It’s Homemade!

This gives me another great business idea.
Offer a catering service that delivers meals (or sells them for take-out). But you make sure there are a few little mistakes in the meals. The cassarole is a little burned, there are a few hairs in the soup, the salad is a bit wilted, the gravy is lumpy, and so on. That way everybody will think your customers made it themselves. Maybe even provide mismatched, and unmarked, containers for them to take the food home.

"Almost a third of young Britons have passed off a ready-made meal as their own creation in order to impress someone, according to a survey by the Department of Health on Monday."

Perhaps it should say "...claimed to have passed off..."

It's likely a lot of those people were too dumb to notice how unsuccesful they were at passing things off.

My family's done that. When we are having a party with more then 30 or so people and will be serving dinner, we buy a lot of chicken at El Pollo Loco, then we bring it home and put it in the oven, where we later take it out (with the guests there) and put on nice plates. People always comment about how good the chicken is and have no idea it is just fast food. A few of our good friends know we do that, but everyone else seems to fall for it, especially when most of the sides and stuff are actually homemade.

If people can fall for it with food from a fast food resteraunt, they definitely could if you get food from a more upscale place.

Are we just that lazy?!?! Come on people!

P.S. Big Gary...if you do that, you should see if you can get a deal with Tupperware.

Well, I'm sure there are lots of people who have done that and at least think they have fooled the other party. However, in my experience, many people do notice that something is ready-made - but saying that they did is entirely different thing. Some are impressed by even that effort, others have entirely other things in their mind and prefer not to complain.

What counts as ready-made?

Tonight I'm having garlic and cheese pizza-bread with fusilli in a fresh pesto sauce and a side of salad.

Ingredients: -
garlic butter (bought),
mozerella (bought - pre-grated),
chedder (will grate my own),
pizza base (bought),
fusilli (bought),
pesto sauce (bought),
salad (will chop/mix my own).

So, did I make this meal, or the supermarket?

You didn't make your own cheese!?!

It seems very implausible; or it could be that the news report has bulldozered over the subtleties of the original survey, which may have been absolute rubbish to start off with ("Have you ever passed off a takeaway as your own food - or are you a humourless bore? Tick one box only.")

It also is possible that, for example, many of the respondents were counting trivial things such as store-bought mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, microwaveable rice or oven chips as examples of fake food.

Besides, I find it extremely unlikely that at least 22 percent of Britain's 16-24 year males - not just amateur cooks, but all males - have been in a situation where they were expected to cook for someone else. It's been a couple of years since I was 24, but from my personal experience you can't trust young people; they lie, they are feckless, they are lazy and they are averse to hard work.

@ Ashley
"from my personal experience you can't trust young people; they lie, they are feckless, they are lazy and they are averse to hard work."

I'm waiting for the "Christmas?! Humbug!!"

I don't think I've ever had someone else prepare something, and then pass itoff as mine.

I would admit it anyway.

I can believe it around here. Few people under the age of 30 can do more than microwave up some soup, and the worst offenders are Business Studies students; They claim they need never cook as they will earn enough money to eat out for a lifetime, which is sadly true.

A friend of mine runs a cooking class at an adult learning school, and he has the most appalling stories to tell about cooking.

Hey Im 21, in college, and I can cook a full 3 course meal for 10 people. Adult, family people. And its good!
I can also make the requisite microwave pizzas.

Chyca, fine. What part of New Zealand or England are you from?

Those countries were the ones under discussion, so 'twas not even personal.

"Hey Im 21, in college, and I can cook a full 3 course meal for 10 people. ...I can also make the requisite microwave pizzas."

What are the other two courses?

While I don't doubt that some people try and pass off take-out as homemade, I do doubt many people have been fooled, but are instead just being polite (if not, then they definately need to start eating out less). Still, when commercials tout making a boxed cake mix, refrigerated cookie dough, jar gravy, pre-packaged frozen meat entrees, etc., as being "homemade" (for shame!), I've no doubt that for some the line has become blurred enough that they just take it one step further...