The article mentions people forgoing frozen foods.. Why not make your own?

Last week, my wife stopped by the local farm and picked up a bushel of corn (that's about 48 ears). She got a big pot of water going, and a cooler with an ice bath standing by. Shuck the corn, cook it for a minute, and into the ice bath to halt the process of cooking.

Next, pull the corn out, strip off the kernels with a knife, onto a sheet pan and into the freezer. An hour later, into freezer-friendly containers and into the freezer for the winter.

The bushel of corn was $20. For that $20, we got about $60 worth of frozen corn, by grocery store standards. This took her about 3 hours in total, aside from the time the corn was relaxing in the freezer.

not much savings for floobtronics if you value your wife's work @ $10/hr. and if you consider canned corn won't go bad if you lose electricity -hope you aren't in tornado alley, fire central california or a storm prone area-. although you do save on sodium added to prepared foods.

@Floobtronics: I think the article was referring to frozen convenience foods... the microwave meals and the ready-to-heat stuff. I was watching for a mention of frozen veggies and I didn't get that from the article.

@Ronin-Democrat: My dad refused to eat canned vegetables when I was growing up. I agree with him; what kind of experience are you paying for, anyway? Something inferior out of a can that usually costs almost as much as the frozen product that tastes much more like fresh and is almost every bit as convenient?

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Well, just follow @Floobtronics' directions, but instead of using corn replace with a plate containing: 2 salisbury steaks, whipped potatoes, broccoli with cheese sauce, and peach cobbler.

Done and done.

Patio furniture->Sounds like home owners turning into apartment renters.

Fashion->Meh...jeans are jeans.

Food->What no ramen noodles and spaghetti (ie bachelor chow). I don't get the frozen food thing, maybe they mean the EXPENSIVE frozen food. There's plenty of cheap frozen food floating around that's actually not bad. Usually you can find the michellina's (or budget gourmet) or Banquet stuff for under a buck at any grocery store. Usually the noodle stuff (lasagna, etc) is pretty good but the chicken usually ends up kind of soggy. Not quality meat but edible.

I recall when the price went on sale for those banquet red boxes to a paltry .65 cents at a grocery store it was tv dinner armageddon. Cleaned out EVERYTHING.

Did the Comsumerist realy read the article?

You got it backwards on the patio furniture.

"CONCLUSIONS: Consumers are staying close to home and they want it to look nice. But they're not committing to big purchases like patio furniture to spruce up their home."

@rpm773: What? Doesn't everyone do that? With my cooking and shopping skills honed for a family of 6, the fact that I like my own cooking, and the fact that I live alone, I often cook for four to six, portion everything out, and freeze several complete dinners. It's monumentally stupid to try to make a meatloaf or a casserole or a minestrone for one serving, geeze.

There was some movement, also, back in the 70s, where thrifty housewives used to get together on a Saturday and prepare a month's worth of basic convenience meals (preseasoned ground beef, marinara sauce, precooked cut up chicken, all the way up to complete vegetable dishes) so all they would have to do later was heat-up and assembly. I forget what cutesy name they dreamed up for it, but some whiz kid actually built a business around it... there's one up the street from me. You go to the location and use their facilities (and, I think, their food) to put together your ready-to-freeze family meals. No need to pay their outrageous prices (they really market to upscale families on the go). I think homeschooling families still pass the idea around on their forums, and it's a good one; with a Costco membership and a large freezer, even couples and singles can save a lot of money and time.

One more hidden cost of my small city apartment.

Considering that I buy a 16 pack of corn on the cobbetts at Sam's Club for about 9 bucks, I could not do the corn thing.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Oh, I found it. it's called "Once a Month Cooking" or OAMC for short.

[www.lmgtfy.com]

I read the part about people not buying frozen dinners, and I'm just not seeing it. Maybe I'm biased because I "make" my own meals but can't cook, but I keep a freezer full of cheap frozen pre-packaged meals. I know I'm not the only one, and the frozen dinner section at my nearby grocers see plenty of action. The most popular stuff (esp. certain Hungry Man meals, such as beer battered chicken) actually tend to sell out, much to my annoyance.

