Yeah....that boxed potatoes were as good as "real" potatoes, mashed.
But that was a long time ago.

Foodonastump:
Maybe you just didn't doctor them enough.

No, I'm never wrong but I won't admit it.

Why should I when I'm always right. LOL
Lou
PS ,
I even get the lumps in the Potatoes.

Not EVERYTHING is better home made!! I spent half a day making home made flour tortillas once - bought a special press and everything. They didn't taste one bit better or different from the store bought ones. The press went in the trash and I've never made them again since. Some things are just not worth the time and effort. Maybe it's because there is a huge Hispanic population where I live and it's so easy to find fresh Spanish food items. Sometimes the tortillas are still warm when I buy them in the grocery store that's how fresh they are!

Lisa

At only 5'2" I've always had to watch my weight, as a 5 lb. gain looks like 10 on me. In my teens I asked my mother not to add butter or oil to anything she cooked. I claimed it didn't make a difference in the flavor of the food.

When I was first married I cooked in non-stick pans and didn't use butter or oils unless I was making baked goods. I poached or broiled chicken and fish and substituted broths for fats whenever I could.

What a difference a touch of olive oil makes in a marinara sauce or a scampi! And pesto is not as good made with chicken broth as it is with EVOO! I still watch calories and try to eat healthy most of the time, but life is too short not to use oil and butter in moderation in cooking.

My eyes were opened when we hosted an exchange student from France one summer and entertained his family. They were all fit and healthy, but really relished good food. When my son returned from spending time at their home he asked that we banish the WW margarine tubs and just have a touch of real butter on things.

I was wrong! A little butter and good oils not only make food taste better, but they keep you satisfied longer - at least they do, me. -- Sorry, Mom ---

Wow, Lisa, I sure agree with you on the tortillas. We eat almost exclusively corn tortillas & I don't make them often enough to become proficient & speedy. We can purchase freshly made at about $1.50/dozen. If my time has any value at all...then making tortillas is not a good use of my efforts.

Pasta is another that's not worth the effort. Lots of Italians in my area & fresh, high-quality pasta is readily available.

I'm long past the point in my life where I feel any compelling need to say, "Yes, I made that myself". I'm not snobbish that food must be homemade by me, except cookies. I don't care who makes it as long as it's good.

I do make homemade mashed potatoes. However, if I could find boxed baby red potatoes with the skins on, a bit of garlic, some sour cream, & crumbled bacon...well, I'd sure seriously consider the BOX! :)

/tricia

I am a little confused. Did you mean that you discovered that real potatoes were better? I use boxed potatoes, only the Hungry jack brand. I can do them from scratch, and I do not used processed food for the most part, but the potato thing, well, we are not that crazy about mashed potatoes anyway, and the Hungry Jack's taste good enough with a tenth of the work. I make my own lemon curd, and cakes, and pie crusts, and just about everything, but the real mashed potatoes are just not worth the effort to me.

Hmmm, the only food related thing that I found that I can think of anyway, that doesn't hold true is this: My grandmother used to say if you ate fish and milk in the same meal, it would poison you. I know that is not what you had in mind, but I can't think of anything else.

Well I have to disagree with both Lisa and Triciae. Homemade flour and corn tortillas are so much better than anything I can buy. I guess if I lived in Texas or Mexico where I could pick up freshly made tortillas that were still warm,I might reconsider. But out here, the only flour/corn tortillas available are from the grocery store. There is no comparison between those and homemade. I put a high value of my time in the kitchen.
Mashed potatoes are one of those things that I find really easy to make. Just a matter of peeling a couple of potatoes. Takes less than a minute of real time. And once cooked I put them through a ricer so mashing is really easy too. But that said, I wouldn't turn my nose up at instant mashed potatoes as long as they were swimming in a puddle of homemade gravy.

I keep store bought beef and chicken broth on hand. I do think that homemade tastes much better but when I don't have any in the freezer I use what I have available.

Ann

Welcome back Sheshebop!! Good to see you posting!

I'm in with amck, a little butter or oil makes a world of difference in certain things. I still don't always add them, but I do know when I don't add them, it's just not the same.

That's funny about the fish/milk myth. My mother used so say don't drink milk after drinking a carbonated beverage, it would make you throw up! Also she used to say if you have a cold, avoid eating eggs or fish. I'm not sure why either of those would hold true, but you know, Momma said!

