cheaper to dine or cook

oh my....

It's a sicilian thing..

You can get yellow or white popcorn seeds at bulkfoods.com at very good prices. I buy the 5 pound bag for $6.43 and that usually lasts a year. If that's too much, you can get the 1 pound bag for $3.49, but the 5 pound bag is a better buy and you can use the excess for gifts or making popcorn balls for parties.

http://www.bulkfoods.com/seeds.asp

and then is there a mailing fee? Never mind, I can check. I have no place I want to tuck in five pounds of popcorn. But.. I am interested in the link in general.
Thanks for the clue..

I need to check that for nuts.

1) Cooking yourself - you pay for ingredients

2) Dining out - you pay for ingredients and labor

If you pay more for #1 than #2 you are doing at least one of them wrong.

Well, there are different ways of paying. One is time. I work full time and part time on top of that and dragged myself in a number of side projects, too. Time I don't have. Whether I shop and "cook" (has to be something super quick) or grab a wrap or donner or whatnot - it's about the same, if not actually cheaper dining out (when I shop, I always end up throwing something out in the end, even though I learned to buy very little) .... I am single and I don't try to save, so that's a big difference. But the quickness is more important to me right now. If I had time and someone at home, I know I would shop and dine very differently. Right now though, priorities are different.

A general markup at restaurants is three to six times what the ingredients cost to cover overhead, labor and other business expenses. The best restaurants who buy expensive ingredients at three to four times markup. MacDonald's and other fast foot is five to six times. That explains if you actually buy a salad at MacDonalds which will just leave you hungry and compare it to the size you get in a restaurant, say a quality chain like Cheesecake Factory (for a lunch, of course), the MacDonalds is more expensive. This is before a tip, of course, but still it tells me to skip a MacDonalds for everyday and go to the better restaurant once-a-week or even twice-a-month. Trouble with MacDonalds cheap burger and fries is that it doesn't fill you up and you'll end of snacking or eating more than three meals a day.

I can usually end up paying the same for good ingredients and cook them at home and still beat or match a MacDonalds. I'll definitely beat the high quality chain restaurant by a good percentage. The really expensive restaurant? There's only a handful I'd actually go to that's worth what they're serving you.

It's still faster to fry an egg than run to McDonalds.



That's the doing it wrong part. I have had big problems with that, and always used the "don't have time" excuse as well, but the truth is that if you just plan ahead it can still takes less time and money.

I too place much more value on time than money, and dine out frequently but the main reason is because they cook better than I do and I like their food better than mine. The time and money arguments don't fly for me anymore when I really break it down. It makes sense to me when I'm working right up to the point I'm ready to faint from hunger and no longer have time to prepare anything, but that's a planning problem more than a real time problem. I could still cook in larger amounts and plan meals and save more time than rushing to get something, but I don't and yes at that point then it's faster to eat out.

But there are tons of things you can make at home faster than you could even go out to get and if you are good at the whole home economics thing (I'm not either) then you really can't beat doing it yourself instead of eating out.

I suspect part of your time comments have to do with your working at home.

If you are out, and grab food on the way home, or on the way to going to a different out, you aren't going out especially to grab food.


I mean, I cook, and even normally prepare food from home to have at work for lunch, but I'd not consider more time a benefit of that (I do consider money and health a benefit) but, with my schedule, it would take way less time to buy food ready made.

well, the "doing it wrong" applies to your point of view.
like i said- it simply doesn't fit with my priorities. i don't plan shopping, because i don't want to plan shopping -- i would rather spend more money if that's what it takes. that's a choice and that's a right for me. not for you...for me.

plus, what deb said. i sleep at home - that's about it. i'm hardly ever there. i travel more than i stay at home. if i was at home a lot , i would cook more. but i am not, so again, for me it's different than for you. what is right for you is not necessarily right for me, right?

Choices vary but I see most of your points to some extent, dag re priorities, robert re time, and both, re "value". In contrast to lightwizard, whom I don't believe just this once, I know many restaurants, even in this pretty tunneled city re food, that I get a kick out of for their savvy on flavors or - sometimes more interesting to me - procedure. For example, a local restaurant here, Vivace, which I'd never name as some top international place, showed me that parsnips can be fantastic.
News for a girl who thought parsnips were slime. That in itself is worth time and money, the knowledge growth being part of value. (And that entree, which I won't go on about, didn't cost all that much anyway.)

So - what does cheap mean? usually it's about money straight up, but can be time as money, about effort as a kind of money, and new knowledge which can be translated to grocery store purchasing.. as value.

yep, i guess value is a better word.... but, the initial question was about monetary cost (eating cheaper and healthier)...which is not on my list (the cheaper part anyway... i don't do junk food, even if i eat out), so i just wanted to chime in on the value, that cheaper is not always worthwhile to all...aaanyway.

I could do a soliloquy on flavor, peculiar given my odd nose, but will skip that for now. Just a sentence - sometimes the cheapest food is a kind of fodder, a stuffing, to make the belly notice, when just a piquant flavor or two can be relatively satisfying, and not necessarily expensive.

Certainly, I don't care at all how you feed yourself and that what I am saying "applies to my point of view" goes without saying. Of course it does, just as does what you say, or anyone else.

<shrugs>

I wasn't trying to change what you do.

If you are making a pancake, sweet or savory, while you are at home, and have ingredients at hand, you'll be way ahead just doing that in your kitchen than going out.

Of course, you had to obtain that kitchen or burner on a shelf (me, younger), buy the cookware, learn about cooking in the first place - which many don't get to by circumstance or choice, get the ingredients in packets or local venues, and learn the recipes from grandma, cookbooks, or internet.

From point to point though, home cooking is cheaper re coins.

I have to amend that. I can't cook indian food without significant investment from a place across town or further.

So - exploration can be tough from the home kitchen.
Just about a luxury. This is too bad.

perhaps not, i was just reacting to "that's the wrong way to go about it" statement ;-) ...

osso, indian is actually quite easy, at least curries are -- but you are right, you do have to have the right ingredients (recipes are online, if confusing) - and that usually involves a special trip to the indian store. they don't have fresh curry leaves in the regular supermarket. i tried to make parathas a number of time -- i much prefer to buy them frozen, i just can't make them well enough at home, and i tried and tried.

I have to confess that...for ordinary home cooking of Indian ...I now tend to use the excellent Charmaine Solomon (or a select few others') ready-made curry pastes.

They are actually good...though nothinhg compares with the fresh aromas and tastes of making the real thing from scratch, which I do for dinner parties.

The question was whether it is cheaper to dine out or cook. I responded saying that if you are spending more money cooking than dining out you are doing at least one of them wrong. I was not talking about you and I wasn't talking about whether time is money, I was responding to a simple question that would be considered patently absurd in most of the countries I have lived (where people still cook).

You decided that this is a critique of your lifestyle, where you deem your time too valuable to cook. I really have no dog in that fight, I don't cook much myself and you certainly don't need to justify how you feed yourself to me. I really sincerely don't care dagmaraka, and for that reason don't really want to continue this silliness.

I ate out every day for the last week or so, I eat out all the time. It's really ok to eat out. That settle it?

uh, whatever, i was really not inviting a tirade, just explaining my reaction. nada to settle here.