This might also be attributable to living in a big college city.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: It's just the two of us and I don't really have the freezer space to do this for more than one or two dishes. And it's hard to freeze portions of everything you make. And it's really sometimes just not that appetizing. It's easier to make one big meal on Sunday, eat that until Wednesday and then cook something else again to last until Sunday.

@nstonep: Dear Lord, Banquet is disgusting. I think people would just rather pack a sandwich to save money.

@WraithSama: I think it's partially about where you live, and partially that people grab these meals out of convenience and put up with the taste. Some of the Lean Cuisines actually resemble real food, but your Banquet meals, Hungry Man, Stouffers, etc. always look like prison food. But sometimes you forget to pack your lunch for the day, and are in a rush. It's more economical to grab that $2 frozen package than to buy a meal at a fast food joint.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Another one near us is "Let's Dish". The advantage that we saw to this was they provided all of the ingredents to make a home cooked meal so you were never saying "I want to make XX, and I need YY ingredient. Do I have YY at home?"

@pecan 3.14159265: Waah. I cook for one, and I don't freeze everything I make (really, sometimes I just have something simple like a seasoned chicken breast in its own pan glaze, with a couple of halved tomatoes with basil and mozzarella broiled in the toaster oven next to a few pieces of asparagus). I just sometimes, out of habit, buy and cook in quantities more appropriate for a family. I don't do OAMC, or if I did, I'd have to team up with a family and take home only what I could use in a week.

Honestly, you eat the same thing for four days in a row? Do you like food?

@speedwell, avatar of snark: It's in my experience that a dozen ears of corn will produce enough corn kernals to make approximately 1/3rd the supply of corn I need for corn soup in the winter.

Even if it's a great deal, I can't spend $20 buying ears of corn when I can get the equivalent of two ears of corn in one can for 98 cents at the grocery store. For an afternoon of grilling, I can buy a few ears, but to make a pot of soup in which corn is the main ingredient, it gets too expensive to use fresh corn.

@pecan 3.14159265: Yes, they would, but they lack cooking skills. My ex-boyfriend recently got tired of peanut butter and tried to saute a chicken breast. He sustained second-degree burns, ruined a nonstick pan, and broke a spatula. As my mother used to say, he could burn a pot of hardboiled eggs.

@nstonep: Why would people moving into apartments buy patio furniture?

@WraithSama: I was very amused to see the mention of Smart Ones in the article, since I used to eat 3-4 of those or Lean Cuisines every week when I had a full-time job outside the house. When I was laid off, I very abruptly stopped buying them.

Now that I work from home, I don't buy them anymore, since I can take twenty minutes and actually cook a lunch from ingredients.

What I'm getting at is that maybe the change is due to unemployment, and people who do still have jobs packing leftovers or sandwiches more often.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Sarcasm. I was playing off the image of..
1. boiling a large pot of water
2. keeping an ice bath handy nearby
3. dumping a full plate of food into each, and then
4. freezing.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: I used to work nights and had no time to make dinner every night so we had leftovers to tide us over until one day in the week in which I worked earlier in the day. Now I make dinner at least four nights a week, and we don't have as much for leftovers. I usually only freeze soups, though.

So this report shows that people are finally coming to their senses?

@WraithSama:
I do that, too. I live in a medium-sized city, but I live alone and almost never cook dinner for myself. I usually eat out for lunch, and if I'm hungry at dinner-time, I'll heat up a Lean Cuisine.

On weekends, I'm with my significant other, and we generally go out for dinner.

I don't think retailers reacted to this recession well at all Take the auto industry, they took huge losses because they didnt discount deep enough. Maybe I dont shop enough, but it doesn't appear to me that wre are any great deals on clothing.

But people still seem to be buying ridiculously pricey widescreen TVs. Why?

