Cost of Eating in VS Eating out for single or married w/o kids (red wine, hamburgers)

[SpeedyAZ]

Originally Posted by gentlearts

What is wrong with your thinking is that you eat mostly junk, and you don't eat leftovers. What is wrong with leftovers? Foods frequently taste better the next day.
IF you ate a balanced diet and IF you cooked a meal, then froze part of it for a second or third meal, then you would certainly spend much less money.
But if you only like junk, and you don't want to be bothered cooking, and you retain your childish prejudices against leftovers, you are throwing money away.

I don't do leftovers and that's my own prejudice.

What junk are you talking about? Chicken Alfredo and a Caesar salad isn't junk I my book! I eat a lot of meat- steak, prime rib, ribs, etc. None of these foods are junk...

[Themanwithnoname]

Originally Posted by SpeedyAZ

I don't do leftovers and that's my own prejudice.

What junk are you talking about? Chicken Alfredo and a Caesar salad isn't junk I my book! I eat a lot of meat- steak, prime rib, ribs, etc. None of these foods are junk...

As do I...

At home, for a much lower cost.

What they said about you buying 'easy to throw together' foods was right.

You pay more that way.

But you were just looking for a justification anyway...

[gentlearts]

Fontucky, the soups made with ham bones or turkey bones are heavenly. I feel sorry for people who haven't been taught this.

[Fontucky]

Can you tell I was raised by Depression-era parents?

[TabulaRasa]

Originally Posted by SpeedyAZ

Last night I did attempt to make a good, home-cooked meal from scratch. I decided I wanted chicken fettuccine alfredo with garlic bread and a caesar salad. Bought chicken breasts, fettuccine noodles, two jars of alfredo sauce, garlic bread, cheese, pre-packaged salad, ranch dressing, and olives...my total was somewhere between $25-$30. I do some 'leftovers' in the fridge but I'm taking a friend out tonight for supper, I'm meeting my parents for breakfast tomorrow morning (brunch), and I'll probably go out Sunday night with my sister and her husband.

So could it be cheaper? Yes if I make quantities of things but to make a small portion, enough for a single meal, I'm not sure.

This would have been cheaper had you:

-topped it with chicken from bone-in breasts, which are cheaper than boneless/skinless (I'm assuming you used boneless/skinless, as most people do, if I'm offbase, disregard), or from chicken carved from an entire chicken you roasted (whole roasters are generally cheaper per pound than packs of boneless/skinless breast meat), and then you have additional chicken for other meals.

-used less sauce (you don't note how many you were cooking for, but if it's just you, there's no way you needed two jars of Alfredo sauce...one person alone wouldn't eat an entire single jar of Alfredo sauce in one sitting). Others have mentioned how you could make your own less expensively, but I won't speak to that, because I never have (my household has too few people who are fans of Alfredo for me to make it), and also because several of the ingredients to make it from scratch are typically quite costly where I am. Heavy cream, for instance, is crazy expensive right now.

-Not used premade garlic bread, but made your own by toasting bread spread with butter/minced garlic or garlic powder

-Not used prepackaged salad, but that's been touched on already

You also note the cost of ingredients that you've purchased in quantity sufficient for several or many meals, and try to compare them to the cost of a single meal out, and that's apples-and-oranges style comparison, there.

Yeah, maybe you bought two jars of Alfredo sauce...but you didn't eat two jars of Alfredo sauce in a single small serving. So you can't really count the cost of two jars of Alfredo sauce in the cost of one meal, and had you ordered the same entree in a restaurant in a single portion, it woudln't have been two jars' worth of Alfredo sauce.

Likewise, I'm not convinced that you ate an entire bag of salad, and entire loaf of garlic bread, an entire package of cheese, an entire bottle of dressing, an entire jar of olives, etc. in one serving. You can't really look at the cost of groceries that should be able to stretch across the preparation of several different meals, and say, "See, it cost more to buy these than it would to buy it in a restaurant." You bought enough groceries to make several meals, so you need to do the math to determine cost per serving or per meal, not just say that your meal cost 30 bucks, because it didn't. And if you did eat all $30 worth of groceries in a single sitting, that would be pretty gross.

[Bunjee]

Hmm, I could've made the chicken alfredo dinner for four to six people--or two with gluttonous second helpings!--for about $15. With extra Parmesan cheese, which ain't exactly leftovers. (It wouldn't have been Parmegiano Reggiano, but canned sauce doesn't have that either.)

I suppose $15 is what one would pay in a middling restaurant for one person. Then again, second helpings is another benefit, and I don't mind leftovers anyway.

[gentlearts]

Alfredo from a jar is just nasty. You could save money with a bit of cheese, cream and butter.

[gentlearts]

I was back at burger, cola, and chips.

[the minx]

Speedy, I've had the same dilemma as well. I force myself to eat at home now because it's healthier and I've had to adjust the way I make meals because most of the time it's just me.

You can buy family size items and portion them out. Since you don't like leftovers, don't cook everything at once. Actually, I've discovered that a lot of stores now package items in single portions (e.g. chicken breasts in individually wrapped packages, but sold in a larger bag). Veggies are easy because you can cook what you'll eat, and they also now come in single serve frozen packages as well.

I'll admit it does sometimes seem like a waste to cook for just one person, but I keep telling myself I'm better for it in the long run.

[fleetiebelle]

I agree that if the OP wants to eat out and has the money for it, then all power to him. (And OP, chicken alfredo is not at all the healthiest thing you can eat, fat, calories, and sodium-wise, so maybe home-cooked, but definitely not healthy. Same with lots of red meat.)

Last night I made a Morrocan-style chicken stew: a pound of chicken breast ($5), a can of chickpeas and a can of diced tomatoes ($1 each), and onion and a zucchini ($1.25 each) and using low sodium chicken broth, tomato paste, garlic, spices, and cous cous that I already had on hand. So for $10, I got four portions of stew with protein and veggies all together. That's how you cook smart for one person.