Saving on: Eating Out

When I first started this blog, I had a goal of eating at a very low cost.  I learned a lot through that extreme measure and challenged myself to do somethings I wouldn't otherwise done.  For instance, I made homemade bread and tortillas.  I realized at the time that cooking from scratch often yielded significant savings.  I also really liked the purity of the idea and wanted to eat as scratch-made as often as possible.  I wanted to save every penny, not just because I'm sort of a miser, but because I enjoyed the game of it.

Enter: Reality

The reality is I'm not a housewife, and I'm not on a that restrictive of a budget.  I need to be modest, but I can afford basic necessities such as food.

Also, if you consider your time as valuable in monetary terms, some scratch made items are not worth the time put it.

One of the down sides to my "commitment" to scratch-made food is that I very rarely had items in the house that were readily cook-able, and it turns out that not every day do I want to spend an hour plus in the kitchen cooking.  Sure, I like cooking and all, but it's not all that I'm responsible for either, and as I mentioned earlier: I'm not a housewife (or a house-girlfriend, or a house anything for that matter).  Anyway, so if I want to eat (which is everyday), but I don't want to put much effort into cooking... Solution: go out to eat! ...err... except for that's basically the most expensive, unhealthy way to eat possible (with a high range of variance).

Basically, despite good intentions, I'm not able to maintain a 'very' cheap food system for very long, so I find myself resorting to 'going out' foods more often than I really need to.  So, I found two things that really help with that.  They aren't novel ideas really, but they work none the less.  

1. Buying 'expensive' food
For example, I decided it was okay to buy already made hummus, and grape tomatoes.  I know these foods don't sound crazy indulgent, but before I thought I 'had to' make hummus from scratch, and only buy grape tomatoes when there was wildly good deal.  I don't though, and having foods I love around has made me more excited to pack lunches.  These foods are actually healthy too and require 'zero' preparation. 

Sunday morning we made breakfast burritos at home, we used good ingredients, like bacon and fresh veggies which are things that I think of as being expensive.  A very rough calculation on ingredient cost suggested it cost about $8.00 for the batch, and safe estimates say we will get at least 4 meals out of this (probably more) for $2.00/person.  When we go out to our favorite breakfast cafe, even with a groupon, it ends up being about $9.50/person.

2. Accepting some processed foods
We've also purchased frozen pizzas.  They are virtually deplorable health wise, but it's well 'easy', and though it's not all that cheap, we've often ordered pizza out when there's "nothing to eat" around here, so the frozen pizza is a lower loss option.  Frozen pizza can easily be purchased for $5.00 or $2.50 per person, and take-out pizza is usually at least $15.00 which is $7.50/person.  Also, as I understand it there are some more favorable health-wise options as well.

Last, we bought a box of breakfast sandwiches  like these ones:

 It was $13.50 for the box of 12, making it one of the most expensive items in my cart and I didn't even have a coupon.   There were cheaper ones at the store, but these seemed slightly healthier (and more edible).  The sandwiches round to $1.13 each, which makes them over a dollar less then their counter part at McDonald's and after a taste test, I can say they were comparable. In this case Jimmy Dean Breakfast Sandwich is a little more healthy than the McD version and has fewer calories as well.

Conclusion
In the first examples, I just need to get over my neurosis of buying mildly expensive food.  For instance... yes I can make decent garlic bread from scratch, but the awesome tasting loaf from target which is $2.00, is hardly a waste of money.  In the last examples, it's a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good.  Also, if I had to locate where food costs add up the most for us - it's very obviously going out to eat.  No question.  So options like frozen pizza and microwave meals make sense (in moderation).  These changes do save me money, but they also add balance.   

At the end of the day - the ideal would be perfectly prepared meals from all-natural, scratch made ingredients all the time.  I can't say I wouldn't want this, but the reality is it takes time.  Time away from other goals and priorities (such as getting another degree, and having a successful career, which are no less important and in some ways more urgent at this juncture in my life).  So I share this because, I imagine I'm not the only one who has to balance a variety of goals in their life, and hope it gives you some food for thought (har har) about where you can make changes to increase balance as well as save money.