I take one Sunday each month and just cook, bag, and Freeze. This was never done at the start 26 or so years ago to save money, it was my lunch at work. I do it now, again not to save money but I like doing it. A lady friend of mind was once told by her mother it's cheaper to buy frozen corn on the cob. Target about 2 months ago had them 10/$1.00. She was over and seen how I did it. I have the freezer on anyway. At 1st I think people do this to save money then after time they do it being they like their own cooking. After all have you seen that the dinners are smaller where you need two of them or 1½ that extra ½ people will get the other ½ that they did not want in the 1st place. Super Size me, I guess its called.

FYI yes I still by the dinners MC when they are on sale. $1.67, last month pickup 30 of them. Then again I am the person that only shops from the frontpage or the 3 days sale, IE: I only buy those items and nothing else.

BTW a Hungry Man meal, over 1,000 cals ouch!

@Hoss: WalMart released their own analysis several months ago based n the data in their stores (it is insane they types of trends they can predict). Anyway, WalMart was seeing a decline in sales in adult clothing, but an increase in sales of chlidrens clothing (indicating that parents were sacrificing themselves, but were not yet ready to sacrifice for their children.

WRT large widescreen TVs and BlueRap/DVD players, Walmart suggested that people were staying home and were not going to the movies and instead were investing in their home entertainment systems. Think about it. If a family of 4 goes to the movies, they are spending $40-50 on tickets + an additional $10-20 or more in snacks, that is $50-70 or more per movie outing. Do that once a month for a year an that is a nice high definition widescreen TV.

@Rachacha: The press release and a story on the Today show can be found here:
[walmartstores.com]
[today.msnbc.msn.com]

@speedwell, avatar of snark: "thrifty housewives used to get together on a Saturday and prepare a month's worth of basic convenience meals"

There are some local moms groups that do this near me, usually they borrow a church basement with a commercial kitchen, everyone brings the fixings for one freezable meal and printed instructions, and the moms take turns assembling and watching the kids. I haven't done it, but I have several friends who do it.

There are a couple of other places like that where you assemble (or just buy) your frozen dinners for six ... it tends to be more expensive, because you're paying for that convenience, but not as expensive as the supermarket. There's one near us, I can't remember what it's called, but it does fundraisers ... 10% of the profits go to your group or whatever, so various charities and schools I'm involved with are frequently hosting those at the place. It's supposed to be pretty tasty, though again, I haven't been. :)

@Floobtronics: I wouldn't spend the time processing corn unless we grew it ourselves or someone gave us a big bag of corn. I stock up on 77 cent bags of frozen corn when they are on sale.

If someone gave it to me it would be worth it to process it and freeze. But I would probably just break the cleaned ears in half, process and freeze them. Ever seen how expensive corn on the cob is in the frozen section?

We save our effort for making things like frozen meals or other foods that have a huge markup just because they are prepared.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: You're confusing liking food with liking variety there, I think. I love food, and I'm often perfectly happy eating favorites several days in a row. It's not really different to me than having the same breakfast. I'm fortunate enough to have room for a standalone freezer, and I've got lots stored in there; that doesn't mean I won't get a taste for white chicken chili one week and whip through the stores for that for five days.

The freezer gives me enough flexibility, fortunately, that I don't have to pin down my schedule to once a month. That way I can cook up lots in April and May in order to avoid using the stove in the summer, and pick up the cooking again in September (or August, this year). But I also do tend to keep a couple of boughten dinners (99 cent sales are pretty common around here, so it's perfectly affordable) for last minute lunches at work when I haven't prepped the night before.

@Nicole: They are not. People are trying to give the outward illusion that everything is fine. We have one empty house on the block, we think they are growing pot. Our neighbors did a rushed sale of their house. People seem to be aware of the potential impending doom and want to give the impression everything is fine. For some reason houses that barely ever mowed last year planted flowers and spend time doing yard work this year. I think people are also spending more time at home so they care how it looks.

@Laura Northrup: We both stopped doing the lunch at a restaurant thing years ago when we realized what a waste of money it was. We both got strange looks for packing in food at work at the time.

I think more people are jumping on that idea to save money.

@Hoss: I just spent way too much trying to find school clothes for one of the kids. Even the discount stores are asking way too much.

