A Matter of Convenience

For more years than I care to remember, I cooked three meals a day for seven people. Eating out was an occurrence rarer than the appearance of Halley’s comet, especially as the kids got older and our “party of seven” included teenage boys who grew to 6’7’’ and 6’3”. Keeping the food bills under control was a full-time job. Even if there had been the huge array of today’s convenience foods available, the additional cost would have ruled them out in our household. (In the interest of full disclosure, I confess to using cake-mixes. I don’t do cakes. And there is an apocryphal story the kids like to tell involving me, driving lessons and Hamburger Helper, but you don’t need to know that.) So I chopped, pared, peeled and diced with the best of them.

Now there are just two of us and it is not unknown for me to buy a bag of salad or a container of melon pieces. But here is where I draw the line.

Click on the photograph for more detail: 14 ounces of individually wrapped apple slices. I didn’t check the ingredients carefully, but these apples are surely packed in something pretty chemical to stop them turning brown during their shelf life. And even if the company could prove to me that there is no health hazard involved, they can’t prove this product is a bargain. On the day I took this photograph, the pre-packaged apples were almost $4.00, while these tempting looking fruit were on sale for 99 cents a pound.


Do the math.