Originally Posted by Meloman

I 1000% agree. Financially I grew up lower income but luckily my Italian mom knew how to cook well. If you know what you're doing it's not hard to cook a quick meal with good ingredients. If you need to, start coupon clipping. Look for sales. Buy in bulk.

The main problem is who most Americans don't know how to cook. Growing up all my friends moms cooked like crap. I remember a friend of mine had pasta with pesto sauce one night. The pesto sauce came from a powder packet you mix with I think milk. Jesus, pesto is the easiest sauce to make. That stuff he ate was filled with god knows how many preservatives and crap. You take some basil, throw it in a blender with some oil, blend it and bam you have fresh pesto sauce. Make a bunch extra and store it in the freezer. It's just 2 ingredients you blend. It's not hard.

I'm no gourmet cook by any stretch of the imagination and I definitely don't know how to cook that many different things. But the few things I do cook, I cook well. And I'm a lazy ass that doesn't spend more than 15-30 minutes cooking. The pesto meal I described would only take the 10 minutes to cook the pasta if you all ready have the pesto made.