For not that much more, Americans opting to eat out

For not that much more, Americans opting to eat out

ATLANTA - By the time he's driven to the farmers' market, bought the organic veggies, and spent an hour of his time cooking a meal for himself and his wife, Mark Chernesky figures he's spent $30.

That's why today, after fighting rush hour, the Atlanta multimedia coordinator is rushing in to Figo's, a pasta place, for handstuffed ravioli slathered with puttanesca sauce. "I'll get out of here for $17 plus tip," he says.

Crunch the numbers and all across America the refrain is the same: Eating out is the new eating in. Even with wages stagnant, time-strapped workers are abandoning the family kitchen in droves.

...

Egads.

Personally, we have been eating at home a LOT more often in the past year despite the increased hours at work and the gym.

I have to admit that I am buying a LOT more prepackaged salads and prepared meals from the grocery store. Joseph's Marketplace in Crystal Lake marks down its entrees at 6:30 pm and that has been an occasional alternative to cooking from scratch.

Personally, I don't see how you can eat out - assuming a reasonably healthy diet - for "not much more" and over more than a single meal.

I guess my feelings are that when you take into account preparation and clean-up time (even if you're calculating your time as worth minimum wage), and then the cost of individual ingredients in even something as simple as a hamburger (bun, meat, tomato, etc.), the cost of eating out may actually be LOWER than eating at home.

It depends somewhat on the restaurant and the food you order, but if you order reasonable dishess at a reasonable restaurant (i.e., not too fancy), it almost seems like you save valuable time and money by having your food procured, prepared and served to you by someone else.

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:I guess my feelings are that when you take into account preparation and clean-up time (even if you're calculating your time as worth minimum wage), and then the cost of individual ingredients in even something as simple as a hamburger (bun, meat, tomato, etc.), the cost of eating out may actually be LOWER than eating at home.

A lot of the shift in thinking about this has to do with calculating the cost of time for preparation and clean up. Nobody considered this as part of meal cost till relatively recently -- probably because cooking and clean up were largely done by women (as they still are in the majority of American households). It's taken a few generations of women working outside the home for women's time to be considered worth anything.

Still, it depends on how many people you cook for and what you cook. If you have a family of four or six, even counting everyone's time, it's going to be cheaper to prepare a big pot of spaghetti at home than it will be to feed that many people the same meal in a restaurant.

Even just for two people, I can make sandwiches for both of us, counting prep and clean up, for less time and money than it would take to go out to a restaurant and eat something similar, even a fast food restaurant. (Assuming I have the ingredients. If you factor in shopping time, it's probably break even.)

Mostly I think that article is full of bunk. People eat out because they like to eat out, but they don't like to justify it as a matter of personal preference, so they come up with reasons.

And don't get me started on the ridiculousness of blaming eating out for obesity....

Of course, the scariest part of that piece is this:

NRA surveys show that diners increasingly view restaurants as extensions of their own homes, and a large percent would like to see table-top TVs installed at their favorite eating joint.

Yikes!

Cathy2 wrote:For not that much more, Americans opting to eat out

ATLANTA - By the time he's driven to the farmers' market, bought the organic veggies, and spent an hour of his time cooking a meal for himself and his wife, Mark Chernesky figures he's spent $30.
...

I'm sorry, but until there is a revolution to local sourcing in our country, Mr. Chernesky will not eat the same meal he cooks from the farmers' market at an inexpensive restaurant. For the past two months, I have been without a kitchen, and it's pretty hard to find ANY vegetable other than potatoes at a cheap restaurant. I absolutely refuse to eat the disinfectant-soaked salads that pass for healthy at most places.

