What is your definition of 'cooking from scratch'?

My definition is the same as yours. When I cook a cake, I start with All purpose flour, baking powder, salt, eggs, milk, etc.

Same for spaghetti sauce, I start with tomato sauce and diced tomatoes. When I had my farm and grew a lot of tomatoes, I made my own tomato sauce. This year I barely had enough tomatoes to make salsa.

I hardly ever buy anything "ready to cook". I do buy Progresso Soup but never claimed to make their soup myself. I will eat that for lunch sometimes if I don't feel like eating a real "meal".

But cooking from scratch means that you have to assemble the ingredients and that means everything. But I reckon if someone cooks at all these days that is to be applauded, so many do take out every day.

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Be yourself - no one can tell you that you're doing it wrong!

Yesterday we had waffles for breakfast. I made them from flour, sugar, eggs, milk, baking powder and bacon fat. I call that "cooking from scratch".

Tonight my husband wanted pizza. I started at 3:00 p.m. making the dough for the crust and making the sauce from my home canned tomatoes. Sauce simmered for a couple of hours. I shredded the cheese, took the onions and green peppers I froze last fall from the freezer and browned the sausage. The sausage we get from another farmer. I did use store bought pepperoni. I call that cooking from scratch. Supper was ready at 6:30. Pizza is not a simple phone call here.

Funny story: A friend of my husbands said to me one day, "M said that you take your pie filling from a can, Mary. I said I didn't believe it but he said to ask you. So, do you make pie from canned filling?"

I gave my husband the evil eye and said,"Our sons decided that if I am the one that put the pie filling in the JAR last fall and I made the crust myself, then dumping the jar into the crust and baking it still counts as making it from scratch." His friend hee hawed and agreed with the boys!

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OMG My husband takes a jar of my canned pasta sauce, pulls out a packet of my home dried pasta, throws in my home-dried tomatoes and my marinated mushrooms and says to me, "LOOK I MADE DINNER."

No, you put together everything I made, you credit-stealing vagabond.

"...but I generally don't go out and kill the steer myself"

From what I am reading that is fine and acceptable as long as you don't claim that you made it from "scratch". This evening I made bread from wheat that I had grown and oil that I hand squeezed from corn. I milled the wheat in a food processor. I traveled thru 13 states looking for a hemlock with enough yeast in the bark for my from scratch bread loaf. A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of the ocean pulling up pieces of string with sea salt to get the 1/4 teaspoon of salt for my bread. Unfortunately, I ruined it all by spreading butter that I didn't churn all by myself, even though I bottle raised the calf and mother for three generations of cows and seperated the cream with a spoon. I could just die having to face folks that might judge me poorly for not making my bread from scratch. Woe is me. Since my hands were stung hundreds of times while reaching into a wild bee hive getting the honey for this loaf, it is becoming hard to type with my fingers all swollen. At least forgive any typo's as the result of my stung hands.

What? You don't eat at Mel's Char Palace?

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7m...n#.UOoz_qxH6V8

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Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

(anyone know how I can get the video to load here?)

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I'm looking forward to the homestead cooking from scratch reality show for tv series. Oh the places that could go!

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There are endless combinations of truth.

I cook dinner from scratch every night...the ragu opening folks do not have a clue..

Kris

Yes, cooking from scratch is seen differently. I make my own Marinara Sauce from my own tomatoes, onions, garlic, and most of the spices from my homegrown herbs. Then I can it, to use when I need a quick meal. I can my own homegrown fruits and veggies. No, I don't grow my own grain and there are other exceptions, too. Good points made about the ingredients used for scratch cooking. I'd have a hard time giving up cocoa powder!

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Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
http://www.irealtyvirtualbrokers.com...lori-christie/
http://luxurywaterviewhomes.com/
SequimLiving@gmail.com

Cooking from scratch is using basc singular ingredients to make a recipe. So bread is flour, water, oil, salt, yeast not frozen premade dough than on the counter.

Microwaves are only for thawing frozen stuff or reheating left overs in our house. Food cooked in microwaves tastes so nasty I can't even describe it!

