Yeah seriously, the “cOoK aT hOmE” crowd really annoys me sometimes. Unless you only buy non-perishables, more often than not it’s just not economically practical for one or two people. Grocery stores are optimized for families.
From personal experience, it’s a personal failing and not an environmental issue. The only time I have issues with food spoilage like described above is when I over buy, forget about, or get tired of something. If I properly plan out my meals (lol) and space out purchases and freeze leftovers when necessary, I have very little issues with spoilage.
And having sandwiches regularly without having ingredients go bad is something I do all he time.
When ever I hear how expensive it is to cook I know I’m dealing with a young person who’s clueless. Have parents not been teaching their kids to cook?!
Reminds me of visiting my niece and her husband for dinner. They never cooked but made a nice meal that night. But they said it just wasn’t economical when they totaled the price vs. portions. They did the math and proudly claimed it was cheaper to eat out. My wife and I were stunned.
Well, duh? Now you have leftover ingredients. Add to those and plan another meal. FFS, they had to buy salt and figured that into the total meal price. They literally started with nothing. Yes, it’s expensive to spin up a fridge and pantry, but once you’re rolling it’s cheap to eat.
Eating out in the US used to be famously cheap. Now that people have been conditioned that way and everything belongs to a few oligopolists, they’ll squeeze every last drop of blood out of people.
I was taught to cook so poorly I had to start from scratch and learn how to make food taste good. There’s no shame on not having been taught basic life skills, but cooking is definitely a skill worth learning. Begin by talking to the laziest home cooks you know, figure out their tricks because we tend to live off cheap and easy stuff
eg. black bean tacos: two cans of black beans, rinsed, cooked in water and store bought taco seasoning until it’s been sufficiently absorbed, put on store bought tortillas, salsa, sour cream, and cheese are optional, I’m partial to jarred nopales as well. Experiment at will.
If only there were some method available, allowing you to search for and obtain information on any possible topic! Maybe in some sci-fi future world, this incredible information resource will also include instructional videos!
Look, all I’m saying is that sometimes I just want to buy a little bit of parsley or cilantro for a dish, but can’t. I gotta buy the entire bundle and waste most of it. And that’s just one such example I can think of on top of my head.
Then you chop it all off and freeze it, put it in a ice cream box or something and then use it for stews or soups where it’s not so important to use fresh
Yeah…I almost never order out unless I have company in town or I’m completely out of food to cook after work and I’m lazy (which is like once/mo). And even then I’ll usually scrape something easy together like cereal or pasta/red sauce or even just toast/butter if I’m really desperate.
I’m not constantly throwing out food or eating the same things. Just every week or so I’ll grab enough to make like three separate dishes plus a few staples and just like that I’m set to scrape together something new or eat at least three different set meals. Or I can run down to grab one extra ingredient and make an entirely new dish combining what I have.
I definitely get eating out is delicious and much easier, but let’s not pretend it somehow saves you money lol
Well I’m glad that you’ve found a way to reuse the same ingredients several days in a row, but the GF and prefer to have variety in our diets. By the time comes around that I have second use for the ingredients I bought, they’ve already gone bad. We got sick of wasting so much food.
Edit: You keep making the same arguments over and over again. I’m not buying too much. Produce tends to be sold in large bunches and can’t be easily frozen. Meat is sold as several pounds and goes bad before I can finish it all. Same goes for milk and eggs. They go bad too quickly.
I think you guys need to buy more versatile food then if you get so bored quickly. you need to look into spices. I don’t mean to sound rude, but if you want to save money, you have to come to a point where you go “yeah i had this 2 days ago but beats ordering food” because it saves you money that you could be using for something else (saving etc…)
If you want to get fancy, vacuum pack it. I’ll admit, I cannot stand even the slightest freezer burn. It makes me gag immediately. Vacuum packing basically eliminates that.
Yes if your going to splurge on something, get a vacuum pack pump. It really does work. I’m too broke af to afford one right now and im kinda going through a break up and trying to find a place and shit, but once i can ill be getting one. I was personally raised to use everything from what you cooked with, scrap cuttings i use from veggies is for a broth i make to make a nice soup with broken up spaghetti. I am also very into cooking on a budget and look at alot of recipes, and also cook my cultural (Italian, no not american italian food) dishes.
You can do a pretty decent job with a ziplock and a water bath until you can afford one.
Put the food in the ziplock and submerge it in a tank of water up to the top of the bag while its still open. Then seal the bag while the lower part is held under water. Helpful to have an extra set of hands if you have someone available to seal while you hold the lower part under water.
Did you know that refrigerators don’t stop food from going bad, they just slow the process? And before you mention the freezer: not everything can be frozen. Like most produce, for example. It’s not a temperature issue, either. I regularly probe the temperature in several areas to make sure all parts of the fridge stay below 38°F.
Even with a fridge, most of the groceries the SO and I buy end up going bad before we can use all of the ingredients. It’s cheaper to just eat out most of the time.
most of the groceries the SO and I buy end up going bad before we can use all of the ingredients.