Sorry but mashed potatoes must be from scratch in our house.
Also, you can't cook with out EVOO and Butter!!!!!!!! It doesn't mean that you have to go overboard like Paula.....
I've never made tortillas from scratch but I'm sure they are great!!! We just try to watch what we eat, more salads and yes I always make my own dressings...usually red wine vinegar, EVOO, Dijon mustard, spices, salt and pepper.

Linda

HEY SHERRY GOOD TO SEE YOU POSTING! CAN YOU READ THIS?

For many years, I couldn't see why anyone would fuss around with fresh herbs. The dried was just as good, wasn't it? I don't know where I got that idea.

The first chink in the armor of my preconceptions was the first taste of a freshly made pesto sauce at a favorite Italian restaurant. So, o.k., basil was better fresh. I grew some basil, way too much basil, and back then knew nothing about freezing a pesto or making infused oils, so all I could think was to dry it. My dried basil had so much more flavor than that from the store!

That got me curious about other herbs, and I started growing a couple of my favorites.

Now I go into withdrawal during the few winter months that I must do without the tender herbs. I've even tried growing them in pots indoors over the winter, but haven't had the right sun conditions. Now I have one of those mini solarium things that extends from my Southern facing kitchen window over my sink...so I guess I'll be trying again next winter.

I'm that way about kitchen gadgets too...I fight new gadgets tooth and nail until someone who knows better buys me one and I fall in love with it. What do I need a garlic press for, I've got knives! What do I need a stick-blender for, don't I have a blender AND a food processor? A Microwave???? What for, don't I have a stove????

Hee hee hee.

I bought some masa harina not to long ago to make homemade corn tortillas and I much prefer the store bought too.
They are so much more flavorful -not sure why-, even and better shaped than the ones I make. We do have good ones here though as there is a large Hispanic community.
I do occasionally wonder if I did something wrong but I'm glad I never bought a tortilla press.

And, for regular sandwiches, I like store bought bread better. I usually buy Arnold or Pepperidge Farm grainy bread.

I think part of the problem with homemade corn tortillas is the masa harina. Great corn tortillas are made with fresh masa. Since I can only buy fresh masa in huge quantities I'm stuck with masa harina...it's just not as good. I think there's a real taste/quality difference. Being a SoCA native & then living in CO, we're spoiled so I buy them from a tortilleria using fresh masa.

/tricia

After the tortillas I got in Texas, I agree, the fresh are far better than any I get here in the grocery store, but I still don't like tortillas well enough to bother to make them myself most times. Ditto pasta, bagels or English Muffins. I won't try to convince myself that homemade isn't better because it most certainly is, but it's not worth the effort to me because I don't like those things that well. I think donuts may have recently fallen into that category too.

Mashed potatoes? Now that's something else entirely. I never met a potato I didn't like, but I don't want boxed mashed potatoes, I want to do them myself. I don't care for Minute Rice either, I like my rice kind of sticky and far prefer the brown stuff.

Store bought bread? Not a chance here, not for me. I don't like it at all and I don't care what national brand you give me. I'll eat the stuff from local bakeries, but no way am I buying that white fluffy wonderbread stuff, I'd rather do without entirely. Can you tell that I bake all my own bread, LOL? It's something I just love and I don't eat that much of it, so it's got to be what I like.

There are a lot of gadgets that do a perfectly good job but my storage space is limited so most of them don't get used enough to justify taking up space,

So, what beliefs have I held that were wrong? That I don't have time to cook from scratch is one of them. When the kids were home I convinced myself that I just didn't have time to bake bread or make a pot of soup, things that took a long time. I eventually learned that baking bread is a long process but the hands on portion is actually a pretty short amount of time. The same goes for soup, lots of prep followed by hours of simmering, during which I can go do something else while the soup cooks, it doesn't require constant tending.

I used to think that if I kept trying something, eventually I'd learn to like it or at least tolerate it. I've come to know that I'm never going to like wine or beer and just because other people do doesn't mean I have to or that I'm hopelessly "wrong". I'll never like olives or jello, no matter how many times I try them and that goes double for wine.

Oh, and I have found that lamb is edible (but just barely) if I marinate it for 12 hours or so in Jessica's Lime Chipotle marinade. It almost doesn't even taste like lamb. Almost...

