Dislike: Prepackaged frozen meals/foods

I talk about growing up at home and how things were done but, in all this time I'm not sure if it was my mom's doing or my sister's.  I was on the tail end of 6 kids - 9 years between me and the next one up.  My eldest sister graduated high school just a few weeks before I was born.  Going forward here, since I'm not sure who did what, I'm going to use the collective "We" as in our family.

Preparing meals for a family of 8 could never have been an easy task.  Planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning up.  I don't remember many occasions other than holidays when all 8 of us sat down together for a meal after all, I was only 8 years old when my family began to unravel.  We didn't have a ton of money.  My parents both worked and well, there were 6 of us kids to feed.  My dad hunted and he fished to supplement the meat we bought.  We had casseroles and dishes that could stretch the dollars just a little bit further.  We canned tomatoes, peaches, and whatever else we could to save what we could.

We didn't use instant potatoes, frozen lasagna, pre-pressed hamburger patties, or frozen boneless chicken breasts in our meals.  If we had Swiss Steak, we made Swiss Steak in the crock pot from the real meat in our freezer, we didn't open a box from the freezer and bake one up.  On occasion, we did have a box of fried chicken or some fish sticks, even a TV dinner (in the foil tray - remember those?) once in awhile.  We did have store bought french fries or tater tots and I don't even remember frozen veggies, we typically had canned.

We had sandwich nights, and leftover nights.  Sandwich night was my favorite.  It was generally Friday night and we'd put out bread, cheese, lunch meat, and all the condiments out on the dining room table and we could make whatever sandwich we wanted - but, we had to eat it!  We were allowed to have potato chips that night!  And Kool-Aid!  I always had to have milk with my meal so, anything else was a real treat!  Sandwich night was also popcorn night!  David and Valerie would get out the popcorn popper, it looked like a big metal teapot that plugged into the wall.  Val would pour the oil in and my job was to carefully pour in the popcorn David had measured out for me.  It was really important not to spill it!  We'd wait for it to pop and pour it into a big, white plastic bowl for my dad, and us kids got the yellow cereal bowls.  What I'd give to share popcorn with my sister and brother like that again!

As I've grown up and made my own family, I've followed a lot of what we did back home.  I rarely purchase prepackaged frozen meals.  I don't like the taste.  I use frozen vegetables or fresh as often as I can.  I still make Swiss Steak in the crock pot but, I do use boneless chicken breasts - only in casseroles though!  I make my own hamburger patties from fresh beef and my lasagna from scratch.   And we sometimes make popcorn with the air popper.  Jacob now has the 'very important' job of pouring in the popcorn.  Yes, of course we have Kool-aid!  But, the best part is that I now have the same big, white plastic bowl my dad always used!  I think of my family every time.

**I'm thinking about frozen lasagna - could you imagine how many boxes you would have to buy to feed a family of 8?  And the cost per box?  Not to mention the amount of sodium in each!  And now you see why we made rather than bought!  I don't know about you but, I'll take cheesy. ooey, gooey homemade lasagna over frozen cardboard, preprocessed cheese food, tastes like a box lasagna any day!