When I was asked if I could do some blogging on Real Food, one of the suggestions was to blog about what convenience foods I find acceptable, or good. I’ve been mulling that one over, because my idea of convenience foods are probably not the same as many others ideas. For me, convenience foods are things like canned tomato products- including marinara sauce which I sometimes make from scratch, and sometimes buy. A convenience product for me is peanut butter, instead of making my own, which we definitely don’t like.
As I mentioned the other day, we do buy, from time to time, boxed mac-n-cheese. In those cases we will only buy Kraft or Annie’s mac-n-cheeses. We probably have macaroni and cheese twice a month for lunch, and that’s one convenience product that I don’t mind purchasing from time to time.
Another convenience product that I don’t like, but would find acceptable would be potato flakes. Dehydrated potatoes usually don’t have much in them other than dehydrated potatoes, and maybe a little starch to keep the flakes separate. It’s when you start getting the flavored varieties that you run into trouble, because that’s when the additives come in. As I mentioned though, we don’t buy instant potatoes at all. I really don’t care for them at all, and find it easy enough to boil and mash my own potatoes when the moods strikes.
We also buy flavored cream cheese from time to time, but there again, I’ve found I have standards. I used to buy a knock-off brand of flavored cream cheese until I started reading the label. While I didn’t exactly expect real fruit in the fruited varieties, I was shocked to read “high fructose corn syrup” as the number two ingredient. No thank you. So now, when I buy flavored cream cheese we only buy Philadelphia brand flavors- and not low-fat either. Low-fat generally means they had to add other things to replace the fat- and the ingredient list is much longer with unpronounceable additives.
Oh, salad dressings is another one- and this is where you HAVE to read your labels. I’ve played around with making my own dressings from time to time, but I’ve not really been happy with them yet. A vinagrette is easy, but actual dressings just don’t work out quite right. The next time you’re in the salad dressing aisle, just flip over a few of those labels. The most common brands? Yup, loaded with corn syrup, sugar and other things like “flavors”. When we purchase salad dressing, one consisitent is the salad dressings in the produce department. We really like the Litehouse brand of dressing- especially the ones made with yogurt, they’re quite delicious.
I’m afraid I’m a little disappointing when it comes to convenience products I purchase and use. My kids really like tomato soup with grilled cheese, and in a pinch I will buy a can of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup and make that for a quick lunch or dinner. But mostly I make tomato soup from scratch with fresh or canned tomatoes, and then freeze the extras to have a few more soup-n-sandwich days.
Condiments are a biggie. I don’t make my own ketchup or mustard, and I don’t make my own mayo. For that we use Hellman’s Olive Oil mayo. I have a pantry full of Asian condiments- Oyster Sauce, Fish Sauce, Black Bean Sauce, Soy Sauce, etc. But those are all things that are pretty difficult to make from scratch. I don’t think fermenting my own tub of fish heads would make anyone happy!
We do buy chips. That’s one I’ve been trying to buy less and less of. It came to a point where I was thinking that chips were a good part of lunch, and, well, chips are not really a good thing for the diet anyway. They’re a snack food, and having an occasional snack of chips is not terrible, but when we’re including it every day for lunch… So yeah, I’ve dropped how often we have chips in the house. Currently we’re really enjoying Pretzel Crisps as a snack, and we always are up for a bowl or two of popcorn or corn chips and salsa, but those other bags of delicious potato chip goodness can be entirely addicting, and we end up eating far too many in a sitting. If I don’t buy them, we don’t eat them.
Is there a specific convenience product you’re wondering about? My first suggestion is simply to read the label. If you don’t know what something is, head to your friend Google and look it up. Or you can ask me here- is there something you consider a convenience food, but you’re wondering if there is an alternative? Maybe I can help you with that.
Cereal is going to get its own post one of these days. I’ve been meaning to do a sugar demonstration to show how much sugar is really in that bowl of cereal, but haven’t gotten around to it. One of these days.
And speaking of “one of these days”, I would love a bit of feedback from my readers. I’ve long been debating the idea of doing some “real time” cooking videos. I make quite a few things that I go on and on about how quick something was to put together, but if I could actually show you… would that be of any interest? Or not? Hit me up in the comments and let me know. I’m thinking on a series that could turn into some real time cooking classes for people who don’t know how, but would really like to cook. Kind of like Cooking Live used to be, only I would supply you with a list of ingredients a few days before-hand, and then when the video goes up, you can cook along. It’s still just an idea, but I’d love to know what my readers think of that!