Annie

Some years ago, I stopped making my grandmother's spaghetti sauce recipe opting for doctored up jarred sauce. Then with the 6 in 1 canned tomato tasting test (yes, I am still working on that) I made two recipes (which is enough for 6 meals) I thought "what was I thinking??". The trade off for convenience isn't worth it, so back to grandma's sauce.

I just have one thing to add...IT'S SHESHEBOP!!!!

And, Jessy, you are too funny.

Oh - see now I so disagree with home made pasta not being worth it!! Fresh is better than dried any day!! If you can buy it in the store fresh, then fine, that's an easy way to get it, but see I grew up making it so to me, it's not a big deal. I have a totally electric pasta maker that I use when I want shapes, and I recently got the old-fashioned crank kind that my mother and grandmother used in order to make the large flat sheets you need for ravioli. It can make spaghetti and fettuccini also.

There is no comparison between fresh macaroni and dried. But like me and the tortillas, that I can get so fresh it's almost like I made them myself, if you can buy it "fresh" and not dried, that's good as well. I've bought "fresh" pasta at bakeries (not the ones from the grocery store) and it is good. I guess mass produced is what I want to avoid. And like with making bread, I enjoy the process of making macaroni from scratch so it's not "work" to me at all. Of course I'm not coming home from work and making it!! It's a weekend treat!

And I like BOTH instant potatoes and mashed from scratch. During the week, instant is fine for me. On weekends when I have time to devote to cooking is when I do things from scratch.

Lisa

Lisa, I buy fresh pasta from several different Italian restaurants that are glad to sell me small quantities...even squid-ink. I used to have an Atlas hand-crank pasta machine but now with lupus it's just too hard & too much effort. I'm exhausted before I even get the dough made by just setting up the equipment.

/t

LOL, Lisa, it's all a matter of perspective. I just don't really care for pasta, either homemade or dried, so it isn't worth it. I like whole wheat pasta better than the white stuff but I'm not wild about any of it.

Potatoes I love, so I wouldn't consider the "fake stuff". It's all in what you really like.

Annie

Instant Rice vs REAL Rice

Here is a link that might be useful: eating my words

Glad to see Sheshebop!! I've been worried about her, and so it's great to see her posting again.

As for the tortillas - I use Ann's recipe for flour tortillas, but I sub half whole wheat flour, and they are much better than what I can buy - at least for the day they are made. And a tortilla press is for corn tortillas - not flour tortillas. I seldom make corn tortillas, but when I do, I only use fresh masa from the Cuban market on Venice Blvd. I don't bother with masa harina - the corn tortillas from the market are better.

There's a Mexican seafood restaurant in Venice that Lee took me to for my first visit called Casa Blanca (doesn't sound very Mexican, nor very seafood, but this is L.A.), and they have a woman who sits in the middle of the dining area making flour tortillas by hand. By that, I mean that she flattens them with her hands and does not use a rolling pin (and certainly not a press). Then she cooks them on a hot griddle, and they are some of the best flour tortillas I've had. Mine are slightly better because I use part WW.

For the topic question... I used to think that only fresh seaweed (Wakame) was good, but DB bought some dried wakame that is excellent, and I put it in a lot of my soups. Of all the dried products, this one is the best, but I think it depends on the brand. I can't tell you what it is because I don't know how to type Japanese characters.

Lars

Wow! "She Bops...She Bops...."
YES!
Ya know the question of home made vs "store bought" has to do with the quality of the products.
I'm not really a skilled bagel maker...most store bought bagels are better than mine....but not all!
Mashed potatoes? Oh my....I know someone who makes mashed potatoes, from real potatoes that are akin to wal paper paste....I would take that dry stuff in the box any day.
BUT...I can make mashed potatoes from real potatoes better than any you can make from a box!
But I have known people who say things like " you make your own spaghetti sauce?"...or "you make your own pie crust?"...."you make your own waffles?"...or bread...or noodles or ice cream or chicken broth....etc etc...
But back to the subject of the moment....
check the link...

Here is a link that might be useful: She bops....or bangs....or whatever.....

I was always secretly self righteous about never putting salt in or on anything. My first purchase of a Morton's salt container lasted for many years. As I became more confident in my cooking skills and my taste buds, I started to add a bit of salt to things. My tolerance for salt is still much lower than the average person, but I've realized that many things taste a lot better with a little salt!

