.
But I do have the time others don't.
I eat well. Because I know how to cook I can eat healthier and more cheaply than most which is just as well given the cost of everything. It allows me to put the heating on sometimes. I can pay my bills. I can keep my dignity and my head above water.
For now at least

They should have trolleys with hoods on them, I think, to save nose ointments from looking.

Most of your comments are thoughtful and not judgemental. My generation (born 1937) had to cook most things from scratch or go hungry. During the war, meals were usually shopped for every day and cooked according to what was available, however much effort it took. Supermarkets and convenience foods only started to appear from the late 1950s. I had no cookery lessons at school being in the "academic" stream. But my mother, a skilled cook, taught me a lot. Think back another three generations and often chickens, for example, had to be plucked and dressed at home, before being cooked. That's really doing things from scratch. Now in my eighties, I buy mashed potato and ready sliced frozen onions when I can. Cooking for one is a real bore.

That's a really good point, Alison.

My grandmother (born 1912) used to see tinned tomatoes and teabags as convenience foods, and apart from fish and chips from the chippy, which she loved, wouldn't have dreamed of doing anything but cook everying from scratch.

(I wonder where that phrase comes from, incidentally? Scratch what? )