I generally only buy 'ingredients' when I grocery shop-- no prepared food and nothing with chemical additives. I'll make an exception for ice cream.
So convenience foods are few and far between. At meal time, everything has to be cleaned, prepared and then cooked. Nothing I can pour out of a bag, heat and serve.
Except for frozen veggies. This is a surprise discovery. I've stayed away from frozen foods my whole life. My mother did much freezing and canning when I was young. And while I appreciated her efforts, the results were always mushy and bland.
On impulse, I tried out a bag of frozen veggies-- a stir fry medley. I poured them over a chicken while it was roasting. The results were very, very good. The veggies roasted in the chicken fat making them extra tasty.
Fresh veggies in your grocery store are really several days old and bred to survive the shipping process. After purchase, they may lay around my fridge or on the counter for several days or even a week before I get around to serving them. By that time they are fresh in name only.
Frozen veggies on the other hand were flash frozen hours after being picked and if you handle them properly they will stay well frozen for weeks.
If you cook them properly, it would be very difficult to tell they were not fresh. The trick is to not let them thaw before cooking. Take them straight from freezer to the fire, so to speak. The quick temperature change prevents ice crystals from forming and damaging the cells.
Thanks to the variety and convenience I'm adding them to everything. I've easily doubled my intake of vegetables. Pasta sauce with with peas and Brussels sprouts was good as was roast Boeuf bourguignon with roasted veggies.
Of course they do have their limits. They will never replace a fresh green salad and they tend to be a bit wet which means they don't brown well in a saute or stir fry. But when I look at my fridge, at the things that have molded, gone soft or just plain rotted and when I think over the times I wanted to eat more veggies but didn't because they were too much work to prepare, frozen veggies now have a well deserved place in my kitchen.