But time pressures are a reality. This is sad, because it is impoverishing the next generation. It is somewhat unusual these days to meet a child who has tasted beets, cauliflower, turnips, brussels sprouts, and the like. OK, so maybe most people would not choose these foods. But there is a slippery slope here, as illustrated by the experience of one of my young neighbors. Raised for his first 10 years in Italy, Michael was curious to try the things his new American friends' families ate at home. But, (and I swear this is true) over the course of three years in suburban Chicago, he was only once offered something other than delivered pizza. What was the one exception? Spaghetti with jarred sauce. The poor kid has come to dread pizza. (But all is not lost, I took his family to Spacca Napoli last week.)

Bless them, the French are taking this seriously, and their government has developed a program to support the transmission of their culinary culture. While some think this is a bit hysterical and chauvinistic, the fact is that time pressure is not the only thing preventing people from cooking. The erosion of culinary traditions represents a loss of knowledge. How might we address this?

Josephine wrote:
Bless them, the French are taking this seriously, and their government has developed a program to support the transmission of their culinary culture. While some think this is a bit hysterical and chauvinistic, the fact is that time pressure is not the only thing preventing people from cooking. The erosion of culinary traditions represents a loss of knowledge. How might we address this?

MAG is addressing the issue via Purple Asparagus.

Purple Asparagus is an educational organization dedicated to bringing families back to the table. We plan and promote activities that enable the entire family to learn about and enjoy every aspect of local and global food culture.

Purple Asparagus celebrates the role family plays in raising, making and sharing food, and teaches children about the importance of food and its traditions.

Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated has started Parents Against Junk Food

"a non profit organization devoted to eliminating junk food from our public school system. No sodas. No candy bars. No chips. No processed lunch or foods of minimal nutritional value. Let’s ask our public schools to feed both body and mind properly, to take seriously their role as guardians of our children’s health and welfare. It is time to take the corporate profit out of school lunches and replace it with common sense, good nutrition, and the love and care that our children surely deserve.

Christopher Kimball
Founder & Editor, America's Test Kitchen"

Both are a start addressing this issue.

The idea that it could be cheaper to eat out is ludicrous.

I spent $63 today at Marketplace on Oakton on a variety of fresh produce, meats, dairy, cereals, and canned goods that will feed both me and my wife for the week.

Example dinners that will come out of today's shopping trip:

Pressure-cooker pot roast. A 3-lb chuck roast, onions, carrots, and celery along with some roasted potatoes will cover at least dinner and lunch tomorrw for both of us. Ingredient cost: about $11. Cooking time 1-hour. Cost per meal: under $3. And it'll taste great.

Spicy tofu and broccoli. A 1-lb block of tofu and a couple broccoli crowns, rice, and seasonings/marinade will also cover a dinner and a lunch. Total ingredient cost: about $5. Cooking time: 45 minutes. Cost per meal: less than $2. Again, delicious.

I could go on and on and on.

Best,
Michael

Thanks, Bruce, for the information on Purple Asparagus and Parents Against Junk Food. I feel a bit better. Maybe I will give out beets for Halloween. . .

Raised for his first 10 years in Italy, Michael was curious to try the things his new American friends' families ate at home. But, (and I swear this is true) over the course of three years in suburban Chicago, he was only once offered something other than delivered pizza. What was the one exception? Spaghetti with jarred sauce. The poor kid has come to dread pizza.

I am surprised. I am not surprised. When I was a kid, I was obligated to eat what was put in front of me or I had no dinner. There was no rejecting the food provided, then asking for a substitute. There was also no negotiating with your parents over what was offered for dinner.

Several years ago, I went to dinner at a friend's home whose daughter was 6 years old. Dinner was baked ham, mashed potatoes, green beans and salad. The 6 year old cried at the table because it was not the food she liked. Her obstinance won her chicken fingers and french fries from the freezer warmed in the oven. It is my understanding this girl still has a very limited food range she will eat. Everyone knows the drill with the parents and grandparents keeping her food stocked in the freezer.

It would not surprise me if your friend's son was offered cheese pizza, because it seems to be the neutral, default choice. I'm sure these households are trying to offer him hospitality, though they are pretty beaten up from dealing with their children's and/or their friend's limited diets.

