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Yep. The people I know who have the most amazing kitchens with brand-new, trick appliances, literally never use them. They eat out or get take-in all the time. It really baffles me why anyone would spend so much money on a kitchen they do not intend to use.
In fact, as a general rule, the larger and fancier the kitchen, the less food you will ever see coming out of it. The best meals I have ever had were made in tiny kitchens that you could hardly turn around in, with appliances that were old in the 1980s.
As for my family, we eat out or get takeout only once a week, on average. Usually Saturday night. My kitchen is also small and dated, but I cook all the time.
I know someone who started a restaurant in an art gallery, with a tiny little galley kitchen, just a cubby-hole. Ultimately I think the kitchen got expanded when the place really took off, but for a long time they made all the food in this tiny kitchen.
We eat out fairly infrequently but mostly really enjoy it when we do. It is a luxury, but a luxury to grab because it is so convenient and often a great time for socializing with friends and new acquaintances. We live in a foodie neighborhood and city so going out is often a fun and great way to check out some of the new places being talked about. Mostly we get by with cheap neighborhood places or gourmet food trucks but sometimes we splurge with fine dining restaurants.
Even so both of us are good cooks, me even more so than my partner, having done so professionally and with a mother who is truly an excellent cook (think Martha Stewart) that has always guided me. It is crazy expensive to eat out often though and I can whip up a great meal easily and enjoy doing so for us and our friends, often cooking enough for several meals for the week ahead or to freeze.
I will agree that most of the folks with absolutely amazing, professional grade kitchens are the ones who tend to cook the least. I loved seeing the re-creation of Julia Child's very modest kitchen in Santa Barbara at the Smithsonian museum in D.C., knowing the wonderful cooking that she accomplished in it. It lets you know that it is not the fancy, huge kitchen island or the $12k Viking range that is the basis behind good cooking, it is the skill, knowledge and patience of knowing your way around any modest kitchen and how to work with what you've got.
As many have noted, I agree. The people I know with the smallest kitchens cook the most.
I think most people eat breakfast at their desks, but for lunch, people either go out or they use the kitchen we have on our floor. Sometimes people do eat at their desks, though.
I usually get oatmeal and a banana (that's breakfast for me nine days out of ten) at a deli between my last train station and my office and eat it at my desk while I'm checking out email and planning out how to attack the day (or my defense if I find the day attacking me).
There are no complaints about eating at our desks. We are commuters. It takes me 90 minutes to get to work and 90 minutes to get home, and that's when everything is going smoothly with the transit systems. Then I'm there most days nine or ten hours, and during intense times during certain phases of projects, the days have been longer and included weekends. We are non-union public sector workers, at the mercy of politicians, so we haven't had raises in five years. Many of us are 9/11 survivors who came back to work to put everything back together when others did not return. They'd better not even THINK about complaining about us eating breakfast at our desks. The Mighty Queen would snap.
Wow, 3 hours of commute time a day---that's 'mighty' intense! power to you. When I had a more high-pressure job, 90 % of the time I ate my breakfast in the car driving to work, even though my commute was short. And would sometimes finish my breakfast at my desk...lol
I'd say we eat at home about 90% of the time. The other 10% is mostly pizza or fast food. We really don't go to REAL restaurants often, because it is very expensive.
I like home cooked food the best, hands down. Most restaurant food is oversalted and way too greasy. I also hate the chemical taste of non-fresh baked goods. Most store bought cakes, rolls and pies taste horrible to me.
I do enjoy eating ethnic foods I would never make at home. Indian, Persian, Greek, Japanese, etc. I usually get take out, though
When I was working 60-70 hours a week a couple of years back, I would not eat breakfast, pack my lunch and eat many dinners out. If I was still at work at 7:30pm, I would turn it in for reimbursement. On average, I was spending about $15 a night in the Chicago area and eating fairly decently.
I would have PREFERRED to cook. However, when you don't get home until 9 pm many nights, I did not feel that I could make it that long, even though dinner would take 30 minutes to prepare. On weekends, I would prepare things for the week like chili, soup, salmon and chicken salad and the like for lunches and occasionally for dinner.
I have seen many 80-100k kitchens in the Chicago suburbs. The nicer the kitchen, the less likely that you will be served a good meal. You usually get served reheated meals from Costco. Even though I have not been a member since 2002, I can pretty much tell you everything that they sell because I have been served it.
