100 DOLLARS A WEEK - Day 22 (What We Ate) & Something About Cooking In Vs. Dining Out...

The other day, I told you about how the Man ended up having to go to Panda Express for some guai lo Chinese-y food for lunch and how that lunch cost $8.00. That we spent 8 bucks on a 2-item combo didn't bite as much as the realization of how much more food at how much better a quality we could have made with 8 bucks' worth of groceries at home.

To further illustrate, in the past couple of months, we've gone out to eat on our own dime just a handful of times. And in that handful (something like 4), we have spent more dining out ($400+) than we do for the groceries that feed us, and pretty well I think, for the entire month.

And let's be real - I love Oceanside, but Oceanside is no fine dining haven. Which is to say, we're not eating at places where we can get better food than we get at home. And when we stay local, we're dining out for one of two reasons: variety sushi and a break from the kitchen.

I understand this is a Red Delicious to Fuji comparison.

When we dine out, each person gets to order what they want, and there is no cleanup. I hesitate to include the notion of service in that equation because frankly, what we get for service most days in casual dining environments lately, I'd rather take a number and go pick my food up at the pass-through. (Lest I should be taken the wrong way, it's not that I'd rather that server be out of a job. I'm just looking at it from a bang for my buck perspective. And maybe I think that server needs to brush up on their notions of good service, too...) Further, if the reality for some of us is that almost all restaurant food looks and tastes better than what we can produce at home, all I can say is, practice makes perhaps not perfect, but eventually, definitely better than what you can get at most restaurants.

When we eat in, the whole family *has* to eat the same thing, and someone's gotta wash or at least load the dishes. But let me reframe that from a perspective of a mother who has two pre-teen children with very culinarily doting grandmothers who don't seem to mind making one thing for one child and one different thing for the other. While it is absolutely a grandmother's prerogative to dote, it is not good for children to grow up thinking they can have whatever they want at every meal. It spoils them in a bad way for this little reality of life we try to instill in them from the time they're old enough to be fixated on a big amorphous purple blobcreature that is supposed to be a singing dinosaur:

You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit.

I'm not trying to get anyone to stop eating out. I enjoy a good dining out experience as much as the next gal. But clearly, there are advantages to eating home-cooked meals most of the time, and not all of them have to do with saving money.

BREAKFAST

For me, the Man, and the Boy, coffee cake and a hot beverage:

For the Girl whom we picked up later in the morning because she had a Father-Daughter dinner with her dad on Friday night, a bowl of chocolate Cheerios:

   3 pieces of coffee cake $1.50
+ 2 cups of coffee $0.40
+ a cup of coconut vanilla latte $0.25
+ a bowl of Cheerios and milk $0.50

= BREAKFAST: $2.65 total, $0.65/person

SNACK

A fruit and veg platter for all.

   2/3 basket of cherry tomatoes $1.00
+ 2 carrots $0.40
+ half a cantaloupe $0.60
+ some ranch dressing $0.15

= SNACK: $2.15 total

LUNCH

Club sandwich type dealies with bacon, lettuce, turkey ham, avocado and tomato on whole wheat.

    4 slices of bacon $0.50

+ 1 avocado $0.75

+ lettuce already accounted for

+ 1 tomato $0.20

+ turkey ham $1.00

+ 8 slice of bread @ $1.00

= $3.50 total, $0.90/person

KIMCHI

Made more kimchi.

   just under 4 pounds of Napa cabbage $3.80

+ half a head of garlic $0.10

+ a big knuckle of ginger $0.20

+ red chili flakes $0.60

+ some rice, sugar and fish sauce $0.20

= KIMCHI: $4.90 for a half gallon.

DINNER

Easy meals all around - instant udon for dinner. With a poached egg for me and the Man, and plain for the kids who don't like poached eggs.

Some button and crimini mushrooms sauteed in some of the bacon fat left from making the club sandwiches for lunch, and dressed with little lemon and wasabi.

And some fresh kimchi. :)

   4 packets of udon $3.40
+ 2 eggs $0.35
+ mushrooms $1.25

= DINNER: $4.90 total, $1.25/person

$18.15 spent on the first day of the last week.

The Man is brewing today. Some kind of stout, I think, but he is not awake to confirm.

This house is a disaster. I guess my day has been planned for me.

Off to assemble breakfast...

shinae