This, That, and The Other

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of you earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 31st) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

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This was originally published on July 31, 2014 on my old blog.

Homemade or made from scratch?

Today’s Daily Prompt asks:

Automation has made it possible to produce so many objects — from bread to shoes — without the intervention of human hands (assuming that pressing a button doesn’t count). What things do you still prefer in their traditional, handmade version?

I know the focus of this prompt is the distinction between handmade and manufactured. But I’m going to go in a slightly different direction, which should come as no surprise to my regular readers.

I’m going to focus my post on the distinction between homemade and made from scratch. Homemade means made at home, rather than in a store or factory. Made from scratch means not using something pre-packaged.

Okay, so yeah, this applies mostly to cooking, which is something I do, to some extent, on a daily basis.

Last night, for example, I prepared a batch of pasta with meat sauce. Was it homemade? Yes. Was it made from scratch? No.

Made from scratch, to me, would mean making my own pasta. I did not do that. I bought a box of organic spaghetti at the grocery store.

Made from scratch, to me, would mean making my own sauce from tomatoes and vinegar and whatever else goes into making “from scratch” spaghetti sauce. I bought two jars of organic pasta sauce at the grocery store.

And at the extreme, made from scratch would mean slaughtering my own cow, chopping it up, and grinding up a hunk of meat. I bought a pound of ground beef at the grocery store.

How in the world, then, can I call my pasta meal “homemade”?Well, I didn’t pick up a package of frozen spaghetti and stick it in the microwave. I didn’t buy a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and heat it up in a pot on the stove.

I boiled the pasta in a pot of water for about 8 minutes (al dente) in one pot. I poured the jars of pasta sauce into another pot. I browned and seasoned the ground beef in a pan. When the pasta was done, I drained it in a colander and then put the pasta back into the large pot.

I took the browned, seasoned ground beef and mixed it into the heated pasta sauce in the other pot. I poured the pasta sauce with ground beef over the pasta and stirred that all up. With a pasta fork, I scooped out a serving onto a plate. I sprinkled shredded Parmesan cheese over the pasta.

And then I ate it. And it was good!

Afterwards, I put the remaining pasta with meat sauce into a Tupperware-like storage bowl and stuck it in the refrigerator. I washed and dried the two pots and the pan, along with the utensils, and put them all away.

So was my meal really homemade? Absofreakinlutely. No one can convince me that my dinner last night was not homemade. It wasn’t made from scratch, but it was most definitely prepared by my own two hands in my own home.