Home Cooking

I was reading this post by Johanna(it is in Finnish) about home cooking and baking, and it got me thinking. Johanna is a Finnish lady living in USA, and her daughter had come home from her friend's house asking if they could bake some cupcakes, she had gotten a great recipe for them. Johanna read the recipe, which read: "take a packet of cupacake mix. Bake the cupcakes. Decorate". To her, and to me, this doesn't count as baking. She had chosen to show her daughter how to make mocha squares. From scratch.

Sundried tomato loaf

I'm just wondering are there really that radical cultural differences when it comes to home cooking? When I was in school, home economics was taught to show us how to cook simple meals, how to clean, wash up and do laundry properly. I still have my old home ec book from year 1994 and I still consult it regularly to find out a basic recipe for something I want to put my own twist to.

Chicken pasta

A friend of mine, who spent a year in USA told me how the mother of the family would consult her vast cupboard of ready meal mixes, choose the one that hadn't been cooked the night before, added water, threw the whole thing into the oven and served it with shop-bought mixed salad. And that was home cooking. My friend went to make mac and cheese for the kids, from scratch and watched the kids' amazement when she went for an actual bag of macaroni, and grated some real cheese and made the sauce from scratch as well.

Scones

There seem to be two clans of home cooks. The ones, who are more than happy to stick a frozen pizza into the oven and call it a day, and the ones who are the Nigellas and Gordons of their own kitchens. The latter one whip up three course meals on a daily basis and up the ante to four or five courses when they're throwing a dinner party. Which is often. Where is the happy medium?

Breaded pork chops

You know, the nice, simple home cooked meal enjoyed by the whole family around the same table at the same time. I grew up on that, and maybe that's where my love for cooking stems from. My mother makes the best meatballs and mashed potato and macaroni & mince bake. I've yet to find someone to rival my dad's fishcakes and fillet of pikeperch with fried potatoes. The fish in our house was what dad would catch. We ate a whole lot of venison, as my dad would hunt moose, and at the christmas table the was always a pot roast of game birds. Tasty, simple and all the more appreciated when you knew the effort gone into making it for you. Not to mention the vegetables grown in our own garden.

Mince & rice pasties

That's what I'm calling out for. Normal, homecooked food where you're not left wondering what kind of E-numbers and other nice chemical surprises may lurk in your next meal.

All the photos above are my own creations. Homemade. From scratch.