Why Home-Made?

When I read THIS POST  over at Macheesmo, I felt both admiration and kinship, but also a sense of "Why didn't I think of this?"

Essentially, if you aren't going to click through to Macheesmo, he is relating an experience that he has and I have all the time.   As told by Macheesmo, it goes like this:

Me: You should really try out X recipe. It’s really delicious and not that hard to do.
Person: Why in holy Hades would you make that? You can just buy it?
Me: Well, it’s just better.
Person: Sure it is buddy. Take a hike.


I often have the addendum: 


Me: It's easy!
Person: What you think is easy is not actually easy because you are a magical cooking person and I do not know how.
Me: No, really!  It is easy!  Just try it!
Person:  (mumble mumble) I'll just buy some (mumble mumble).


But!  The reason Macheesmo is so brilliant is that he goes on to prove that homemade is better, step by step, with some favorite foods, and he has spreadsheets to compare the two.  Seriously, this dude has the same problem I have and came up with a spreadsheet solution to it before I did!  Spreadsheets!  Showing that homemade Mac and Cheese is better than store bought in a number of important categories!  I need to meet this guy.  For reals.  


Anyway, here's the proof that the time commitment is similar, the money commitment is similar, and the taste and nutrition absolutely cannot compare (homemade wins!), at least with this particular meal, and I would argue that that is largely true across the board.  


However, I say this with an important caveat.  As my beloved aunt Esther emphasizes: part of being a good cook is knowing what store-bought foods are good and which aren't, and what store-bought stuff can be added to homemade to make something incredible.  Her example: pesto.  Pesto is often gross when store-bought, but is time consuming and requires fresh fresh ingredients to make from scratch.  So, for a main dish of pasta with pesto, she does homemade.  But for appetizers, she does store-bought pesto (she says Buitoni is the good brand, and she would know!) spread on store-bought crescent roll dough, rolled up and baked into fantastic pesto rolls.  


So what's the moral of this story?  Try homemade.  It's usually better. The end.