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From scratch.

I use homemade to refer to a meal that was made at home and at least mostly from whole ingredients, even if it has, say, sauce from a jar included in it.

I use "from scratch" to describe a meal made from whole ingredients, nothing premade.

A meal that was bought already prepared, or comes in a box and just needs water and an egg added I don't consider homemade.

From scratch!

Most of the cooking or assembly is from scratch. I count semi-homemade as homemade as long as the ingredients are elevated in some way. Ex. Chicken parm for me is homemade eventhough I use store bought sauce and pasta.

@pui: Same here. From scratch is everything homemade and homemade can be a combo.

For me, it's close to "from scratch" but might include a convenience item or two. For example, homemade mac and cheese can have store-bought pasta in it, I don't need to make the noodles myself. And I bought gyoza wrappers when I made homemade dumplings. But the majority of the ingredients should be basic and identifiable, not processed and prepackaged.

I use it interchangeably to mean both from scratch and using prepared items in a meal. I guess I specify only if I make a crust from scratch, for example. But usually my meals consist of both from scratch (like breaded chicken cutlets with a lemon basil sauce) and prepared items (like frozen petite peas or boxed rice pilaf).

Always from scratch.

Wow...kind of surprised by the answers.
I say homemade is anything that isn't store bought!
We do grab take-out a lot though.
Homemade brownies are out of the box, but I mixed it and baked them. If they aren't homemade, they are the ready made from Costco.

From scratch. I made chili this week and used my own spices, not some pre-packaged spice mix.

I generally homemake most of our food, even bread and pie crust when I have time, but I draw the line at homemade pasta. I don't have time for that, so I use boxed.

I think my designation tends to come from whether an item is typically something you can pick up completely made in a store.

I'm more liberal with the use of "homemade" in baking. For that, if I used a box mix and storebought icing, I'd still call it homemade because I didn't pick up a pre-made one out of the refrigerated case in the bakery. If I actually made it from basic ingredients I'd call it from scratch.

If I make spaghetti with ground beef, canned sauce, and storebought noodles and pre-grated cheese I wouldn't call it homemade. HOWEVER, if I made a lasagne with canned sauce and storebought noodles I'd call that homemade, because it wasn't one that was purchased completely assembled and thrown in the oven. If I did a lasagne with homemade sauce and actually made the pasta, I'd call that from scratch as well.

I'm a lot more liberal on the homemade label too, it appears. A homemade meal could be boxed spaghetti, canned sauce, ground beef, as long as I did the cooking and assembling at home ; a TV dinner would not be homemade. "From scratch" would be not using mixes and convenience items--and I really don't make things from scratch very often. Cooking from scratch just isn't one of my priorities! Maybe it will be later in my life when I'm not a grad student--though my mom always used convenience items (canned veggies, etc.) and I loved her cooking, so probably not.

if I mean from scratch I'll say from scratch homemade is just made at home in my book.

Hmmm I've never thought about it. I took brownies to MIL this wekeend and was asking for the recipe and I had to tell her "I cheated, they aren't from scratch" they are from a box. But I made a cake that was "homemade" even though 1/2 the base was a box I jsut added a bunch of ingredients to it?

I never make pasta from scratch but if I make something with store bought pasta but nothing else I would call it homemade still.

Mostly from scratch. I'm making taco pie tonight and I call it homemade, even though I used baking mix in it.

@Mae: Same!

@locavore_mama: I just made some lasagna!

I thought of you the other day...Costco sells a rotisserie chicken soup! Lol!