Monica Farber
Store-bought is fine!
Picking up a cake or a tub of pimiento cheese at the grocery store is the norm nowadays.
(According to our readers, store-bought is more than acceptablein the case of Publix potato salad.)
Credit:Monica Farber
But is it ever okay to say that you made the dish yourself?
Have you ever said that bakery cookies are your family’s secret recipe?
Or that you whipped up a bowl of salsa that actually came fromTrader Joe’s?
Credit:Jen Causey; Food Stylist: Emily Nabors Hall; Prop Stylist: Caleb Clarke
Business Manager Nellah McGough agrees: Lies always catch up to you sometime or another!
And in some cases, that little white lie could be extremely harmful.
We heard one anecdote of a guest having an allergic reaction to a dish at a gathering.
What our editors also unanimously agreed upon is that store-bought reallyisfineif youre honest about it.
What was surprising was that the responses were divided.
One commenter said: It sure is!
Another person agreed, saying: I used to serve a Dutch Apple Pie.
Whenever someone would ask if I made it, I replied, Its a Smith family recipe.
It used to say that on the box of a Mrs. Smiths pie.
Its all in how you word it, if you have a little help from genealogy.
I slid it over onto my cake plate, ha!
Then they built a Publix a mile from my house.
I was found out!
Not cool, said one person.
Better to say, “I brought some of that wonderful potato salad from Trader Joe’s.
It’s the best!”
Another said: Always best to tell the truth, remember, your children are listening.
Dont raise them to be liars.
And one commenter summed things up succinctly: Don’t lie if asked.
Why give it away over a casserole?
We couldnt have said it better ourselves.
