It’s cheaper to buy fresh

I don't use canned goods either and buy everything fresh. It does require
more trips to the groceries during the week, or the farmers market on the
weekend, but it's worth it. Plus freshly cooked food is far more healthy than preserved canned food.

For instance, most cans are lined with resin and certain vegetables and fruits like tomatoes contain a lot of acidity which dissolves the resin. So you eat part of that with your canned goods.

What!?

Fresh is MUCH more expensive. I'm not saying it's not worth it but it's a lot more expensive.

I don't really have a problem with frozen foods. I freeze a lot of stuff from my garden and it's much better than the fresh stuff I can get this time of year. Most frozen fruits and vegetables contain exactly that -- frozen fruits and vegetables, with little processing and no additives. They can taste much better than out of season or commercially grown produce.

As to fish -- almost all wild caught fish is frozen at some point. It's actually better to buy it frozen and thaw it yourself than to buy the thawed stuff at the fish market -- it's fresher if you buy it frozen, if you get my drift.

I love to cook and I'm careful about my ingredients. I want the maximum flavor bang for my buck. Sometimes that means frozen.

Yayyyyy. I dunno about cheaper for sure, and not if you have to throw stuff away - but healthier for you - none of the preservatives, sugar and salt already in the can. To me, fresh tastes better, even cooking up your own beans versus opening a can. It's a different way of cooking, since you need to keep fresh produce fresh.. and not forever in a cupboard.

I loved it when I lived close to a co op grocery store that was on my way home from work, and could stop for a few minutes every three or four days and see what was looking good in the produce or meat and fish sections. I have very few cans of anything by now - usually a supply of canned tomatoes as those at my local market are always dreck, better dreck or worse dreck. I do buy frozen once in a while, as the produce section at my local market is not so great. Plus the girl is not on the west coast, land of plenty, anymore.

I figure you'll enjoy cooking classes.

Yes, re the resin. Or whatever that stuff is, I forget the name. I wish my market had the boxed tomatoes - those are expensive but pretty good relative to all else available except from the garden in august.

It sure does take more trips to the grocery store; we go at least three times a week now!

I use to like this red beans and rice box mix, I would buy it on occasion, Marco won’t have it, he makes his own and you know after tasting his homemade you would never buy the box mix again.

No canned veggies either. Green beans? Nope has to be fresh, spinach, even corn, he will only buy corn on the cob and cook it. You can sure taste the difference!

I do most of the cooking in this house. I try not to use too much pre-packaged. Because that does get expensive, but at this time of year, we don't have that many options. It gets really depressing when I buy tomatoes, but I still buy them and more veggies than my husband can believe - he knows I'll force him to eat them..
I buy a lot of frozen fruit, berries and veggies. I buy most of my meat as frozen packs from the local butcher, they also raise all their products.
I've recently gotten back into to cooking... I spent so much time traveling,moving and then just generally being lazy and uninspired. I'm enjoying mucking about with recipes again and as an added benefit, I'm feeling pretty damn awesome.. lol

You know, among the French preparing a meal is a family ritual, a form of "bonding" if you will, and an activity which takes up much of the evening after work and school. Besides, French tee vee really sucks . . .

Aaa . . .don't be a wimp. The French go to the market every day . . .

How the costs compare depends on if you buy what's fresh when it's in season.

Will you be having a kitchen garden next summer?

That's true, big difference here that way.

You two might discuss doing the freezing and canning yourselves. You can blanch and freeze your own fruits and vegetables for later use. You can do the same with canning them.

Buy produce in season when they are cheap and plentiful. Buy extras to put away in the freezer or for canning.

This site has links to seasonal produce calendars by state.

http://www.fieldtoplate.com/guide.php

Here are two of them for Florida. The Pick Your Own one might make for some fun weekend outings for your new family.

http://www.florida-agriculture.com/marketing/seasonal_availability.htm

http://www.pickyourown.org/FLharvestcalendar.htm



Last summer I bought extra peaches, blueberries, onions and bell peppers.

For the price of a couple jars of store-bought peach jam, I made 8 jars of homemade peach jam. Instead of spending $8 a bag for frozen blueberries, I bought triple the amount of fresh blueberries for the same price, froze them on sheet pans and then bagged them for the freezer. I bought two dozen bell peppers of differing colors, sliced them up, froze them on sheet pans and then bagged them by the handful for use in cooking. I also bought extra onions after we used up the ones grown in my garden and made a dozen jars of onion marmalade.

My grandmother did her own canning.

We will buy canned veggies just because we both work long hours and don't have a lot of time for preparation.

I come from an Italian family and that is how it was in our house, especially Sunday dinner.

It can really be fun to get a group together to make a big meal.

Absolutely cheaper to make from scratch.
I always make extra and freeze meal-size portions of leftovers. When I roast a chicken, I cut off all the meat and divide it into five or six portions. The bones go into the 'Make Broth Bag".
Hamburger is divided into 1/2 pound or 1/4 pound portions.
Freeze four or five of those.
I semi-cook steamed or roasted veggies and freeze them too.
Green beans, peppers, roasted onions, steamed carrots.... .
~
At breakfast, I decide what I want for dinner.
I take out the appropriate bags and let them defrost in the fridge all day.
Then, when get home late (after 7PM) at night, it only takes a few minutes of making rice or pasta to throw a meal together.

Joe(I've learned you cannot freeze cheese.)Nation

In that case, consider frozen for reasons others said, re usually not having additives - sugar, salt, preservatives of many kinds - and food being snap frozen while very fresh, plus not having the can lining thing, which I'm remembering now is a word spelled like bisphenol. I looked that up and at first glance you'd have to go through a lot of cans to be harmed, but I remember controversy about it.

Oh, wait - I like what JoeNation does with his veggies too.
Me, I really need an auxiliary freezer as I cook similarly to the way JoeN does re my meals, and I get into craziness keeping my smallish refrigerator's freezer in some kind of order. A sharpie pen is great for labeling..

ossoB's correct about frozen. Unless you are buying directly from a farmer, the best quality produce you'll usually get is frozen - the food hasn't been treated to maintain it for a long trip. Some companies have the flash freeze plants right on-site.

If you are buying fresh produce from a market, try to find out if the vendor has actually grown what they're selling. Are they certified Green Market vendors? There have been numerous cases in North America where produce markets have been caught selling goods they bought from a wholesaler.

Beth, I have a bias toward buying produce I can see first hand, but I know you're right re the produce production system. I can't easily get to the farmer's market here, the short time it is here, for other reasons, so I should really be buying frozen. But, my market doesn't have that good a frozen veg selection either. On growing my own, I've done that before, love doing it, but I've other stuff to work on right now.

I'll add, I just stuck some dried fava beans in a pot of mixed soil in my kitchen to see if they'll sprout; I still remember the lima bean trick back in high school biology. If they do, the season here is short, as they don't like heat, but I've been reading about fava bean leaves as being nutritionally good... I've gone a little crazed re eating greens lately.

I used to buy my hamburger, and then make it into patties, which i then froze. If i wanted a burger, it could go into the pan without even bothering to defrost. If i wanted something else, i could do as you described by letting the appropriate number of patties thaw during the day. I used to buy two or three pounds of burger at a time.