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The simple ingredients could include commercial canned corn or homegrown canned corn, so that would make it different in my opinion, but not necessarily in others' opinions. The egg could be commercial or straight out of the nest box, from a home raised chicken. The water could be public with flouride, etc..., or pure well water. The milk could be store bought or straight from a milk cow. The flour could be purchased or homegrown and ground. All aforementioned are indeed basic, but certainly different.

I made a Dungeness Crab Corn Chowder that was raved over, but we have no cow, yet caught, shelled, and froze it beforehand (in milk). My canned crab turned out better than any I have tasted. I had brought that chowder to our networking social.

Sticking to basics, without eating processed chemical laden foods, is so much better for us all. Doing our best with what we have is all we can do.

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Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
http://www.irealtyvirtualbrokers.com...lori-christie/
http://luxurywaterviewhomes.com/
SequimLiving@gmail.com

Like was mentioned above, going paleo has made a big difference. My wife is struggling with the transition, but loves feeling better and losing weight.

I grew up with OP's definition, but my mother didn't work outside the home. Both of my wife's parents worked, so her mom cooking was opening boxes or cans. Notbutanapron's reply made me laugh because the in laws still 'bake' pies for dinners that are pre made shells and canned filling. To them that's a big deal.

Gradually my wife is coming around to my notion that just because that chemistry experiment is called food doesn't make it food.

I like RAGU and since both DW and I work outside the home for pay. I consider a bottle of Ragu with some saute'd sausage/hamburger, diced onions and peppers, mushrooms added to it, served over some spaghetti I took from a box and boiled til it was al dente' and served with some grated cheese to be as home made as I'm going to get on a work night.

Sounds good for dinner tonight. I may even stop at the store and pick up some french bread to warm up with butter and garlic powder.

The air of superiority on this thread is really something else.

No one is saying that doing that is wrong but just don't call it "cooking from scratch".

For dinner tonight, I'm using prepared pesto, some pregrilled chicken, boxed pasta and broccoli rabe that I will clean and cut. It's a great meal, one that my family loves - but not one I'd say was from scratch. But that's OK. I don't need to cook from scratch all the time!

I agree completely. I do cook from scratch a lot BUT when I work a 12 hour shift, I generally don't. My husband LOVES what I call "kid foods". If he is the one getting supper ready it is either leftovers I fixed or "kid foods" - chicken nuggets, pigs in a blanket, mac n cheese, cottage cheese, apple sauce, canned fruit, etc... We say he "fixed supper." He knows it isn't cooking - from scratch or otherwise.

Thirty years of marriage and I still occasionally get asked, "Where is the Bisquick?" I have never ever used it. His mom does all the time. He still misses it. It is comfort food for him.

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I've been told that my brother-in-law is a scratch golfer.

I guess that I'm now impressed.

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Less barking! More wagging!

OK - I lied. I didn't make this for dinner tonight. DD cooked - just about from scratch in my opinion. Sausage and peppers but the sausages were from the store and we used canned tomatoes from the store. But I'd say it was close to scratch. LOL Heck, it was perfect because I didn't have to cook!

My definition of cooking from scratch is the same as yours, Clovis.

I think some people think they cooked from scratch if they heated up some convenience food at home cause they didn't go out and eat fast food....

Lol I'm not sure why people are getting all but hurt over heating prepared food not being cooking from scratch. LOL

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For brevity's sake: Just because someone has put in the effort of cooking, does not automatically mean that person has earned the term "cooking from scratch."

If the main ingredients include a box with directions or a jar of sauce someone else already made, and you think you cooked from scratch, then you simply misunderstand the DEFINITION of cooking from scratch.

Basic ingredients that someone else made commercially available - sugar, milk, flour, butter, meat, cheese, spices - can be used to make something from scratch. I would count canned tomato paste or canned tomatoes as a basic ingredient, but not tomato sauce, as someone else prepared its flavor. Those who use tomatoes from the garden, and cooked using nothing but basic ingredients, can claim they cooked from scratch, AND used home-grown ingredients.

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Wise enough to know I'll never be wise enough to know it all