&&&

Maybe ten years ago Dominicks, when still locally owned, had a fruit or vegetable of the month club. It's audience was children and broadening their awareness of the variety of fruits and vegetables. They not only provided the produce gratis, they also had serving ideas and recipes to highlight the product. It was a great idea well worth the effort.

Regards,

David Hammond wrote:... it almost seems like you save valuable time and money by having your food procured, prepared and served to you by someone else. Hammond

Likewise, a sound argument for in-vitro fertilization. (grin.)

The marketplace is the testing ground, as ever.

Josephine wrote:For the past two months, I have been without a kitchen, and it's pretty hard to find ANY vegetable other than potatoes at a cheap restaurant. I absolutely refuse to eat the disinfectant-soaked salads that pass for healthy at most places.

Good grief, what kind of cheap restaurants are you eating in? I can certainly find loads of vegetable options at cheap Middle Eastern, Indian and Mexican places, and even my favorite diners serve a side of veggies with most meals (frozen from a bag, to be sure). As for disinfectant-soaked salads, well, with all the recent E. coli scares, you can hardly blame them.

Josephine wrote:But time pressures are a reality. This is sad, because it is impoverishing the next generation. It is somewhat unusual these days to meet a child who has tasted beets, cauliflower, turnips, brussels sprouts, and the like. OK, so maybe most people would not choose these foods. But there is a slippery slope here, as illustrated by the experience of one of my young neighbors. Raised for his first 10 years in Italy, Michael was curious to try the things his new American friends' families ate at home. But, (and I swear this is true) over the course of three years in suburban Chicago, he was only once offered something other than delivered pizza. What was the one exception? Spaghetti with jarred sauce. The poor kid has come to dread pizza.

I have to agree with Cathy2's take on this. I do not have children, and I am continually surprised at the number of people I talk to who limit their family diet based on what the kids prefer.

The vegetables you name are all readily available in convenient canned and frozen formats, so it's not a lack of fresh market opportunities that prevents their being served. I will confess that I was in college before I ever tasted fresh peas -- and they were a revelation, I can tell you -- but my mother who not only worked full time but hated cooking besides still saw that I got my share of vegetables, even if they mostly came from Birdseye.

We did eat out more than any other family I knew -- but that's because Mom equated cooking with drudgery, not because she didn't have time. She simply chose to do things she enjoyed more with the time she did have. That's a choice a lot of people make.

I enjoy cooking, but I still eat out a lot, partly because I enjoy eating other people's cooking even more.

Josephine wrote:the fact is that time pressure is not the only thing preventing people from cooking. The erosion of culinary traditions represents a loss of knowledge. How might we address this?

I definitely agree here, but I'm not at all sure what can be done about it. Even in this day of celebrity chefs, lots of people think of cooking (and the cleanup that goes along with it) as drudgework. However, the reintroduction of home ec classes into the schools would likely help.

A few comments (in no particular order):

1) My father all ways had (and still has) a 1-2 acre garden in which to raise various vegetables. We would generally have 2-3 vegetables at every meal including some that I would care not to see again. (I cannot stand raw kohlrabis.)

2) I do not see many vegetables at most reasonably priced restaurant. I used to get them with the entree at Around the Clock but now you have to ask. And what you generally get is grossly overcooked.

3) Somewhere in the 1970s, most schools abandoned preparing "real food" for what "children would eat". I few years back, I bet a friend that I could list fifteen to twenty items that would make up 80% of the meals of any school district that he chose. I won.

In all fairness, the school lunch programs use commodity products that are miserable.

4) Children will control the menu selection - if you let them. They'll also be disrespectful - if you let them. They'll also stay up all night - if you let them.

It is funny. I take my nephews and nieces anywhere and they seem to find something to eat. If not, the next meals is only a short time away. (And they eat things that they don't for Mom and Dad.)

