Slop.

i cook a lot, but in the US it's increasingly class-income linked to have the time/space and household infrastructure necessary to cook. its sort of bifurcated though. like there are broke people stretching dollars like wizards in the kitchen and there are luxury bozos stunting on each other with premium ingredients.

the food system in the US has pursued individual convenience and speed to the exclusion of everything else and gotten household kitchens to be like school cafeterias: workstations for reheating already-prepared foods or assembling already-processed ingredients from kits into meals.

that pre-consumer processing is a "value-add" for the processor, because they can charge more for the product and the buyer pays more to save time and no longer needs a food processor, a mixer, certain specialty ingredients, etc. they can just casually mix some things in a pan, put a tray on a rack, or put a dish in a microwave. saving the eater time has been the god of the US food system for decades, and marxists know why: get the fuck back to work.

so, everything is orchestrated to have portioned and ready meals.

after one has gotten used to this style of food prep, going back and reclaiming the last steps of processing in an ill-equiped kitchen is a very expensive investment and requires re-developing an atrophied skill. plus all the knowledge necessary to cut through the marketing distraction at the grocery store and reclaim those lost savings strategically, based on what kitchen infrastructure investments are affordable.

none of this is an easy process to navigate and the fact that it is a pain point for so many right now is evidence of a major and arguably rapid shift in the material conditions of homes everywhere.

for example, the only people in my family who knew how to do in the kitchen what i have learned how to do were my parents' parents, who lived during the depression. they're all dead now. i have to explain cost cutting grocery and kitchen strategies to my elderly parents and middle aged sibling all the time. they are all luxury meal kit people.

it blows their minds that i can articulate ingredient costs per portion for all of my common meals, and that some are very low. they used to find it laughably eccentric, but lately they pay more attention. i still don't think they appreciate my insistence that all of this is going to get much, much worse.