3 ms·

> Quick; if you just came home from a long day at work, you're not likely to have the energy to prepare some elaborate home-cooked meal every night, so the tru

by Swizec 6y ago

> Quick; if you just came home from a long day at work, you're not likely to have the energy to prepare some elaborate home-cooked meal every night, so the trusty 'ol blue box it is Mac&cheese is quick. Even from raw ingredients. Maybe this is cultural, but growing up in Europe with a single-mom who worked 2 jobs ... we had homecooked meals only. Store-bought pre-packaged stuff was too expensive and unhealthy. Takes about 20min to cook a nice weekday meal based on whatever's in the fridge. You pack the fridge on weekends.

leetcrew 6y ago
so first of all, there's really no way mac and cheese is healthy unless you serve it with a side of brussels sprouts. it's comfort food. aside from that, I think there must be some regional price differences here. a box of annie's mac and cheese is like $1.50, which goes down if you buy in bulk. if you're fancy you can add a pad of butter and/or some whole milk, but otherwise that's $1.50 to feed two people. an 8oz block of cheddar cheese is already $2 at target, and you still have to buy the pasta, milk etc. mac and cheese is a surprisingly expensive food to cook at home though. I could definitely make a rice and beans for less money.
- Swizec 6y ago
  > an 8oz block of cheddar cheese is already $2 at target Well there's your problem! A portion of cheese is 1oz :D That's 880 calories for $2. Pretty good imo
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    Few places will sell you a single ounce of cheese (especially the commodity kind).
    - Swizec 6y ago
      Cheese keeps in your fridge for weeks and is good for multiple recipes :)
senkora 6y ago
I predict that store-bought pre-packages meals will become more common in Europe over time. I think there’s a clear pattern of food cultures being hollowed out over time. It’s great if your parents know how to cook well and you can learn from them, but eventually that chain breaks when a child would rather buy their food than learn to cook it. Making things from scratch is hard and time-consuming if you don’t know how to cook. At that point store-bought meals are sometimes the best remaining option. The United States gets a lot of flack for being the first country to encounter a lot of issues because we were the first to widely industrialize food, but this will happen everywhere.
yellowapple 6y ago
> Takes about 20min to cook a nice weekday meal based on whatever's in the fridge It takes half that to prepare it from a box. And most of that time is waiting (either for the water to boil or for the pasta to cook). And further, you know what you're getting with the blue box. Less risk of messing up, and less painful if you do somehow catastrophically mess up.
sgtnoodle 6y ago
It's definitely a lifestyle/mindset and convenience thing. I can make a delicious, more nutritional mac and cheese from scratch in about the same time as from a box and I often do. It requires my attention for 3x as long, though, and dirties twice as many dishes to wash up afterwards (I use a saucepan to prepare a roux to make a smooth, less calorie dense sauce.) If my toddler is melting down from hunger, it's less stressful to whip up box mac and cheese. Many people don't realize how easy cooking staples can be and are intimidated, or lack the interest to figure it out. That likely correlates strongly to the lifestyle they were raised in. Also, most folks' psyches seem tightly coupled to the foods they were exposed to at a young age. If someone was raised eating Kraft, that's naturally what they'll think of as mac and cheese, and they may never revisit that association as an adult. Scratch / improvised cooking is a skill that takes practice to be good at. Personally, I enjoy it as a hobby. My mom cooked a lot, but made very bland food. I regularly pick out a random food I enjoyed from childhood, then figure out how to make it authentically. Last month I figured out perogies (I cheated on the mashed potatoes). Last week I made a delicious seared lamb with fennel and tomatoes (I've been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares lately). Over the last two years I've optimized my sourdough technique to the point that it's boring (although I still wish I could get a more sour flavor!) I learned how to make proper wood fired pizza in Italy before COVID, and I'm still enjoying optimizing that at home, and starting to experiment with sicilian style.

by Swizec 6y ago

leetcrew 6y ago

so first of all, there's really no way mac and cheese is healthy unless you serve it with a side of brussels sprouts. it's comfort food. aside from that, I think there must be some regional price differences here. a box of annie's mac and cheese is like $1.50, which goes down if you buy in bulk. if you're fancy you can add a pad of butter and/or some whole milk, but otherwise that's $1.50 to feed two people. an 8oz block of cheddar cheese is already $2 at target, and you still have to buy the pasta, milk etc. mac and cheese is a surprisingly expensive food to cook at home though. I could definitely make a rice and beans for less money.

Swizec 6y ago
> an 8oz block of cheddar cheese is already $2 at target Well there's your problem! A portion of cheese is 1oz :D That's 880 calories for $2. Pretty good imo
- mattkrause 6y ago
  Few places will sell you a single ounce of cheese (especially the commodity kind).
  - Swizec 6y ago
    Cheese keeps in your fridge for weeks and is good for multiple recipes :)

senkora 6y ago

I predict that store-bought pre-packages meals will become more common in Europe over time. I think there’s a clear pattern of food cultures being hollowed out over time. It’s great if your parents know how to cook well and you can learn from them, but eventually that chain breaks when a child would rather buy their food than learn to cook it. Making things from scratch is hard and time-consuming if you don’t know how to cook. At that point store-bought meals are sometimes the best remaining option. The United States gets a lot of flack for being the first country to encounter a lot of issues because we were the first to widely industrialize food, but this will happen everywhere.

yellowapple 6y ago

> Takes about 20min to cook a nice weekday meal based on whatever's in the fridge It takes half that to prepare it from a box. And most of that time is waiting (either for the water to boil or for the pasta to cook). And further, you know what you're getting with the blue box. Less risk of messing up, and less painful if you do somehow catastrophically mess up.

sgtnoodle 6y ago

It's definitely a lifestyle/mindset and convenience thing. I can make a delicious, more nutritional mac and cheese from scratch in about the same time as from a box and I often do. It requires my attention for 3x as long, though, and dirties twice as many dishes to wash up afterwards (I use a saucepan to prepare a roux to make a smooth, less calorie dense sauce.) If my toddler is melting down from hunger, it's less stressful to whip up box mac and cheese. Many people don't realize how easy cooking staples can be and are intimidated, or lack the interest to figure it out. That likely correlates strongly to the lifestyle they were raised in. Also, most folks' psyches seem tightly coupled to the foods they were exposed to at a young age. If someone was raised eating Kraft, that's naturally what they'll think of as mac and cheese, and they may never revisit that association as an adult. Scratch / improvised cooking is a skill that takes practice to be good at. Personally, I enjoy it as a hobby. My mom cooked a lot, but made very bland food. I regularly pick out a random food I enjoyed from childhood, then figure out how to make it authentically. Last month I figured out perogies (I cheated on the mashed potatoes). Last week I made a delicious seared lamb with fennel and tomatoes (I've been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares lately). Over the last two years I've optimized my sourdough technique to the point that it's boring (although I still wish I could get a more sour flavor!) I learned how to make proper wood fired pizza in Italy before COVID, and I'm still enjoying optimizing that at home, and starting to experiment with sicilian style.