LAZ wrote:

A lot of the shift in thinking about this has to do with calculating the cost of time for preparation and clean up. Nobody considered this as part of meal cost till relatively recently -- probably because cooking and clean up were largely done by women (as they still are in the majority of American households). It's taken a few generations of women working outside the home for women's time to be considered worth anything.

I’d agree with you on this one, LAZ, but suggest that while not enough attention has been paid in recent years to the notion that women’s work = money, this was once a much-debated topic in this country. In the late 19th century, feminist philosophers called attention to the fact that the time-consuming work women did in the home, most especially kitchen labor, had value which went unrecognized and uncompensated; and they argued that unless women were freed from these chores they would never be liberated beings. Thus Charlotte Perkins Gilman, for instance, argued that homes in the future should be built without kitchens; cooperative cooking facilities should be placed in centralized facilities staffed by properly trained and paid professionals, where families might visit to take their meals. This may sound un-American to some or like a utopian pipe-dream to others, but the irony of it is that Gilman’s vision has come to fruition, though not in the cooperative, non-profit spirit that she intended: now nearly half of all American meals are eaten in restaurants (1/4 of those meals in fast-food restaurants; this has been true for many years, so I'm not entirely sure why the eating-out story was considered news). I suspect that many people go to restaurants, as you say, because they enjoy it, but I also think that for many women, who continue to do the food-related work in most families, eating out constitutes a calculated choice about how they can most efficiently utilize their time.

Bruce wrote:

Josephine wrote:
Bless them, the French are taking this seriously, and their government has developed a program to support the transmission of their culinary culture. While some think this is a bit hysterical and chauvinistic, the fact is that time pressure is not the only thing preventing people from cooking. The erosion of culinary traditions represents a loss of knowledge. How might we address this?

MAG is addressing the issue via Purple Asparagus.

Purple Asparagus is an educational organization dedicated to bringing families back to the table. We plan and promote activities that enable the entire family to learn about and enjoy every aspect of local and global food culture.

Purple Asparagus celebrates the role family plays in raising, making and sharing food, and teaches children about the importance of food and its traditions.

Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated has started Parents Against Junk Food

"a non profit organization devoted to eliminating junk food from our public school system. No sodas. No candy bars. No chips. No processed lunch or foods of minimal nutritional value. Let’s ask our public schools to feed both body and mind properly, to take seriously their role as guardians of our children’s health and welfare. It is time to take the corporate profit out of school lunches and replace it with common sense, good nutrition, and the love and care that our children surely deserve.

Christopher Kimball
Founder & Editor, America's Test Kitchen"

Both are a start addressing this issue.

and, might I add, Alice Waters is doing her part(as is to be expected)...the Summer before last she inaugurated a children's teaching garden in DC

ToniG wrote:now nearly half of all American meals are eaten in restaurants (1/4 of those meals in fast-food restaurants; this has been true for many years, so I'm not entirely sure why the eating-out story was considered news).

You notice that they led with a man. That makes it more newsworthy.

Your feminist history is quite accurate. However, it's taken a long time for appreciation of the worth of women's time to get beyond feminist dialectic and into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, feminism continues to promote distaste for cooking. Someone recently proposed that a professional women's group I belong to publish a cookbook as a fundraiser. The negative response was immediate: "A cookbook would simply feed into stereotypes we're all still busy fighting."

ToniG wrote:I also think that for many women, who continue to do the food-related work in most families, eating out constitutes a calculated choice about how they can most efficiently utilize their time.

I don't know about "calculated." I suspect in most households, things go more on the lines of, "I don't feel like cooking tonight. Let's go out."

Home cooking is moving from a required chore to a lifestyle choice, a hobby performed by those who take pleasure in it. Those who do not will increasingly rely on restaurants and the home meal replacements offered by gourmet shops and grocers for their daily meals.

jlawrence01 wrote:2) I do not see many vegetables at most reasonably priced restaurant. I used to get them with the entree at Around the Clock but now you have to ask.

