Processed "food"

I have been in the "baby is coming soon" mode, which translates to hard to walk and I don't want to spend any time on my feet at all.

So I thought I'd deviate from my norm and actually buy microwavable foods.  You know, the pre-made, processed stuff. I got our normal frozen burritoes that Tim and the kids like (and I do, too, but not this week for some reason).  And I got frozen pizzas that we used to eat all the time, and chicken pot pies I used to eat when I was in college, and canned soups, etc.

Today I made the pot pies for the kids for lunch, and I had one, too. First processed food in a long time--we usually make almost everything we eat, including our bread.

And the first thing I noticed was how SALTY processed foods are. And the second thing I noticed was that they are hardly on this side of the "edible" line. After having homemade chicken pot pie, the store-bought kind can hardly be classed food--at least for humans. I think cats would like it okay. (And my toddlers, being unaccustomed to "fake" foods, wouldn't touch them).  Also I noticed how much sauce and bread and how little actual food they contained.

I also discovered that the grocery store pizzas we used to eat all the time are nasty. Also fairly inedible. Especially after having homemade pizza with homemade sauce every couple of weeks for months and months. Even the pizza hut pizzas the kids got for meeting their reading goals were very salty and not as good as I remembered (although still edible and pretty tasty--gourmet compared to the grocery store stuff. Yuck!).

Then, to my surprise, I discovered that the storebought yogurt tasted as sweet as candy, and the storebought ice cream was so overly sweet as to be shocking. And all but the 100% fruit juice tasted more like corn syrup with cleaning fluid poured over it than juice. What happened to me? I love candy and sweets, normally. I've just been making my own for a long time, and it tastes different (richer, and less sweet)--perhaps because I use sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup? Perhaps because even with 2 1/2 cups of sugar in 4 qts of ice cream, there is still MORE in storebought ice cream? Yikes.

Funny that being away from the pre-made stuff makes the sugar and salt they load it with really stand out.

That'll teach me. Next time I want a frozen pizza, I need to make one and freeze it before I cook it!