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I preach the gospel of making your own food. I testify about the power of creating a meal from scratch, and glory of eating it. It is my cause. It is my purpose.

But last night, I cheated. Like so many others, I did not practice what I preach.

To be honest, and I am all about honesty, I have cheated before. Countless times. Mea culpa, mea media culpa.

I’m sure you know the feeling: Sometimes, I just don’t feel like cooking. I had a busy day at work, it was hot, I’ve had less sleep this week (this century) than I need. Also, I’m lazy. So we turned to convenience foods.

As I said: Not the first time, not by a long shot. But I still feel guilty.

My mother was a teacher who came home from work to her two boys and still put a homemade dinner on the table every night. It was good, too. My father pitched in as well. I don’t want you to think my father didn’t help out in the kitchen. Every year or two he would make biscuits for Sunday breakfast.

He used Bisquick. They were delicious.

Last night, we opened a mostly premade meal of stir-fried Korean barbecue-style beef. I’m not being coy by withholding the name of the brand; I genuinely don’t remember what it was. The package was mostly red, with some black on it, too. We got it in the refrigerator section of some store, but I’m not certain which.

The package said it made “about two servings,” which should have been our first clue. I am unpetite, and most traditional ideas of one serving is not enough food for me. “About” two servings was not going to be enough food for us both.

My wife graciously allowed me to eat the entire nearly two-serving meal, especially after she tasted it and concluded it was too spicy for her. She decided to microwave a frozen premade lasagna.

Again, I don’t know the brand. But her recollection is that it was supposed to be healthful in some way.

My wife has a far greater tolerance of food that is supposed to be healthful than I do. She even swears that she enjoys it.

She did not enjoy this. I didn’t interrogate her too closely about it, but apparently this particular lasagna lacked the unhealthful things that would have made it taste better. She threw most of it out.

My stir-fried Korean barbecue-style beef was, let’s say, less offensive. It was decidedly, unquestionably edible. It was almost good enough to think about buying a second time, but not quite.

The texture was gloppy. It was too thick, too viscous. If you ever had to choke down the old-style prep drink before a colonoscopy, it was sort of like that, but thicker. I’d say it was midway between the texture of stir-fried Korean barbecue-style beef, and phlegm.

It could have been partly my fault. I left the food in the hot pan — away from the heat — for an extra minute while my wife’s lasagna continued to cook in the microwave. Then again, an extra minute should not make that much of a difference.

The meal was supposedly made with gochujang paste, which explains why it was a little too hot for my wife. But other than the heat, I tasted none of the savory-sweet and fabulous flavor that makes gochujang so addictively irresistible.

Otherwise, the dish was bland but not actively unpleasant. The gloppy sauce covered most of the taste of the stringy beef, and the vegetables helped break up the blandness. The noodles were actually quite good, but it’s hard to mess up noodles.

I learned my lesson: It’s homemade meals from now on.

Until I feel tired and lazy again.