Probably they got tired of throwing out uneaten veggies. But I had dinner just the other night at Artemis, a similar sort of diner in Mount Prospect, and half my plate was mounded with peas (and a scattering of carrots, corn and green beans, as if they'd mixed in part of a can of Veg-All). I had my choice of soup or salad, too, and though I chose the chicken bow-tie soup, Himself had navy bean, full of vegetables.

Artemis Restaurant and Ice Cream Parlor
847/437-3020
912 S. Busse Road
Mount Prospect

LAZ wrote:

ToniG wrote:now nearly half of all American meals are eaten in restaurants (1/4 of those meals in fast-food restaurants; this has been true for many years, so I'm not entirely sure why the eating-out story was considered news).

You notice that they led with a man. That makes it more newsworthy.

Your feminist history is quite accurate. However, it's taken a long time for appreciation of the worth of women's time to get beyond feminist dialectic and into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, feminism continues to promote distaste for cooking. Someone recently proposed that a professional women's group I belong to publish a cookbook as a fundraiser. The negative response was immediate: "A cookbook would simply feed into stereotypes we're all still busy fighting."

ToniG wrote:I also think that for many women, who continue to do the food-related work in most families, eating out constitutes a calculated choice about how they can most efficiently utilize their time.

I don't know about "calculated." I suspect in most households, things go more on the lines of, "I don't feel like cooking tonight. Let's go out."

Home cooking is moving from a required chore to a lifestyle choice, a hobby performed by those who take pleasure in it. Those who do not will increasingly rely on restaurants and the home meal replacements offered by gourmet shops and grocers for their daily meals.

It's sadly o.o.p. but, Shulamith Firestone's A Return to the Family Table includes some amazing recipes: I esp. love her modest proposal for meat pies.

LAZ wrote:Meanwhile, feminism continues to promote distaste for cooking. Someone recently proposed that a professional women's group I belong to publish a cookbook as a fundraiser. The negative response was immediate: "A cookbook would simply feed into stereotypes we're all still busy fighting."

Did you see the Colbert Report a couple of days ago? Stephen Colbert had Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda on. It truly needs to be seen.

gleam wrote:

LAZ wrote:
Did you see the Colbert Report a couple of days ago? Stephen Colbert had Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda on. It truly needs to be seen.

Did they talk about food/cooking?

I was a SAHM for many years, which meant that I had time to cook longer meals. As well as cuts of meat that take longer to cook, such as pot roasts and chicken leg quarters. I've recently returned to the workforce full-time and find myself buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and a lot of "en-cor" family-style TV dinners. *sighs wistfully* I think I'll have to save my sauerbraten skills for the weekend.

Anyway, to stay on topic, I too am wondering with some others in this thread what "not much more" means when it comes to budgets. My family would not appreciate a $20 McDonald's-type meal every single night, and probably couldn't afford something closer to what we really like, which is ethnic meals, which run $30 a meal bare minimum. So YMMV. I think the best solution has been to have a few very frugal meals at home (such as En-cor blech or grilled cheese), followed by a few wonderful meals out at ethnic restaurants. That way, it all evens out in the wash.

Saint Pizza wrote:

gleam wrote:Did you see the Colbert Report a couple of days ago? Stephen Colbert had Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda on. It truly needs to be seen.

Did they talk about food/cooking?

They performed the interview at a kitchen set, in a segment called "Cooking with Feminists". He had them making an apple pie.

gleam wrote:

Saint Pizza wrote:

gleam wrote:Did you see the Colbert Report a couple of days ago? Stephen Colbert had Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda on. It truly needs to be seen.

Did they talk about food/cooking?

They performed the interview at a kitchen set, in a segment called "Cooking with Feminists". He had them making an apple pie.