So what you mean to say that for YOU it’s cheaper to eat out given your current eating and cooking habits. But you are generalizing this for everyone. There are lots of reasons buying groceries and cooking may not be working for you. If you really want to save money, there is absolutely no question that it’s cheaper than paying someone to cook for you every meal. Just because you haven’t figured out how to do that doesn’t mean you can say that’s universally true.
This said, it sounds like eating out all the time is working for you and you are happy with it.
So this may not apply to you, but… If you do want to optimize for cost, I’d suggest:
Don’t buy cheap ingredients. Discounted groceries are old groceries. Buy from a farmer’s market if you can as things are WAY fresher and will last much longer.
Work out a small set of meals that you can put on repeat, last long and/or freeze well. Make these in quantities for several meals.
Buy as your base ingredients things that aren’t perishable or can be frozen easily. Dried beans are an obvious example.
Are you under the impression that families are going to the grocery store every day and trying to eat everything within 48 hours of picking it up from the store? No, people are buying the week’s worth of stuff and might not be getting to actually cooking it until 6 days later.
Buy a week’s worth of food, with each perishable item in quantities small enough to go into a few meals per week, out of the 21 meals you’ll be eating that week.
Fresh vegetables and fruit last a week or two. Fresh meat lasts a week. Eggs last a few weeks. Most dairy products last a week or two.
Make meals out of a combination of fresh ingredients, dry goods (pasta, rice, beans, breads), canned/preserved foods/sauces/condiments, frozen foods. With basically one perishable feature ingredient per dinner, it doesn’t take that much planning to feed yourself for maybe 10-25% as much as it costs from takeout or restaurants. Even if your food waste is double as a single person, that’s still 20-50% the cost.
Unless you’re doing heavy veggie sandwiches that’s strange to me. I’ve packed my lunch my entire adult life, and sandwiches are the primary staple. Back when I ate meat I was able to mix it up between two different types of cold cuts day by day using the big containers and I can’t remember them ever going bad. Since I quit meat I just do peanut butter out of convenience and it’s similar. Occasionally a slice of bread or two goes bad but with the big whole wheat loaves from Aldi it’s an end piece and a few cents of spoilage. And all this is with me being the only one to eat these things.
Yeah seriously, the “cOoK aT hOmE” crowd really annoys me sometimes. Unless you only buy non-perishables, more often than not it’s just not economically practical for one or two people. Grocery stores are optimized for families.
I don’t know what it’s like where you live but I’ve never had that problem and I mainly just buy groceries for myself.
From personal experience, it’s a personal failing and not an environmental issue. The only time I have issues with food spoilage like described above is when I over buy, forget about, or get tired of something. If I properly plan out my meals (lol) and space out purchases and freeze leftovers when necessary, I have very little issues with spoilage.
And having sandwiches regularly without having ingredients go bad is something I do all he time.
When ever I hear how expensive it is to cook I know I’m dealing with a young person who’s clueless. Have parents not been teaching their kids to cook?!
Reminds me of visiting my niece and her husband for dinner. They never cooked but made a nice meal that night. But they said it just wasn’t economical when they totaled the price vs. portions. They did the math and proudly claimed it was cheaper to eat out. My wife and I were stunned.
Well, duh? Now you have leftover ingredients. Add to those and plan another meal. FFS, they had to buy salt and figured that into the total meal price. They literally started with nothing. Yes, it’s expensive to spin up a fridge and pantry, but once you’re rolling it’s cheap to eat.
Eating out in the US used to be famously cheap. Now that people have been conditioned that way and everything belongs to a few oligopolists, they’ll squeeze every last drop of blood out of people.
For what it’s worth no, my parents did not teach me how to cook, and none of my friends’ parents taught them how to cook either
I was taught to cook so poorly I had to start from scratch and learn how to make food taste good. There’s no shame on not having been taught basic life skills, but cooking is definitely a skill worth learning. Begin by talking to the laziest home cooks you know, figure out their tricks because we tend to live off cheap and easy stuff
eg. black bean tacos: two cans of black beans, rinsed, cooked in water and store bought taco seasoning until it’s been sufficiently absorbed, put on store bought tortillas, salsa, sour cream, and cheese are optional, I’m partial to jarred nopales as well. Experiment at will.
If only there were some method available, allowing you to search for and obtain information on any possible topic! Maybe in some sci-fi future world, this incredible information resource will also include instructional videos!
To clarify, I can cook, I just had to learn on my own because my parents never taught me
Look, all I’m saying is that sometimes I just want to buy a little bit of parsley or cilantro for a dish, but can’t. I gotta buy the entire bundle and waste most of it. And that’s just one such example I can think of on top of my head.
Then you chop it all off and freeze it, put it in a ice cream box or something and then use it for stews or soups where it’s not so important to use fresh
Been there, done that. Produce doesn’t freeze well at all. It just turns soggy and mushy. It’s a non-option but thanks for trying.
I use parsley and cilantro like that, but only in stews, soups and stocks, it does get a bit soggy and frostburned tho.
