AIBU a generation that can’t be bothered.

Actually, I've just come in from the supermarket. In front of me, at the checkout, was an elderly couple. Mid 60s probably.

No basic meal ingredients. Ready meals. Ready prepared meat and veg packs. A frozen chicken / stuffing oven-ready thing. The only unprepped stuff was a pack of tomatoes and some grapes.

So not really a generational thing at all.

GillT57

Farzanah

I’m more amazed by the alcohol I see older people putting in their trolleys.

you were obviously the lady looking incredulously at my trolley full of beer and gin on Saturday........

Pensioner squanders fuel allowance on gin

Gin, beer, crisps, and two lemons.

You forgot the tonics!

As for knit-your-own, I did once read somewhere about knitting your own orgasm…

No change there then.
I'd probably give it up as a bad job half way through all that work.

I've stopped going to supermarkets. I do my shopping on line and they bring me the ready meals and the mashed potato and red wine if that's what I want. Why waste time shopping? And only the delivery person knows what I've bought!

Certainly not a generation thing both my son and daughter nearly always cook from scratch. We also cook from scratch as my husband is a bit of a foodie and wouldn’t entertain ready meals. But if I lived alone it would be different I absolutely hate cooking so the quicker to prepare the better

I don't know how people find time to "cook from scratch" and work full time.

MissAdventure

I don't know how people find time to "cook from scratch" and work full time.

Simple foods I guess. Doesn't take long to throw some chicken in the oven, with a couple of jacket potatoes.

GagaJo

Actually, I've just come in from the supermarket. In front of me, at the checkout, was an elderly couple. Mid 60s probably.

No basic meal ingredients. Ready meals. Ready prepared meat and veg packs. A frozen chicken / stuffing oven-ready thing. The only unprepped stuff was a pack of tomatoes and some grapes.

So not really a generational thing at all.

You could have been behind us, GagaJo! Were you in M&S? Marvellous ready made meals.

Certainly not generational. My DH does most of the cooking. Sometimes we have made from scratch meals but often a ready made meal is ideal depending on what we've been doing that day.

As for the rice. How I love microwave rice. All that bother gone. I always was useless at getting rice to be just the right firmness. It was either raw or mush.

Microwaveable has put an end to that trauma

MissAdventure

I don't know how people find time to "cook from scratch" and work full time.

Planning my daughter has it off to a tee although it’s much easier now she mainly works from home. The slow cooker is her friend
She also has some new fangle express cooker that will cook a risotto in four minutes
Cooking from scratch does not have to take hours my husband did toad in the hole last night in 30 mins

Chardy

Up at 6, out the house by 7, kids dropped off, work by 7.45, home by 5.30. Kids fed, out again to football practice 2 weekday evenings, plus Brownies. Get one doing homework, the other reading to me every day.
I started planning tomorrow's work when kids were in bed
And people telling me how easy it was being a teacher and only working 9 to 3pm
And obviously I should have been cooking from scratch too

That was a typical day for me as well - a single parent of three! I did not buy convenience ready meals though as personally I don’t like them but I did batch cook at weekends and bought frozen things like chicken, burgers, fish fingers, chips etc for the other days when we had after school activities.

I was very lucky that I earned enough as a senior manager not to worry too much about the food bill, a good job really as I had two boys with hollow legs! Had I been on a tight budget, I’m not sure how I would have coped, no way did I have time or energy to cook from scratch every night.

What happened to cookery lessons at school ? Domestic science it was known as.

It's just normal cooking, as far as I see it.
Unless people are growing and harvesting veg to make coleslaw, and fiddling around making sauces and so on.
It's just cooking.

Dickens

Schools used to teach kids to actually cook - I remember rushing down to the playground to hand over ingredients to my son who'd forgotten to mention it the night before...

Now they study Food Technology. Parents, pupils and teachers have expressed concern over the value of this part of the Curriculum, namely that too little time is devoted to learning how to cook nutritious meals and too much time given to 'investigations' and written work, and complex 'product development'.

So we shouldn't be surprised at what they put in their trolleys, and I'm not going to judge them anyway - no-one knows the lifestyle or commitments of a mother with a trolley containing instant mash or pouches of pre-cooked rice.

I was born in 1956 and I did not learn to make meals while at school in the 1960’s. I could however make perfect toast, lay a tray of china to make a pot of tea and make puff pastry! We occasionally made a casserole or a cake but not often.

It's 'Food tech' these days, Ellan.
My grandson does it.

I never made a meal in domestic science lessons, either.
We made Victoria sponges, and did things like laying out a tray for tea.

The point of the article was to see if a family of 4 could be fed on £60.
With this in mind I would have expected the journalist to have researched, done a meal plan and bought the best value & quality possible.
Buying prepared vegetables is not really budgeting

Yes, I see your point.
I do always check out the very cheapest option first, and usually go for it.

Farzanah

I’m more amazed by the alcohol I see older people putting in their trolleys.

Oh, it could be worse, they could simply have wasted their money!

Miss Adventure I worked full time had 3 children and a husband that was away a lot.

A slow cooker was a wonderful aid, I would prepare the food in the kitchen as the children sat at the table pretending to do their homework, in 15 minutes I can bang a chicken in the oven, prepare the veg and set the table.
Chicken out to rest, start off gravy, roasties in and veg on, that’s 25 minutes.
A nice glass of wine in the interval and hopefully some interaction with the children.

Yes, I have a chicken casserole in mine as we speak.
I just put in everything I can find and hope for the best.

Well I see your point to some extent, but we know nothing about this woman’s circumstances.
To be fair, there were veg and rice in her trolley which could have been full of crisps and biscuits.

Most of the food on the list requires to be warmed up and all of the 'real' alternatives can be cooked in a microwave. So only having a microwave is no excuse for not cooking

I am also deeply sceptical about this story that young people live such' busy, busy' lives young people these days and have no time to cook.

Ofcom reports that the average family spends up to 6 hours a day, watching tv, streaming and surfing the web. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9862695/Families-spending-nearly-six-hours-day-watching-TV-streaming-new-Ofcom-report-finds.html.

They have plenty of time to cook, talk to their parents and do all those other things they do not do because they lead such busy lives. They just need to spend less time stuck in front of a screen for non-work purposes and put the healthof their children ahead of themselves and their screen addiction.

The other consideration is that if your money has to be stretched you can't afford to waste it learning to cook - if you make a meal your kids won't eat, or it's undercooked or overcooked, you have to feed them something else.

Her article probably would not have been relevant to her own age group if she hadn't bought the things you describe.

Apart from that I do agree that it is odd that a generation that is so concerned (rightly) about the environment buys these kind of things, but do they have an option?

We taught our son to cook, but lots of his contemporaries have grown up in homes where they were never required to help with cooking, laundry or any other kind of housework.

Nor were they taught these skills at school.

So it is hardly surprising that they buy ready -made meals and powdered potato mash, is it?

I was never taught to cook- but we had no money- so I just got on with it. Take aways and ready foods I could have never afforded when we were young. And how long, and how difficult, is it to peel potatoes and mash them with a bit of butter and milk, or boil rice. Really. But veg in season and boil, same for fruit. Not really the end of the world.

Now I don't mind what people do, but then stop complaining about being short of money.