How many of your meals do you actually prepare from scratch?!

I prepare most of my meals from fresh food. I happen to live near a large outdoors public market where fresh meat, produce and delicacies are available, cheaper than at the grocery store and sometimes dirt-cheap when you know the tricks. I enjoy this very much and make the most of it. But I keep frozen lasagna in the freezer. It's very convenient: it goes from the freezer to the micro-wave to the table. Nothing to prepare, no dishes to wash. Restaurant-like quality. When I come home late from work I also occasionally buy ready-to-eat meals from a nearby caterer.
For me that's the 21st century way. It's fine right now as an unmarried working woman. I am aware this will have to change with a family to take care of. Frozen lasagna and ready-to-eat meals would not be appropriate then. But a stay-at-home mom has more time to devote to culinary tasks than a working woman.

For some people it might be laziness, but the real culprit is that when families started having both parents in the workforce, they started relying more on prepared meals. Combine that with the variety and availability of convenience foods, and you have a perfect recipe for our current state of affairs. An entire generation moved away from home-cooked food, and didn't develop the skills in the kitchen to pass down to their children.

Fortunately for me, I grew up in a family where food was almost always homemade, and often "put up" or canned from foods grown on my relatives' farms. I learned to cook very young, and by 8 I was the official "gravy maker" in the family. All of my brothers and my sister can cook very well, because my mom is an amazing cook and so was her mom, and all of her siblings. My daughter cooks all the time and has been helping me in the kitchen and cooking from a young age as well.

Most of our meals are home-cooked. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that we like our own food better than most restaurant or convenience foods. I go to the farmer's market every week, buy meat from sustainable sources, and rarely use pre-made packaged foods.

I cook everything from scratch, except I do buy Zatarain's rice and beans and jambalaya mixes as a guilty pleasure.

I think it's too many demands on our time that keeps many of us from cooking; when I'm working full time, I rarely get dinner on the table until 8, which is really too late from a dietary standpoint.

Surely, though, some people are just lazy and would rather pick up dinner than cook; it's a lot of work to prep, cook, and clean up.

I think it just tastes so much better, though, that it's worth the effort, and the wait.

Almost all of them. Canned soup is about all I eat at home that I don't make myself, when I'm hungry and have to eat right now. There is nothing stopping you from preparing all your own food except your own inclinations. We don't make our own meals so much any more partly because there aren't so many women staying at home all day with time to make everything from scratch, because freezing is available to everyone at home(when I was growing up, home freezers didn't keep food very long, if you had a proper freezer at all), and because food processors have made relatively cheap food available and so have restaurants. With all this ready made food available, people have gotten lazy. I also believe that parents have gotten lazy and not bothered to pass on cooking skills to their children. It's easier to do it yourself than to teach someone else. When I was a child, eating in restaurants was not done by families. Most couldn't afford it. And there wasn't any take out where I come from, at least not until I was a teenager.

I am a full time working mom and I try to make homemade food as often as I can. Even something simple on a rushed night, like grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade tomato soup- easy and quick. I like to cook though, so that helps. Planning ahead is key- planning your shopping trips, getting things ready the night before so you can put together a meal easier when you need it.

I think the big factor in not cooking at home is that people just don't know how to cook! I enjoy cooking and I enjoy having people enjoy my cooking! Sometimes I make more that I need and put the leftover in the freezer for another night when I'm too busy to cook. But occasionally we get take out too!

If you dont get raised on home cookin,chances are you wont cook good home cooked meals when you get older.Fast food joints are killing people all over.Clogged arteries,obesity,its a way of life for most people now.Pretty sad. Eat a fast food meal and see how fast you run for the toilet and compare the same meal cooked at home.Fast food is full of garbage thats why.

I think advertising has something to do with it. Sometimes a picture on a box looks good but in reality, those are just empty calories. I like cooking from scratch, baking bread, making home made soups. They just taste better.

I work full time and I still prepare most of my food home made. The nights I work till 8 I do tend to use a semi home made approach. I will use something frozen or boxed, but usually adjust it with a little of my own touch.

like once a week becuase i eat dinner at my school

Actually, I cook almost all of my dishes from scratch, often to the point of baking my own bread and making my pasta. I find it much easier and more cost effective to go into a well stocked kitchen and select the items I need to prepare a meal, rather than buying boxed pre-cooked foods.
When I go to the market, I buy meat on sale and freeze it immediately (unless I'm going to use it that night or the next day), staples like flour and cornmeal, eggs, dried beans, crackers and cereal (for the kids), peanut butter and things like that which will keep forever, and loads of fresh vegetables and fruits. I often have to go back in a few days to pick up more fresh produce, because I use so much of it in my cooking.
As an example, I just told my wife not to buy any more bottled Caesar salad dressing because I learned how to make it fresh from scratch. Now that's one more item I don't have to pay someone else to make for me.
We decided that one night a week we would go out and splurge and get a hamburger (a GOOD hamburger, though, not a McDonald's or Burger King type). Other than that, we have cut out fast food from our menu, and feel better, look better, and have more money!