The advantages of cooking from scratch

With all the headlines of horse meat in ready meals, it is now making people take note of what they are eating. Hopefully it will mean people will take more of an interest in making there own food. Having just eaten last night's left over vegetable lasagne, where even the pasta was mas made fresh, it made me think how much better it tasted from the the convenience food reheat in the oven/microwave versions, it has a far better flavour to it & in the long run works out cheaper than buying one of similar ingredients. OK making lasagne from scratch is a bit of a long winded process, but then you make what you have time to make. There are plenty of meal options that take less than 30 minutes to make if time is short or if you have a slow cooker just bung everything you need in it for a stew & it is ready with little effort when you get back home to eat. If you just adjust your eating habits to the time you have to cook, it will become less effort & less of a chore. I tend to go for easy options as I hate faff & therefore enjoy my food when it is ready. If you cook more you will start to think more about the wider ethics & economics of your food. Cooking from scratch rather than buying ready meals & convenience foods has cut down our food bill considerably. Hopefully next year our food will have a bit more seasonality as I will be taking on a vegetable plot which I find puts more in sync with the turning of the year & makes me feel even more smug of I did this. Seriously, ditch the crap that is not what it appears with its dubious meat, excess salt & sugar, artificial flavourings & whatever else they decide to put in there & taste food how it is meant to.