Dee Zimmo said:

Years ago I took in a young woman with a baby, she kept running out of food stamp money before the end of the month..I noticed that she had purchased french fries, hash browns, boxed mashed potatoes, and the like. I asked her why she did not just buy one big bag of potatoes instead? She said she did not know how to cook them. I was shocked. I showed her how to use basic ingredients to make all the things she bought in a box. She was grateful to know these skills that no one showed her, making better food choices and saved money to boot; she also shared those skills with her friends later on. I take this as a sign of the times, there are generations of people out there that have lost the skills to cook with basic ingredients and depend on the prepared foods in a box from the store; this will not end well for many people that depend on this type of food to eat.