Food For Thought

Is eating out cheaper than cooking?

I ran across this article during one of my many internet surfings through MSN while on hold with a vendor at work. It struck me as interesting because, having moved out from my parents' home this year, I have been trying to be very frugal and not dine out. Grocery bills always seem high because I am buying food for an entire week's worth of meals.

The breakdown of this article is that resteraunts (real ones) are actually providing food that is on par with the price of a grocery store bought meal (when factoring in driving and time). However, the downside is the portion sizes.

Pesronally, portion sizes have never been a problem for me. I have always eaten until I am not hungry, and then I stop eating. It doesn't matter if I am out with friends or with my grandmother. I never eat when I am not hungry. To combat resteraunt portion sizes, 99% of the time I eat half of my food and put the rest in a box for dinner the next night. Suddenly my $12 meal has become 2 $6 meals. Like I say...I'm frugal.

But this article got me thinking. So now instead of just assuming eating in is cheaper (unless its a "meal" of tuna & rice), I'm going to try and do a catalog of how much each meal costs and see where it puts me.

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"You must eat bitter before you can taste sweet"- Iron & Silk
"I see no virtue where I smell no sweat"
"Arm yourself because no one else here will save you" - Chris Cornell

“	going to try and do a catalog of how much each meal costs and see where it puts me.	”

Frugal doesn't begin to cover it.

One thing to consider is quality and source. If I had time to go down to the market to buy my food it would be a whole load cheaper than it is delivered to my door in a one hour slot. It's expensive to get equivalent quality of ingredients from equivalent sources from restaurants where I live.

Sure, if I wanted to live on curry sauce and chips, I could eat very cheaply and never cook but I tried it as a student and it required an unhealthy amount of alcohol to make it palatable.

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Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

Is eating out cheaper than eating in? You're joking right? Not in Blighty it aint! I took my wife out for dinner last night and we walked to a restaraunt up the road and paid £168 before the tip for a meal for two!

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Faith itself, compelled by the Holy Spirit, possesses an inner dynamism that necessitates deeper understanding. ~Thomas Weinandy O.F.M.

“	Originally Posted By: FightingFat Is eating out cheaper than eating in? You're joking right? Not in Blighty it aint! I took my wife out for dinner last night and we walked to a restaraunt up the road and paid £168 before the tip for a meal for two!	”

How much is that in real money?

__________________
"You must eat bitter before you can taste sweet"- Iron & Silk
"I see no virtue where I smell no sweat"
"Arm yourself because no one else here will save you" - Chris Cornell

Double it!

__________________
Faith itself, compelled by the Holy Spirit, possesses an inner dynamism that necessitates deeper understanding. ~Thomas Weinandy O.F.M.

“	paid £168	”

That's going it some. A good meal for two with a bottle of reasonable wine costs us £100 on average - more in this area means trendier but no better.

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

“	Originally Posted By: FightingFat Double it!	”

Damn dude!!! What in the world are you eating? Endangered animals???

__________________
"You must eat bitter before you can taste sweet"- Iron & Silk
"I see no virtue where I smell no sweat"
"Arm yourself because no one else here will save you" - Chris Cornell

I think my idea of eating out and FF's and John's idea of eating out are entirely different. My idea of eating out is Chick-Fil-A....!!!!

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Rock On!
Cam
"Raise up your mind....."

The prices I'm talking about are local restaurants - good, fresh ingredients well prepared and reasonable wine, nothing pretentious. Sure, you can eat out really cheaply too but once you've tasted real food that processed gunk loses its appeal

Matthew Norman reviews Brula, Twickenham | Weekend | Guardian Unlimited

onglet steak and chips with green beans

http://tatler.co.uk/RestaurantGuide/...0&PostCode=All

La Trompette

~CHOR BIZARRE ~INDIAS RESTAURANT~

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

Ah, Chick-Fil-A ... I practically subsisted on that in college.

IME eating out in Europe was always fairly pricey. Except for a few really good restaurants and pubs around Dingle it was normal to spend $200 and up for restaurant meal. But the food was always good quality.

In the U.S., it depends. My fiance & I can eat a really good restaurant meal for $40-$60.

As far as groceries, if I insisted on buying all my food at Whole Foods, including meat, fresh vegetables, & a couple frozen dinners, my weekly grocery bill would be around $200. Instead, I shop at the Market Basket around the corner, limit the amount of meat/poultry we eat in one sitting, and get away with a basket full of fresh foods for about $60.

So, technically -- if we only ate Chinese takeout or pizza all week, our restaurant bill would be only a little higher than our grocery bill. But the fat content is much higher and the quality much lower in most restaurant foods (including the more expensive places).

__________________
"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...

Locally we get top quality ingredients when we eat out but certainly more fat too. I read an interview with a top chef who responded to the question "why doesn't my cooking at home ever taste like yours" with the answer "butter"

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

LOL!

Yeah I was watching some cooking show on PBS the other night, following some top chef as she made dinner at home for guests. She had a bowl of homemade butter, about a quart of it, and she was just digging out handfuls of it and slathering it over the top of some prime-grade ribeyes. Her reason? "If it's really good food, the calories don't matter."

I don't know if I totally agree with that, but dang those steaks looked good...

__________________
"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...

Fish Hook review - Restaurants - Time Out London

red mullet escabeche with foi grasse ballotines followed by sea bream with ham, green beans with alsace bacon and then blueberry tart with honey greek yoghurt sorbet. A fantastic bottle of wine for under £30, a bottle of water, crab tempura then sea bass and roasted veg for the wife, a coffee and a herbal tea, great service, total £103.

There's no way you could cook that sort of stuff at home and if you could you'd have to factor in the cost of taking time off work to go to the fish market at an obscenely early hour, buying stuff that only sells in bulk to put a little into the meal, and buying in the equipment...

Eat like that all the time and you'd die of a heart attack pretty swiftly though.

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

Since I don't work, I have LOTS of time to carefully gather the ingredients for gormet meals at home. My daughter works at an organic market and passes her staff discount on to me. I also took a nutrition course in nursing school and own every cookbook under the sun. So, for us it is cheaper and healthier to eat at home.
However, we are very lazy and tend to eat out a lot. I'm really starting to hate all that salt. I ate at a Greek restaurant tonight (Grub Med) and I feel like that poor slug in my garden that I killed with the salt shaker. My ankles are swelling too. We fed 5 people for $168.00 + tip(no booze), AND we took 2 boxes of leftovers home. I guess it's lamb stew tomorrow.
Bottom line: you can eat in or out on the cheap, but it's healthier to learn to cook good food at home.
Final word: None of that matters if you REALLY hate to cook.

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"I say, if you want to find out where the road goes, get in the fast lane and hit the gas." Calvin and Hobbes

The big advantage of eating at home is that you get to choose the company.

I'm just not good at ignoring annoying people. If I have to listen to one more smug middle class home counties type explaining how they sorted out johny foreigner on holiday I think I'll order a bottle of spirits for them and beg them to drink the lot in the hope it makes them a touch less boring.

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me