Alarming example of how the general public in America relies on processed/prepared/takeout/ restaurant foods

Ya only have to do that once, huh? I don’t like oven mitts but have one that Bob brought back from a Scottish mill many years ago. I put it on the handle.

Here’s an example from just before Xmas. There’s oasis inside the 12-oz paper cups, so the flowers usually last about a week.

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That’s great!!
Such a nice idea.

I’m a potholder gal myself. I find oven mitts too large and clumsy. For perspective: I have “oven mitts” made for use with a toaster oven. You’re supposed to insert your thumb in one side and first two fingers on the other side; I put all 4 fingers in and have room to spare. So I guess my hands are too small to comfortably fit a mitt.

Besides, I have a vast collection of seasonal potholders, so they function as part of the kitchen decor :slight_smile:

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Yeah, in life there are most certainly things you only do once :slight_smile: … I have ridiculously big hands, hard to get them in mitts, especially if hands are wet/damp.

I did find a commercial set of mitts at Rest. Depot that I can get my paws into. For the Big Green Egg I use welding gloves. Sized for real men :slight_smile:

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Go for towels for the oven and the welding gloves for the smoker :slight_smile: Bob has “manly hands” also. There are he can’t do and things that I can’t do. So we complement each other. I guess :slight_smile:

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We always hear that many people use processed food, prepared food…etc. I don’t know how bad the situation is. I mean. We do hear that many people eat from frozen dinner and take out, but I am not sure if it is really over 50%.

The other thing is that how do we define “processed food”?

If I use store-bought sausages or cheese or pickled kimchi, am I not using processed food?

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I’ve found welding gloves to be a terrific grilling tool, too!

The thing that gets me every so often is the gas stove in my mother’s kitchen. More than a few times I’ve touched the cast iron grate forgetting that I just took something off the heat! I’m used to my electric stove that turns red.

My own distinction would be that freshly made sausage and kimchi are prepared foods from whole, identifiable ingredients and “processed” foods are those that also contain stuff that is assembled with stuff like added gums, hydrolyzed proteins, altered fats and fats not from the named main ingredient only, modified starches, coloring, “natural flavors” and the like.

So in a literal sense, yeah, the fresh sausage meat has gone through a prep process, but is not, typically full of processed ingredients.

I had this discussion with a friend: is peanut butter processed food? Even if it’s 1 ingredient peanut butter, no sugar, no added oil, organic, blah-blah…it’s still “processed”. I understand what people are getting at when they refer to “processed food”, but it’s not a perfectly descriptive term.

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In college I asked my roommates if they wanted some lemonaid I was about to make. When one of the girls came in my room and saw the lemons, she was taken aback. She was unaware lemonaid could be made without powder. And this college story was not super-recent…ahem…we probably watched videos on MTV while we drank it. We’ve been on this downward slide a long time.

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Well, slightly related, I have know a few people (very few actually) who cannot stand to eat anything which looks like from animal parts. In other words, the idea of eating from a whole roast of chicken is repulsive because it starts to look like a real animal. However, eating chicken nuggets is less repulsive.

Absolutely agree. However, I think some of these are more “black and white” very easy to distinguished cases, while some are more borderline.

For example, brewing soy sauce and fermenting vinegar are processes. These are ancient processes which we have done for thousands of years. My guess is that most people view these are acceptable processes and won’t call them as “processed foods”. Meanwhile, the newer processes like trans fat and chemical food coloring are something most of us agreed as not-so-good.

I cannot help but think there are many processed foods which sit at the gray area

Absolutely agree with you, as well, which is why I described the distinction as just my own. For some, it means added salt and sugars, for others, it means white flour and highly refined sugars. For me, it’s added crud that has no business in the company of the other ingredients. :slight_smile:

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Yep. Once is enough. Also, my husband once grabbed a handle that he didn’t know was hot because I was doing the cooking and didn’t have a chance to warn him. I leave a mitt/pot holder on hot handles. I also have some handle covers made just for the purpose - they’re short so they don’t work on my All-Clad stuff, but they’re great for cast iron.

We should totally have this in the Cookware section. Unfortunately, whenever we move these “side conversations” under a new thread, we end up killing it – people often stop posting.

True, isn’t it? Happened over and over again on CH.

:smiley: Which is why I almost never asked moderators to split the sub-threads out because it often kills a perfectly nice conversation.