There are a lot of families that are non-cookers. When we visit the SIL, we generally spend about $150 in groceries just to have something to cook with when we get there. Also, I have probably spent $500 on kitchen equipment - knives, pots and pans. BIL likes to eat out every meal, including McDonald's for breakfast; SIL is always on some weird diet for some supposed disease or condition that is plaguing her. The kids like to see visitors so they can get a meal.
As for eating out, honestly, the cost is more but can easily be controlled. In the Chicago area, I was averaging $15. Now that I am retired in Tucson, I am usually spending $10 or so. I guess that I COULD cook for less some days BUT if you are cooking for one person, you are spending more buying all the ingredients on many complex dishes. For example, I can get a plate of macaroni and cheese for $6 at my friend's restaurant. By the time I buy four cheeses, the noodles and the milk, I out a lot more money.
I seldom am served overstated food. When I am, I take it back and get something else. And my experiences at chain restaurants are about the same at local restaurants. I have been served great food in chain restaurants and total garbage in local independents.
I don't buy many prepared foods as most of them are pretty easy to make.
I think the popularity of Food Network stuff and the rise of a "foodie culture" has mostly served to make people think that every meal you cook at home has to be a gourmet production with elaborate, high-end ingredients and fussy, complicated preparations, which can easily suck up as much money as dining out. Having the basics down is more important than knowing how to make this trendy entrée using that trendy appliances or tool.
I disagree. Emeril didn't require any elaborate, high-end ingredients - quite the opposite. Food Network brought attention to regional cooking, showed how to actually season food with all those herbs and spices folks have in their cupboards, and explained various cooking techniques.
WOW! Just wow! My hat goes off to you. And putting in those kinds of hours, too--you'd better get to eat at your desk!
I had no idea, MQ. A hero among us!
I'm not a hero. Just a person who got in the stairs asap and ran like hell. The tragedy of the deaths of almost 3,000 of my fellow human beings often obscures the fact that approximately 15,000 of us made it out before the buildings went down.
One of the reasons why I don't eat out much is because of................where would I?
I'm a midshift worker, have been for over 20 years. I get off work around 0800 and the only places that are open are fast food joints (which I have long sworn off) and IHOP. My internal clocks are so far off the norm that breakfast has essentially disappeared for me, there is only lunch and dinner.
Further, when I do desire breakfast and there is a university place open that I can eat at (that was another thing that turned me away was being able to find a snack bar that was open at 0800; most didn't open till after the second round of classes around 1000), most are serving what I can't eat. Institutionalized eggs will turn my tummy upside down. I can't have a breakfast taco with them and since eggs are mixed in with just about everything, I'm out of luck. So when I do want a breakfast taco, I'll go home and make mine with cat or other kind of fish.
If I am more in the mood for lunch/dinner, those places don't open up till 1030 or 1100....and by then, I'm 3 hours into my off time and would rather not waste it waiting.
Meals around 1800 have another issue. I am around a group of people winding down from the day while I'm winding up. Hence, office parties, if not occurring in the middle of my off time, I have left far behind for that other reason.
Am I complaining? No, it is the life I have picked but it just hit me that there is another major reason, in this topic, why I don't eat out all the time.
That may be a difference...I've never worked in a place that had random non-employees around.
I think of my bank's main office. If I go in there to handle business that can't be conducted online, as with my recent name change, it's a bunch of desks in an open plan that are in view of any client who walks in the door. Nobody's got greasy McDonald's sacks from their lunch break out on their desks, or Gladware from home...they don't even have cups of coffee. I'm sure that as any client who walks in the door can potentially be sitting across your desk from you, requiring service, there is a standard of neatness for your workspace. Places with this setup typically require that eating be done in a break room.
By contrast, when I worked in newspapers, we lived at our desks at pretty much all hours, if we weren't out in the field, and our desks looked it. But the general public wasn't coming in and out of the newsroom, either. The admin assistant/receptionist who manned the front desk and who handled the public? Couldn't eat at her desk.
Last edited by TabulaRasa; 12-21-2014 at 07:57 AM..
I disagree. Emeril didn't require any elaborate, high-end ingredients - quite the opposite. Food Network brought attention to regional cooking, showed how to actually season food with all those herbs and spices folks have in their cupboards, and explained various cooking techniques.
And consider Alton Brown....his entire show is about variations on an item....mostly regional....AND.....most importantly the techniques to actually make them easily in any sort...high end or not...kitchen.
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