I've really seen it all now - pancakes from an aerosol can!

[pluckyduck]

Here's my ever so slightly amusing story from the Odyssey of Learning to Make Bread.

(Back story is I was quite ill at the time and using learning to make bread as a distraction from genuine fear and also a way to keep my body moving when it needed to move but also to not have to move too much as I was easily exhausted.)

So I'm all the way back at b-r-e-a-d flour. I see that I need this thing called "bread" flour. I ask the husband to pick some up for me, and boy did he, he came home from the warehouse club with a twenty-five pound bag of bread flour, only thing he could find, that cost all of $6.00.

I'm both excited and mystified. What do I do with 25 pounds of bread flour? How could it only cost $6.00?

Asked on a bread forum I was lurking about and the first response I received was a very sniffing "well, I wouldn't know, I only use King Arthur flour"

I'm like, yeah, I know King Arthur! The sword guy! Does Sir Lancelot have his own flour, too?

Mind you, I received a ton of kind help along the way to learning how the hell to make some bread....but I believe we (as a culture) do set up unnecessary divisions between the haves and have nots and the do's and do nots.

It's food. There are no merit badges awarded in grown up life for food preparation or oh so sekkrit knowledges.

[theworm[$]]

I buy pudding cups.

Look - I think most of us think that it would be great to go back to basics, but I don't know how many of you (I say you instead of us because I know my answer) want to go out back and ring the neck of the chicken to make dinner.

I love the idea of cooking from all fresh ingredients, but heck - in the last 8 weeks between issues at work, and building a house, and flood, and hives and exhaustion, we've gotten food out or eaten out more than we've cooked. And yes, we have cooked from scratch, and I liked it a lot, but it's not always an option.

We've had other threads on EA implying that parents with overweight kids that let them eat convenience foods are abusive. We're talking here about how unhealthy some prccessed foods are or how lazy we are to use them. This isn't little house on the prairie where the day is spent preparing food from the ground up. Our society is a busy one. We have less leisure time than folks in many other countries - work 40-80 hour work weeks, try to make ends meet, and it involves a lot of compromise. This is just another one. I've made pudding on the store - about 30 years ago. I like it, but.....time and money and compromise is what life is all about.

So... I buy pudding cups. Lynn - some of those 60 calorie ones are yummy!!!

[mtomm[$]]

Prepoia said

However, I don't feel that snobbish applies to anyone that has been writing replies in this thread. It's great that we all have been able to contribute without feeling intimidated by anyone's snobbishness. That's why this is such a great place to hang out.

I like that.