What are Cheap Eats?
An article in the Portland Press Herald today shows how many people misunderstand how to eat inexpensively. Granted, the current hard economic times warrant a lot of cutting back– but when that is equated with buying pancake mix, Spam, Kool-Aid and Velveeta, we have a problem. The couple pictured are purchasing what appears to be nothing but cans and boxes of food. And who can blame them? This is what has been taught to Americans as “cheap eats.” I remember in my home ec class in the 7th grade being taught to cook with canned biscuits and other prepared foods, which I found utterly baffling (and yet somewhat enthralling as a kid unused to such “glamorous” foods!) since I had been taught to cook years before with fresh ingredients. And then there’s Sandra Lee and her horrific semi-homemade cult. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using frozen green beans instead of fresh, but in general cooking from scratch is significantly cheaper than buying boxes of crap, period. A box of pancake