@Laura Northrup: Ah, good point about the unemployment. For me the frozen meals are strictly for work, but the Budget Gourmet/Michelinas really are cheap enough here to compete with a lot of homemade stuff.

I wonder if there's a gender factor here as well? I've heard that there's a difference in the kind of frozen meals women tend to eat and those men tend to eat, and the big serving guy meals tend to be pricier--could be they're getting particularly hard hit since it's easier to undercut them with homemade.

@Rachacha: Thanks for the link to the video. Interesting. But seems to me that a video on older equipment can be just as entertaining. And a WII is very costly both in the console and extras. The walmart analysis is probably right -- but people's logic in terms of their priorities feels completely wrong. $1000 spent on non-neccessities today can mean a missed rent payment if they are laid off.

@bohemian: Yes, I was in a discount store called Marshalls last weekend to look for shorts. Considering (i) the bad economy and (2) that it's end of season for shorts (in New England), I left without buying thinking that $25 shorts in a discount store as too much.

@bohemian: Yeah, our Kroger will do bags of frozen veggies for 45 cents once in a while. Pick 'em up on double coupon day with a store coupon and they're free!

I try to freeze stuff myself, but if it's something time consuming that I really can find inexpensively already made, then that's what I'll do!

And for help with who has the in-store deals + awesome coupons check out The Grocery Game. [www.thegrocerygame.com]

@pecan 3.14159265: You use canned for your soup? Do you like it better than frozen? I LOVE corn chowder, but figured frozen was the way to go...

@pecan 3.14159265: Actual question (no snark) - how do you freeze soup? I've tried but it gets burned.

@onereeves: I'm glad I'm not the only who caught this. I know its a blog and some say they shouldn't be held to the same standards, but could you imagine the Consumer Reports writers down the hall making the same mistake?

I seem to always have enough in left overs from dinner that I never eat frozen meals at lunch anymore. I actually have a couple in my freezer that have been there for probably over 6 months.

We have a nice spot in our living room just waiting for a flat screen TV, but even though prices have dropped a lot, we still don't feel like committing close to $1,000 (including mounting) on something we really just don't need. Our other two smaller TVs are doing just fine, one for us, one for the kids.

@burnedout: For me, I fill soup in those plastic Chinese food takeout containers and I make sure it cools before I put it into the freezer. You shouldn't keep soup in the freezer for more than a few months anyway.

@burnedout: I'm actually not a huge fan of the frozen corn I find at the store. Even the cheapest generic corn is more expensive for quantity than cans of corn.

Bird's Eye brand is pretty good as far as frozen goes, but it's more expensive than the generic corn I can get canned. The problem is that when you get to making pots of soup and you need a ton of corn, it gets expensive. It was just cheaper to buy cans rather than frozen.

@AkakmanH:
So you bought about 8 ears for more than a buck each...

@pecan 3.14159265: Ha! Thats what I do. Though I only do it for one person.

And the trick here is to be hungry enough. If you are hungry enough, anything tastes good.

@pecan 3.14159265: same here! i actually bought a whole lot of different sizes of those plastic chinese food containers at an online restaurant supply store years back for super cheap. even with breakage and that nasty thing that happens to plastic when you microwave starch it, i have plenty left. [and i bought an extra sleeve of lids since the lids often die first]
if you are looking for them, the containers are 'newspring delitainers'
they do sometimes crack when freezing though so you really do have to let them cool before before freezing the food or the air displacement makes them crack. i usually cool the whole pot of food in the fridge and then portion it out into containers

@bohemian: i think that last point is key. a lot of families are starting to forgo the summer vacation, so they're sprucing up their homesteads to make them more enjoyable.

we started seeing this in my area when gas prices hit $4/gallon (what was that - may 2008?) there was a run on anything backyard related at most of the home stores - you couldn't even find those cheap-ass plastic patio sets at kmart!

i did some serious planting this year, but that's only b/c a few friends loaded me up with enough plants that it took me a full month to find room for them! man, i'm lucky.

@MostlyHarmless:
What's the saying? Something like "hunger is the best sauce" I think. Yes, it is true!