Yeah…I almost never order out unless I have company in town or I’m completely out of food to cook after work and I’m lazy (which is like once/mo). And even then I’ll usually scrape something easy together like cereal or pasta/red sauce or even just toast/butter if I’m really desperate.
I’m not constantly throwing out food or eating the same things. Just every week or so I’ll grab enough to make like three separate dishes plus a few staples and just like that I’m set to scrape together something new or eat at least three different set meals. Or I can run down to grab one extra ingredient and make an entirely new dish combining what I have.
I definitely get eating out is delicious and much easier, but let’s not pretend it somehow saves you money lol
what? I have never had this problem for myself. it seems people just want an excuse to eat out
Well I’m glad that you’ve found a way to reuse the same ingredients several days in a row, but the GF and prefer to have variety in our diets. By the time comes around that I have second use for the ingredients I bought, they’ve already gone bad. We got sick of wasting so much food.
Edit: You keep making the same arguments over and over again. I’m not buying too much. Produce tends to be sold in large bunches and can’t be easily frozen. Meat is sold as several pounds and goes bad before I can finish it all. Same goes for milk and eggs. They go bad too quickly.
I think you guys need to buy more versatile food then if you get so bored quickly. you need to look into spices. I don’t mean to sound rude, but if you want to save money, you have to come to a point where you go “yeah i had this 2 days ago but beats ordering food” because it saves you money that you could be using for something else (saving etc…)
Plus learn to buy in smaller quantities, to me this seems nore like an issue of buying more than they can eat.
Also, has no one heard of a freezer?
If you want to get fancy, vacuum pack it. I’ll admit, I cannot stand even the slightest freezer burn. It makes me gag immediately. Vacuum packing basically eliminates that.
Yes if your going to splurge on something, get a vacuum pack pump. It really does work. I’m too broke af to afford one right now and im kinda going through a break up and trying to find a place and shit, but once i can ill be getting one. I was personally raised to use everything from what you cooked with, scrap cuttings i use from veggies is for a broth i make to make a nice soup with broken up spaghetti. I am also very into cooking on a budget and look at alot of recipes, and also cook my cultural (Italian, no not american italian food) dishes.
You can do a pretty decent job with a ziplock and a water bath until you can afford one.
Put the food in the ziplock and submerge it in a tank of water up to the top of the bag while its still open. Then seal the bag while the lower part is held under water. Helpful to have an extra set of hands if you have someone available to seal while you hold the lower part under water.
Obviously not as good, but it does help.
yes ive tried this without success, party because no extra hands.
Freeze your food and eat more?
I cook at home a lot since 2020 and stuff does not really spoil. I have not seen cheese or yogurt or bread spoil. Veggies not really.
The only thing I am cautious with is meat
Do you know what a “refrigerator” is?
Did you know that refrigerators don’t stop food from going bad, they just slow the process? And before you mention the freezer: not everything can be frozen. Like most produce, for example. It’s not a temperature issue, either. I regularly probe the temperature in several areas to make sure all parts of the fridge stay below 38°F.
Even with a fridge, most of the groceries the SO and I buy end up going bad before we can use all of the ingredients. It’s cheaper to just eat out most of the time.
So what you mean to say that for YOU it’s cheaper to eat out given your current eating and cooking habits. But you are generalizing this for everyone. There are lots of reasons buying groceries and cooking may not be working for you. If you really want to save money, there is absolutely no question that it’s cheaper than paying someone to cook for you every meal. Just because you haven’t figured out how to do that doesn’t mean you can say that’s universally true.
This said, it sounds like eating out all the time is working for you and you are happy with it.
So this may not apply to you, but… If you do want to optimize for cost, I’d suggest:
Are you under the impression that families are going to the grocery store every day and trying to eat everything within 48 hours of picking it up from the store? No, people are buying the week’s worth of stuff and might not be getting to actually cooking it until 6 days later.
Buy a week’s worth of food, with each perishable item in quantities small enough to go into a few meals per week, out of the 21 meals you’ll be eating that week.
Fresh vegetables and fruit last a week or two. Fresh meat lasts a week. Eggs last a few weeks. Most dairy products last a week or two.
Make meals out of a combination of fresh ingredients, dry goods (pasta, rice, beans, breads), canned/preserved foods/sauces/condiments, frozen foods. With basically one perishable feature ingredient per dinner, it doesn’t take that much planning to feed yourself for maybe 10-25% as much as it costs from takeout or restaurants. Even if your food waste is double as a single person, that’s still 20-50% the cost.
Unless you’re doing heavy veggie sandwiches that’s strange to me. I’ve packed my lunch my entire adult life, and sandwiches are the primary staple. Back when I ate meat I was able to mix it up between two different types of cold cuts day by day using the big containers and I can’t remember them ever going bad. Since I quit meat I just do peanut butter out of convenience and it’s similar. Occasionally a slice of bread or two goes bad but with the big whole wheat loaves from Aldi it’s an end piece and a few cents of spoilage. And all this is with me being the only one to eat these things.