Can you make it better and cheaper at home?

This is me, too. Pretty much all food items from scratch. Can’t remember the last time I had commercial yogurt or salad dressing. Well, maybe a restaurant for the salad dressing.

I make beer and mead occasionally, more often liqueurs such as limoncello, Bailey’s, Kahlua, blackberry cordial and pear brandy. Also pear, strawberry and grape wines.

I grow a lot of my own vegetables and fruits, so I also do a lot of home preservation: Canned tomatoes, jams, pickles, dilled green beans, plums, berries, apples and pears.

Other things that are good to have around and easy to store are dehydrated items: Beef jerky, tomatoes, mushrooms, various fruits and herbs.

I catch my own fish and smoke them. Most of the meat in my freezers was either raised by me (pork, beef) or traded for (lamb). I’ve raised my own chickens for meat in the past but am not doing this at present. I don’t much care for chicken butchery. I do keep them for fresh eggs.

I like to forage for wild berries and mushrooms. (Home-foraged truffles are always cheaper.)

Living on my own, I’ve learned to do a lot of repairs around the property. Lawn tractor, sprayer, fencing, a little plumbing and minor carpentry. Hot tub repair a specialty.

Also make some pottery items. Natch.

Wish I could make my own chocolate.

It’s my preference to live this way. Just an old hippie girl. I have more time than good sense, some would say.

And yes; all better and cheaper – though I know it’s discouraged to mention it on the SDMB.

I’ve never tasted anybody’s home-made ice cream or beer that was better than the bargain priced store brand.

See, for me it’s quite the opposite. Play time for me is cooking. I always tell my wife that if I ever lose my will to cook, I’ve lost my will to live. I value my time, too, but dicking around time is just dicking around time when I can’t be doing something else and earning money.

So, for me, yes, for many things I can make it better and cheaper at home, but certainly not everything. Like I make a good pizza at home, but it’s not the same pizza as the one from my favorite pizza joints. When I want a certain type of pizza (or any other food), I want that particular version of it.

Here’s your problem. If you’re comparing either beer or ice cream to the bargain-priced store offerings, you are not likely to find any comparison, on either price or taste. For both beer and ice cream, the big suppliers have redefined what the public considers good to match their use of sub-standard ingredients and ultra-processing. By offering these products at such a low price, combined with heavy advertising, they get a large number of people considering their offerings to be the standard to which others should be compared.

It’s like trying to make a hamburger at home to taste exactly like a Big Mac. Few people are even going to try. Because, when making a hamburger at home, they are likely to use better beef, buns without the added sugar, actual tomatoes instead of a mystery sauce, and other improvements that results in a burger that, while most would consider superior, it would decidedly not taste like a Big Mac. Someone wanting a Big Mac may actually prefer the BM over the homemade burger because it is always going to have the same taste and texture and the homemade burger is always going to be different.

I’ve made both beer and ice cream at home that has been considered better than any commercial offerings, not just bargain-priced brands. Now, some has come from friends and family, who may be a bit biased, but much of that feedback has come from uninterested strangers who just wanted more and were appreciative. It’s not hard, the key is using good ingredients and understanding how to process them to reach your goal. Yes, you have to enjoy doing it since if you are going

TL;DR, there’s no accounting for taste.

Yes. Pizza (including dough for the crust), chicken and noodles (including the noodles), stews, soups of several types.

I have been driving for going on 42 years now, and still haven’t paid someone else for an oil change. My oil changes are cheaper and better since I use the better oil and filters instead of the stuff the quickie places use.

I don’t think we are in disagreement. You enjoy the time you spend cooking, so it is not rolled into the “cost.” I usually don’t enjoy that time, so it *does *count as part of the cost. Different assumptions lead to different conclusions, even if we agree on all of the facts.

No. Absolutely not, absolutely nothing.

Whoops! Nothing personal, ma’am. I just love doing it as a craft for personal fulfillment. Not to take away any of your business, which I respect.

I prefer my deviled eggs and my tuna salad to anyone else’s. I can’t speak to cheaper though, because the last time I had a tuna sandwich somewhere other than at home was probaby circa 1971, and I don’t think I’ve ever paid for a deviled egg. They are usually what someone else has brought to the potluck and making me wish I’d brought mine instead of whatever I brought.

These are exceptions though as I usually think all food tastes better if somebody else cooked it.

Furthermore, while no doubt some people can make some stuff better/cheaper at home, my experience is the vast majority of people who truly think they can are delusional. “Oh, you should try my [blank], it’s so much better than what you can try.” Then it turns out to be garbage, but of course you lie and say yes, right, so much better.

Heh i ve had people from sees candies tell me and my aunt our peanut brittle was better than there’s …now if I could only get them to lease the recipes

  • Buy. “… so much better than what you can buy.”

Sure. Tomato sauce is ridiculously easy to make and way cheaper and better tasting than anything you can buy in a jar or a can.

I consider this one of the main answers to this thread, if not THE main one.

True enough.

(It’s also that I don’t particularly place a monetary value on time I’m not doing anything with. There’s a lot of things I hate to do, like painting or cleaning, but I do it because it still saves me a couple hundred bucks over paying someone and just futzing around with my free time earning zero. But perhaps that’s because I have more than enough free time, so it’s not worth it to me. I guess I’ve just never understood the argument about idle time being worth money. Sure, if I had another job that I could be doing instead, then it’s worth $X/hr to me. If it’s idle time, it’s not worth anything to me monetarily. It may have some non-tangible worth, I suppose. But I suppose that’s a discussion for another thread.)

It really doesn’t matter what others think, unless that person is specifically cooking for others. The nice thing about cooking for oneself is that one is cooking to one’s tastes, so it doesn’t matter if 9 out of 10 people find that it sucks compared to a commercial product. If you prefer it, then it’s “better.”

All you said is perfectly true, except the first line. It’s not MY problem. I have no doubt that very good beer and ice cream can be made at home. But nobody who has acquired that skill has yet invited me to enjoy it. There have been people who dabbled with the art, with only self-delusional success, and that is THEIR problem, not mine. I’m perfectly happy to drink any beer that doesn’t say Light on the label, and I’ve never seen a store-bought ice cream I didn’t like.

Somebody said above that “the labor is free” when you do it yourself??? No it isn’t, I hate when people say that. There is a whole lot of opportunity costs. From the shopping for ingredients, to following a recipe, to perfecting a skill, etc, etc. That time spent is not free. You may have already bought the tools for the job many years ago but your time and effort has value. Many times, it’s much easier to crack open a can of tomato soup and add a handful of spices that it would be to make tomato soup myself.

I could take down my wood deck in the backyard and replace w/ pavers, but my couple weekends I’d use to complete the job have value. I’ll hire that work out.

Yes, no kidding. But if you’re not using that opportunity otherwise and are just idling or enjoying your free time, you’re not losing any money. For me, as much as I hate it, I’d rather sit and paint a room and save a couple hundred bucks if I don’t have any other paid work I could be doing in the meantime. Then I could enjoy a couple hundred extra bucks of beer when I truly do have idle time. Obviously, I do pay people to do work, but that’s when I don’t know how to do it myself or don’t trust myself doing it myself. Or when I truly have other things that must get done that I don’t have the time to do it myself.

But, like I said, this is a separate discussion. My view is that people overvalue how much their time is actually worth. Or perhaps I just undervalue mine. When I work, I make hundreds an hour. When I’m not working, I’m not making anything. My time isn’t worth my hourly work rate, or even half that rate, or even a quarter of that rate. But, perhaps for another thread…