This just made my day. Thanks for sharing the link.

gleam wrote:Did you see the Colbert Report a couple of days ago? Stephen Colbert had Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda on. It truly needs to be seen.

Brilliant! Thanks so much for posting this!

LAZ wrote:

Your feminist history is quite accurate. However, it's taken a long time for appreciation of the worth of women's time to get beyond feminist dialectic and into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, feminism continues to promote distaste for cooking. Someone recently proposed that a professional women's group I belong to publish a cookbook as a fundraiser. The negative response was immediate: "A cookbook would simply feed into stereotypes we're all still busy fighting."

As to your first point, I'm probably nit-picking, but my point was that such feminist ideology, while perhaps not mainstream, was once widely influential: Gilman was a tremendously popular writer and speaker, drawing big audiences from New York to Topeka. Her theories and those of other feminists at the times sparked all sorts of experiments in communal living and in alternative civic planning. Today, though there is still occasional puzzlement and a Time magazine story considering why women continue to do the lion's share of housework in all households, regardless of income level, even when the woman is also working full time, it's tough to find anyone who is proposing some reorganization of society to address that problem -- or at least anybody who's talking about such stuff who could find anybody to listen to them. Maybe that's because women have made as much progress as necessary -- but there are some tired, grumpy women out there picking up after their husbands who might think otherwise.

It's probably true that the feminist movement, from the 1960s forward, did (in general) disdain cooking for a while, but that hasn't been(generally) true for some time, as is evidenced by the big move in women's studies to take up cooking and food issues -- topics that were verboten in the early years for women's studies. Maybe the woman from the group you're in who eschews cookbooks would like to be able to attend a Gilman speech, or maybe she'd just like to see some professional men's groups (other than firefighters) putting out cookbooks for fundraisers. I'd take the Fonda/Steinem appearance on the Colbert Report (which was hilarious) as an indication of this transition, as they played along happily with the joke, rather than refusing to take up the wooden spoon. That Fonda took literally the injunction to kiss the cook (twice) was especially amusing.

eatchicago wrote:Spicy tofu and broccoli. A 1-lb block of tofu and a couple broccoli crowns, rice, and seasonings/marinade will also cover a dinner and a lunch. Total ingredient cost: about $5. Cooking time: 45 minutes. Cost per meal: less than $2.

mike, the fact that you call spicy tofu and broccoli a "meal" troubles me. the fact that you'll eat that 'meal' consecutively (an assumption) makes you a better man than i...

if i truly want to cook what i want to EAT, cost of cooking at home > eating out.

gleam wrote:Did you see the Colbert Report a couple of days ago? Stephen Colbert had Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda on. It truly needs to be seen.

:LOL:!! that is the BEST!#$!@#$

TonyC wrote:mike, the fact that you call spicy tofu and broccoli a "meal" troubles me. the fact that you'll eat that 'meal' consecutively (an assumption) makes you a better man than i...

I like my tofu & broccoli. If that makes me a better man than you, so be it.

Here's another one. Last night I made the chicken thighs with parsley and garlic from" Pepin's Fast Food My Way" (this is my wife's favorite weeknight dish): chicken thighs, a few cloves of garlic, a half-cup of parsley, flour, olive oil, rice, and some frozen peas on the side--total ingredient cost, about $5 for two dinners and leftovers for one.

Best,
Michael

eatchicago wrote:Here's another one. Last night I made the chicken thighs with parsley and garlic from" Pepin's Fast Food My Way" (this is my wife's favorite weeknight dish): chicken thighs, a few cloves of garlic, a half-cup of parsley, flour, olive oil, rice, and some frozen peas on the side--total ingredient cost, about $5 for two dinners and leftovers for one.

FYI, Pepin's original recipe calls for boneless skinless breasts, but I use thigh meat for less than half the cost and more than double the flavor.

For more on this excellent recipe and adaptations, read this thread.

