yeah, you can’t really make your own puff pastry at home. Unless you’re a total food nut, I guess.
Yes you can. It’s not that hard. Just a lot of butter and folding.
The problem is that it’s only a little teeny bit better than the frozen stuff, and a LOT more work, so most people buy it.
They are two different foods which are composed of different ingredients, united by a similar appearance and cooking style. To quote Italian chefs everywhere:
“Fresh pasta is for tourists.”
Anything that is a royal bitch or very messy to make yourself has value.
Candy/chocolate
Marsala sauce (who has veal bones laying around to make veal stock) I use beef stock, and its pretty good but its just not the same.
When its on sale, any boneless skinless chicken parts.
Peeled and deveined shrimp
Mayonnaise
I also use alot of:
sun dried tomato
dry minced onion
dried potatos.
I also have some nifty bulk dry vegetable soup mix, I toss a little handful of it in all kinds of things for a little extra color and flavor (carrot, celery, onion, herbs).
IMHO since potatoes usually get pretty heavily cooked its easier to keep a couple pounds of dried potato slices around rather than bags of fresh, especially when you are only cooking for 2 and a big bag will go bad long before you use it.
What I want to know is if I can press my cats through the Zyliss press will they then be flushable? Maybe that’ll be the way I finally get rid of them. They are a constant source of annoyance (and yet I love the little beggers) especially when I’m cooking.
I’ll admit that I read Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential and up until that reading had never chopped garlic, only pressed it through my (I now realize low quality) Pampered Chef Garlic Press. Oh, I still use the garlic press sometimes but chopping works too.
And yeah, maybe the flavor difference thing is all in my head 
Hey, the one my mom has is the Pampered Chef one! It blows goats! Doesn’t press very well and then you can’t clean it. Zyliss all the way.
I was thinking about this the other day. The only things I really buy pre-packaged are dry pasta, canned beans, stock, and breakfast cereals. Just about everything else seems just as easy to make from scratch. These four, however, are really convenience foods for us–I don’t have the gadgets for making good pasta, and beans and stock take forever to do. Breakfast cereal is our default snack.
Well, that and keeping everything cold. Overhandle the dough just a little bit and let the butter melt, and you’re done. There is a delicate touch to it and while it may not be as difficult as making your own struedel dough, it definitely takes some skill.
I just can’t get anywhere close to restaurant Chinese chow at home (have a wok but the stove doesn’t get hot enough to melt gold or anything) so I go with these sauces that are about a buck twenty five each. They are better than I can do.
Most (but not all) convenience foods okay by me. I love to eat, but I don’t like to cook; IMO, the microwave oven is one of the best inventions of the 20th century. My grandmother and mother were great cooks, but the “cooking gene” didn’t get passed on to me or my sister (and it didn’t help that they couldn’t tell us how they did it – no recipe, just a little of this and a little of that.) Sis and I would both rather clean up the kitchen than make the mess cooking. (Interestingly or not, my son got the “cooking gene” – he loves to cook and has treated me and hubby to many gourmet dinners.)
I especially like eggplant parmagian(sp?) in the frozen section (can’t remember the brand), and stuffed peppers (Stouffer’s, I think). I do cook, but mainly for my hubby; if it weren’t for him, I’d live on frozen dinners. BTW, pinkfreud, try Cozy Shack tapioca with no sugar added. I love tapioca, but was never impressed with the pre-packaged stuff, including Cozy Shack’s, but one day I noticed they had a tapioca with “no sugar added.” Tried it, loved it. I think a lot of convenience foods are ruined with too much sugar and salt.
P. S. - I just re-read the O. P. - sorry, I’m not a “serious cook.” Nevermind.