Eat at Home

That's right, eat at home. In a world full of restaurants and fast food joints it's easy to convince yourself that it's easier to eat out and faster. But it's so much better for you to make your own food and share a meal with your family!

First let's evaluate this strictly on a convenience factor. While it may seem like you save a lot of time by going out to dinner, that's hardly ever true (unless you only visit McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell etc.) Let's say that dinner takes an hour to prepare and you spend 30 minutes eating. I'd say that's a fairly generous time allotment considering the number of families who dine and dash off to sporting events, school plays, PTA meetings, Wednesday night church and such. That's 1.5 hours of your evening.

Now let's take a look at a night out. Most people are willing to drive at least 20 minutes to go out to eat at a place that they like, often even more than that. There's 40 minutes right there. Not including the 15-20 minutes that it takes to be seated, order your food and have it brought to your table. Suddenly there's the hour that it took to make dinner and that's assuming that there was no traffic, you are the only one at the restaurant and you instantly knew which place to go for dinner without any delay in decision making. Not so fast and convenient now, is it?

Granted it's nice not to do the dishes, but is it worth paying $10 a plate or more just to have the dishes done when you could prepare the same meal for less than half the cost at home? And face it, $10 a plate these days is relatively moderate when you include taxes and tip (I doubt your tipping the server at home, although, maybe you should be).

Besides the time and money factors there is also the health factor. When you cook at home you know exactly what goes into your food and how much you are eating. Plus you rarely feel as obligated to stuff yourself and "get your money's worth" when you are eating at home instead of at a restaurant.

To illustrate, try this on for size: This winter I took my wife to dinner at a nearby restaurant as a special night out. I had a roasted red pepper stuffed chicken breast with mashed potatoes. Sounds tasty, no? I was curious about the nutrition facts for the meal and was shocked to find that the meal I had just eaten was around 1500 calories, not including my two large glasses of lemonade. I did not feel like I had stuffed myself despite eating over half a day's worth of calories. Admittedly, I was full, but not to the point of bursting or to the point at which I felt like I really shouldn't eat anything else that evening. In comparison, I had cooked a similar meal of stuffed chicken breasts at home during the spring and had an equally tasty dinner that was approximately half the calories of eating out.

Another danger to your health of eating out is feeling that you need to get your "money's worth" as I previously mentioned. The unfortunate American definition of this generally means More = Better. We opt for quantity over quality. Which leads to all sorts of problems that I will have to address at a later date.

All this to say that there are many benefits to eating at home, and you don't have to sacrifice flavor or quality. Not that eating out once in awhile is a bad thing. All things in moderation, right? Including moderation itself...hmmm...chew on that all you philosophers out there. But for now, try dining in a little more often. Make it a game and see what you can save by eating at home. Whether it's dollars or pounds it'll all add up in the end.

In case you need any other encouragement, have a taste of this...