Best,
Michael

eatchicago wrote:FYI, Pepin's original recipe calls for boneless skinless breasts, but I use thigh meat for less than half the cost and more than double the flavor.

Perusing that other thread, I realize I never thanked you for turning me on to this recipe and this adaptation. Really quite a nice little weekday meal that we've been enjoying for a while now.

Cheers,

Aaron

David Hammond wrote:I guess my feelings are that when you take into account preparation and clean-up time (even if you're calculating your time as worth minimum wage), and then the cost of individual ingredients in even something as simple as a hamburger (bun, meat, tomato, etc.), the cost of eating out may actually be LOWER than eating at home.

I don't know that I follow this approach for calculating the cost of a meal in terms of time spent prepping and cleaning up. I think you have to look at the opportunity cost of preparing and cleaning up a meal. For me (as a salaried worker), cooking at home is not cutting into my potential productive time (in terms of time when I could be out in the world making money), rather it is a substitute for my recreational/lesiure time. The question then is what is the value of my recreational/leisure time? But for me, cooking actually is a relaxing, leisurely activity (sometimes too leisurely -- as my wife can attest after a few too many weekday meals on the wrong side of 9:00). So I think it nets out to zero in my case -- the cooking just is leisure activity for which I am getting full value in terms of whatever utility I derive from lesiure activities -- and there is no additional "cost" to me for cooking outside of ingredient costs. This oversimplifies things, of course (there are probably some other things I would like to do in my spare time that are more valuable to me than cooking), but it does go to show that cooking, for some, is a recreational activity (or, as LAZ put it above, a lifestyle choice/hobby).

There was an editorial on the business-news radio show "Marketplace" on WBEZ a few months back. The topic was similar to this: the commentator was asserting that "brown-bagging it" actually costs more money than going out to lunch every day.

Her assertion was based on opportunity cost (a lawyer that bills out at $100 per hour and spends 15 minutes making lunch is paying $25, plus ingredients for lunch).

Personally, I'd like to meet one laywer who, at the end of the week says, "If only I didn't waste so much time making a sandwich in the morning, I could have billed a couple more hours this week".

If you sleep 8 hours, did you just spend $800? You brushed your teeth this morning--Two bucks!!!

Like Matt, my food preparation does not come at the expense of my profession.

Best,
Michael

Matt wrote:This oversimplifies things, of course (there are probably some other things I would like to do in my spare time that are more valuable to me than cooking), but it does go to show that cooking, for some, is a recreational activity (or, as LAZ put it above, a lifestyle choice/hobby).

Matt, I think you're absolutely right. The value of the time spent cooking varies by individual. Me, I'd usually rather eat than cook, but at various times in my life I've been more into the recreational aspect of preparing dinner (this sensation has waned with the years, more's the pity).

The validity of the equation that "eating out is less expensive than eating in" depends so much on location, accessible ingredients, etc., and it is not uniformly true, as eatchicago clearly demonstrates. Still, last night I had a fine little Pugliese pizza at Art of Pizza. It was ten bucks, and probably contained about $1.00 in ingredients, if that. However, it was finely crisped, did not require me to mess up my kitchen, take grief from my daughter about how we're eating late (again), or clean up. Instead of cooking, I was chatting with The Wife in a candle-lit gallery of surrealistic artworks enjoying better food than I could make at home for ten times the price of a home-cooked meal but with much more satisfaction -- not sure how you put a price on that.

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:However, it was finely crisped, did not require me to mess up my kitchen, take grief from my daughter about how we're eating late (again), or clean up. Instead of cooking, I was chatting with The Wife in a candle-lit gallery of surrealistic artworks enjoying better food than I could make at home for ten times the price of a home-cooked meal but with much more satisfaction -- not sure how you put a price on that.

Hammond

David,

Familial peace and romance is worth exactly $8.67 per half hour. You probably still lost about 30 cents.

Best,
Michael