No way, man. My grandma’s stuffing was some of the best stuff I’ve ever eaten. She passed down the recipe to my mom, but my mom is gluten-free so she can’t taste-test it as she makes it, so it’s never quite the same. Yet, still way better than stovetop.
Cranberry sauce, though. I will always prefer the canned jello type stuff over homemade. Some homemade ones are great, sure, but that canned stuff is so good.
I’m Canadian so I had this conversation about a month ago.
I agree with the stuffing … when you are preparing ten food items for a big supper, no sense in taking time to make complicated stuffing when all you need is a big packet and some hot water. Especially when the difference is negligible between instant and homemade.
I feel the same about frozen lasagna. Either my wife, myself or both of us can spend hours in the kitchen making a good lasagna recipe and it doesn’t taste much better than a store bought frozen one that didn’t take any work.
Now Turkey Gravy … that is a war I’m willing to fight.
The worst crime I ever witnessed was my mother in law’s Turkey Gravy, which I had to bear every Christmas for years. She dosed her roasted turkey in plain water, drained the liquid at the end, strained off the fat, leaving only mostly water and then added a flour slurry with no spices … it came out as a thin white pudding the same color as the potatoes and the whole family loved it. As much as they said they loved it, everyone heavily salted their food anyway.
That was about ten years ago and I’ve studied the gravy arts and become an expert at seasoning my turkey, roasting it with minimal liquid, carefully collecting drippings, making roux, seasoning and flavoring if I need to and making the creamest, tastiest, brown turkey gravy … even my wife raves about it now.
God that reminds me, I froze some leftovers into a dinner tray … I’m eating some today.
I feel the same about frozen lasagna. Either my wife, myself or both of us can spend hours in the kitchen making a good lasagna recipe and it doesn’t taste much better than a store bought frozen one that didn’t take any work.
Speak for yourself on that one. I can do a home made lasagna that’s far better than anything that’s available mass produced and frozen.
But I’m still gonna bake a Stouffer’s most of the time because it’s way less work.
I don’t deny it and I would love to try your lasagna.
But on average it takes about six hours to make a good lasagna … that’s cooking, cutting, mixing, boiling, preparing and then baking the food. Not to mention the expense of gathering good ingredients to make it.
I’m not saying frozen lasagna is the best … it’s like the turkey stuffing … I would rather spend five minutes making some instant store bought food that is decent quality rather than spend hours making something a little bit better.
The directions say to mix the hot water thoroughly throughout the dry mixture, cover, and remove from heat so the entire mix can absorb the water. Sounds like there was no mixing and the half that wasn’t in the water barely got any while the rest was sitting in the water meant for the entire package. Easy fix is to mix it before covering. Hopefully the next batch comes out to your satisfaction!
There’s a part of me that wants to suggest recipes to save you from this nightmare, but your ignorance is your bliss and it comes from a readily available, cheap and easy to prepare cardboard box.
In my 40 years, I have had many home made recipes. I have never found them comparable for one weirdly indulgent reason - salt. I think the salt content for better or worse is what drives me to the boxed stuff, especially now with the huge (and reasonable!) drive toward low sodium broth. I don’t know why, but boxed stuffing/dressing is my favorite food.
You’re damn right that a lotta stuffings end up undersalted. And I’m not gonna tell you the boxed stuffing isn’t tasty. (My “nightmare” comment is totally hyperbolic and flippant, but we’re having fun here I hope)
But I have a friend who makes it with sausage and sage herbed brown butter and I’m confident it’s a box beater. Heck of a lot more work, though.
I’m with you. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had truly good homemade stuffing? It’s always a weird, damp, spongy mess. But that box of Stove Top, ready in minutes? I’ll eat the whole thing by myself. It’s also great to have an extra box to go with the leftovers, especially for the sandwiches.
I think that's totally fine, as much as some might want to turn this into a "Ketchup on Steak" kind of holy war.
I grew up on StoveTop and I do think it's yummy.
My mother in law makes a stuffing that's essentially potatoes, bread, onions, whatever other seasonings, and yes a good bit of salt. (I haven't helped make it I admit, so I could be doing it a disservice to describe it that way)
She even cooks some of it inside the turkey and some of it outside, though it never really gets soggy.
As far as I'm concerned, you could throw out the entire rest of Thanksgiving dinner and just give me a big bowl of that.
I watched TNG through fully with my daughter when she was 12, one episode most nights. She’s nearly 17 now and absolutely shocked that I can send her banger Star Trek memes daily.
I wish I could get my daughter into Star Trek. She’s not interested in any of it. She doesn’t even like science fiction that much. I don’t get it. She came from two devoted Trekkies. We have a standup Mr. Spock in the hallway on the wall. We have a delta on the living room wall. We have a Spock tree topper and an Amok Time ornament. And I can’t get her to watch a single episode of any of it. We tried Encounter at Farpoint a couple of years ago and she didn’t even make it through the first half.
Encounter at Farpoint probably isn’t the place to start.
We tend to assume our kids will get into it the same way we did, but different generations respond differently.
Our kids are fans, but they like the franchise on their own terms. We started them with the TAS DVD set, after priming them with Odd Squad. They loved it.
When they hit school age, I tried them on a curated set of TNG episodes. Didn’t really stick, but Voyager they adored. By high school they’d tried most of it but would only watch the occasional episode of DS9 or Enterprise. They watched the early seasons of Discovery with enthusiasm even though I had to fast forward through some scenes.
In high school, their interest fell off as they explored other fandoms, but they’ve come back to it on their own terms. And their favourite shows at the moment aren’t ones that I would ever have predicted.
Might just be kids being kids. If the parents like it it’s by default dusty and not cool. Eventually they come around, at least I did on quite a few things I found lethally boring as a kid.
While it is easily the best show of any genre to be produced in a long time, I’m not sure how anyone that doesn’t know trek can get full enjoyment out of it, let alone 2/3 of the jokes.
Give it time, you never know. Our kid isn’t super into any of it but did latch onto Twilight Zone and then like TOS soon after. She wasn’t ever huge into star wars either. I have yet to introduce her to the rest of trek. I’m running out of time before she’s in college lol
Lol … the rebellious alternative teen in the 90s was often a Trekkie that lived in an alternate reality.
The modern rebellious alternative teen is now probably someone who refuses to join their parents fanbase.
It’s probably not that they don’t like Star Trek … it’s probably like they just want to do something without their parents. It doesn’t mean they don’t love you, they just want to do something different.
But what do I know … I don’t even have kids. But I do have about 30 nieces and nephews, and about the same number of grand nieces and nephews who have given me enough experience to know that teenagers are a weird bunch … and when you think about it, we all were at one point.
Yea, just checked now out of curiosity. First, it was definitely a bit mirror universe creepy. Second, yea, it did seem a bit shallow and childishly dumb from what I saw. Funny.
That’s a weird sign. If it’s made by a church or other religous group, you’d think they wouldn’t phrase it like that, as it implies god doesn’t exist, but of course an atheist wouldn’t be making signs talking about god either.
So, is this “Business Alpha Nottingham” some weird agnostic church or what? The website doesn’t work fyi.
lemmy.sdf.org
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