Of all the products you can buy at a supermarket, which is the most frequently manufactured at home instead of purchased at the supermarket?

(post your own, and/or answer)

- Walt

Hm, well, I don't actually grow the beans myself, but other than that, right now I guess I'd have to say coffee.

I've also taken part in the growing of various vegetables and fishing for fish, and getting eggs from the chickencoop and so on, but it's been a while.

Rich

Ummm...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Water?

Dav

Depending on what you mean by "manufactured," my first choice would be water. I mean, maybe if you live in a really toxic environment it's reasonable, but haven't people ever heard of a water filter? They shell out a buck a bottle for stuff that comes out of the tap for very little.

Besides that, I always think cut-up chicken is silly. The more cut-up it is, the sooner it stops being fresh. You pay a guy to run a frozen chicken through a bandsaw (no joke), so you get splinters of bone all over the place, and you tear up the grain of the meat. And if you have any manual dexterity at all, you can learn to cut up a chicken in two tries (a few more if you want to do it really elegantly), and you get it the way you want it. Then you can use the carcass for stock.

Which is another thing I don't buy. Canned stock tastes like metal and salt. Boxed stock is the same crap in a box, and tastes like cardboard.

So basically I combine three stupid things and get wonderfulness for cheap:

Chicken (cut up). Cook, and serve with:
Water (out of the tap)
Carcass (from chicken)
Bring to boil, then simmer gently for 3 hours. Throw in any root vegetable peelings you may have around instead of throwing them away. Strain, freeze or salt gently and serve immediately.

Think how much you've just saved, over
Bottled water
Cut-up chicken
Tan crap from a can
Plus it makes your house smell fantastic.

Sorry, you provoked a rant.

Cottage cheese -- accidentally.

Chris

It's not water; getting it out of the tap doesn't constitute manufacturing. Putting it in bottles arguably might, but not many people do that regularly. Filtering it might also be considered manufacturing, but fewer people filter their water than manufacture the product I'm thinking of.

Hmm, coffee might be a close call. The thing is, the supermarkets I've shopped at don't sell ready-to-drink coffee. If yours does, then I might have to accept coffee as a valid answer, but it wasn't what I had in mind.

Love that chicken stock. I make my own too.

- Walt

Bread?

Walt Freitag wrote: Hmm, coffee might be a close call. The thing is, the supermarkets I've shopped at don't sell ready-to-drink coffee. If yours does, then I might have to accept coffee as a valid answer, but it wasn't what I had in mind.

Hmm..

Salad
Sandwiches
Pancakes
Cakes/Pies
Coleslaw

Those are my best answers so far.

-Chris

Oh, god, yes. Salad. Excellent point. What kind of freak cannot cut lettuce? And what sort of weirdo buys pre-made pancakes? I don't have a problem with buying pancake mix, but you know, it doesn't take much to cook the things. And not tearing up lettuce leaves seems to me deeply strange.

But I admit that I like frozen pizza, although to be fair I must say that frozen pizza doesn't actually taste quite like anything else in the universe, and certainly is very different from real pizza.

And yes, I used to buy them when I lived in Chicago. Chicago deep-dish is a totally different sort of food -- no relation at all.

Iced tea?

Julie, who grew up with a pitcher in the fridge and considers Snapple an abomination, Honest Tea on the other hand ...

Pre-grated cheese? The 'pre-grated' part obviously, not the cheese itself.

Ice?

Strawberries

The ones you buy at the store usually suck hard. Sadly, most people don't know because they've never had the real thing. :-(

Iced tea. Sun tea is da bomb.

Matt's got it. It's ice. Most people make some either daily or every few days. Most of the time (when it's not below freezing outside, and usually even when it is) they use complex machinery (a freezer, and in some cases an automatic icemaker within the freezer) to do so. Yet you can buy bags of it at the supermarket.

Somewhere along the line this turned into a "fresh foods are better" discussion, which I don't mind at all, as the original question was completely pointless.

Sun tea is excellent. Home-grown strawberries, tomatos, and herbs are all superior. As are the basic makeable-at-home chesses like ricotta.

A few other notable foods worth making from scratch: salsa (what's with that soupy ketchup-like stuff they put in jars?), curry pastes and sauces, spaghetti sauce, and all kinds of baked goods (except some breads, which bakeries can often do better).

And even paying $20.00 or so per pound for the right kinds of fish at a Japanese market, I save a bundle by making my own sushi. In an hour or two I can make up far more sushi than I'd be able to afford, sometimes hundreds of dollars (retail) worth, for a party or game session.

- Walt

Hello,

Well, as long as it's pointless, I can ramble about the ice-buying thing.

My wife and I have a downstairs bar in our house. It's pretty extensive. It doesn't wrap around a corner or anything, but it's a whole nook, and there are shelves with glassware, and sink and fridge and all that. Since moving into this place, we've become cocktail people and many friends consider coming over for food and a movie to include, necessarily, a "try this one!" session at the bar.

So buying ice is now something I do. For a mixed-drink extravaganza, you need a whole bunch of it in readily-scoopable form, and I can't see dedicating freezer space to whole armloads of ice trays, plus refilling them and all that.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Well, as long as it's pointless, I can ramble about the ice-buying thing.

Usually I just get the cheapie crap for shaking in the mixer, but for the next real knock-down drag-out party, I'll get cubed, block, etc, and also set up cracked and shaved. Mixed drink snob, remember?

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Usually I just get the cheapie crap for shaking in the mixer, but for the next real knock-down drag-out party, I'll get cubed, block, etc, and also set up cracked and shaved. Mixed drink snob, remember?

Heh...when Ron says Mixed Drink Snob, he means it. I expect if you asked for a Kamikazee he'd glare and say "make it yourself" :-)

Ron mixes drinks in which there are strange chemical reactions such that the drink becomes sweet and pale green even though nothing sweet or green was ever added to the glass.

Ron Edwards wrote: Mixed drink snob, remember?

I make a Kamikaze, all right. Fresh lime juice or Rose's, your preference. No grenadine (feh). Cointreau, not Triple-Sec.*

As for hours of operation, pretty much any time when I'm not working out in the evening and when I'm not working out or otherwise up early for the next day. Not that we use the bar that often, but it'd be open that often.

Best,
Ron

* Whoever chimes in and says, "Cointreau is a triple-sec," gets a boot in the ass.