I have to say that there is a huge difference in quality/taste of boxed mashed potatoes. Years ago, we did a little taste test, and I've forgotten the brands because we don't buy them any more (we rarely eat potatoes in any form, mashed maybe twice a year). But we tried 4 brands, and only one was edible. I recall it might have been something with "ida..." in the name, but it definitely had the shorter list of ingredients and fewest non-pronounceable pseudo-food ingredients.

So before you condemn all boxed mashed potatoes, check the brand you buy, it makes a tremendous difference. (But all this is from memory of maybe 20 years ago).

As for my "I was wrong" moment, I agree with Deee: it's salt. That's exactly what I've gone thru, and I now use salt, altho a lot less than many other people.

"As for my "I was wrong" moment, I agree with Deee: it's salt. That's exactly what I've gone thru, and I now use salt, altho a lot less than many other people."

Put me in this category too! I eschewed salt in my kitchen for years, tho I grudgingly added it to baked goods. In the last few years, I have started adding a tiny bit to most things and food really DOES taste much better with that tiny bit of salt added!

Alexa

I'm also one who doesn't cook with much salt, however, I've found that some dishes just need some. I can't tell you how many times I tried to make my mother's escarole soup and it just never tasted right. I finally had her make it in front of me and I knew immediately, it was the salt! I wasn't putting more than a pinch in mine, while she put quite a bit in hers. And that was the difference. Something so simple!

Annie - I have to laugh. I truly don't think I could live without macaroni!! Ok, that's a bit of hyperbole, but I would be very sad. It's probably my favorite food. I could, literally, eat it 3 times a day, 7 days a week and not get sick of it. And I could live very easily never eating another potato - unless it was inside gnocchi of course lol!! So it is, very much, a matter of perspective!

Lisa

Linda, thank you for the great link to the Ricky Martin video. That's so funny, that one dancing girl was me. Really. Truly. Woulda girl who is blind in one eye and can't see out of the other lie to you?
She Bang I mean Sheshebop

Bang....Bop....all the same.......

I also remember waaaay back when we were poor...like now only worse! and our weekend treat was a couple of Martinis before Sunday night supper. Back then Seagrams was a top shelf gin for us and while we loved Noilly Pratt or Martini and Rossi vermouth, we bought the cheaper brand Tribuno.
But we drank only a few drops in our martini because we don't like too much of that funky herb taste. That bottle lasted for well more than a year.
when it was gone we decided that since we used so very little, we could afford the more expemnsive vermouth.....and it was so good we put more in the Martini and in no time it was gone!
and we discovered why DH could never make a martini as good aas a good restraunt could....It's not necessarily skill, but rather the ingredients.
So if you still think any boxed potatoes are as good as home made...try Idaho russets, not over nor under cooked, dried a little bit after you drain them and mashed with enough butter milk and cream and salt and pepper.

My moment was tasting real butter on green beans. I'd always used margarine on and in everything because it was supposed to be "better for you" - then my taste buds were awakened at a dinner party. I proudly grew my own green beans but these were canned and tasted better - why? The butter. Since then I have read about what margarine is really made of and about transfat so I swore off it for good. I do use some olive oil spread but nothing tastes like real butter. I don't do the Paula amount though. Moderation is the key to everything.

Another thing I went "duh" was brown rice instead of instant white. Takes several minutes longer to cook but tastes kinda nutty where the white tastes like less than nothing. And, the white has no nutritional value whatsoever! I make a huge batch and pop it into the freezer - break off some and steam it hot again. It did take a bit to get used to eating brown though and it still doesn't taste right in sushi. LOL

I use instant potatoes and save the russets for scalloped potatoes and potato salad (with the skins left on). Peeling is what takes the most mindless boring time and those to be mashed do not taste good with skins - so box it is.

I've tried making my own tortillas and don't have a source for fresh masa. Failures one after another. So, I now use the masa harina for tamales and buy a huge stack of cheap premade corn tortillas to keep in the freezer.

And by the way, one of the reasons Mexican foods taste so good is that they use lard, not shortening or oil. Along with butter, lard has been on the list of "not good for you" for a long time but OH! does it make fried chicken, pie crusts and sugar cookies taste wonderful!!!! And, as people are finding out, lard is actually better for you than butter or vegetable oils (except olive). Check it out. Home rendered is best, pig farmer supplied is great, but grocery store lard is just yucky.

Nancy

Here is a link that might be useful: Lard, Butter, Olive Oil and those other fats