Topic: Opinion
By Christian Science Monitor
By the time he's driven to the farmers market, bought the organic veggies and spent an hour cooking a meal for himself and his wife, Mark Chernesky figures he's spent $30. That's why recently, after fighting rush hour, the Atlanta multimedia coordinator dashed in to Figo, a pasta place, for hand-stuffed ravioli slathered with puttanesca sauce. "I'll get out of here for $17 plus tip," he said. Crunch the numbers, and across America the refrain is the same: Eating out is the new eating in. Even with wages stagnant, time-strapped workers are abandoning the family kitchen in droves.
I call shenanigans on this article. It's a marketing piece for the restaurant industry! If that guy make a special trip for ingredients to cook one meal, then yes, it will cost more than running to his local take-away, but that's a function of his haphazard planning rather than the costs of food. If this guy planned his dinners as carefully as he plans his work projects he'll learn that you can amortize the cost of food the way you capitalize depreciation of fixed assets. Except in this case, the assets are not fixed but they are delicious.
The problem is that if you never cook at home and then make one special meal, you'll think it's expensive because you have to buy all of the food + all the spices. That's expensive; a good bottle of olive oil can set you back $10 at the grocery store, a container of sea salt $5 and one of good pepper another $5, so you think "OMG $20 just to get oil, salt and pepper". But once you do it for a while and have a decently stocked kitchen, it's much cheaper than eating out. No one uses a whole bottle of olive oil or a whole jar of pepper in one meal; the cost of the ingredients are all spread over the number of meals. It is much more eocnomical to eat at home if you're content with simple foods and don't need gold-sprinkled foie gras or panda steaks to be happy.
Further down in the article cited above, we get another justification that if you factor in the cost of your time then spending time cooking just isn't worth it. One guys says "When I add my hourly rate, the time to cook at home, I can instead take my family out to dinner, and it comes out pretty even." That's a specious argument - he's essentially claiming that he is paid his hourly rate every hour of his day, which would mean that a movie will cost him 2x his hourly rate + cost of tickets and popcorn, and reading a magazine will cost him 1/2 hour of his hourly rate + cost of the magazine. I bet he doesn't think about going to the movies or reading a magazine in terms of his hourly rate, then why does he think it applies to cooking a meal for his family?
If someone doesn't like cooking and prefers meals from a restaurant, then they should just own up and say so; there's nothing wrong with that. Why do people need to justify it? It's hardly a sin for which you need to plead indulgence. I don't like to bake and I would no sooner make my own pie crust as knit my own damn socks, but I won't tell you that it's because it costs less to buy a pie crust than baking it once you factor in my hourly rate!
For example, a complete dinner for four:
1.5 lb beefsteak $15.00 (gourmet organic grass-fed)
4 young potatoes $0.60 (from a bag @ $2.50)
1 box mushrooms $2.50
1 med onion $0.50 ($1.00 per lb)
1 head garlic $0.25 (from 4-head sack @ $1.00)
½ stick butter $0.50 (from 4-stick pack @ $4.00)
2 tablespoons flour $0.05 (from 1 lb bag for $2.00)
1 frozen pie crust $1.50 (from 2-pack @ $3.00) Of course I buy frozen. What do I look like, Laura Ingalls?
Pinches salt and pepper $0.02 (from 1 lb sea salt @ $5 and medium jar pepper @ $5)
1 loaf French bread at grocery store bakery $1.00
½ butter, softened, for bread $0.50
a little crushed rosemary to add to butter $0.02
½ gallon ice cream $2.50
1 box seasonal berries $2.00
Wine: $20 (restaurant markup'd make this $40 or more)
Gas for cooking meal $0.02
Actual cost for meal: ~$47
Serves 4 at less than $12 each -
- gourmet beefsteak pie with mushroom and onions
- warm bread with rosemary butter on side
- a glass of wine to go with
- ice cream with berries for afters
This might take 20 minutes prep and 20 minutes bake, plus 20 minutes cleanup = 1 hour that I wasn't going to be paid anyway.
Not expecting company?
½ lb large shrimp $5.00
sprig of dill-weed $0.05
sprig of basil $0.05
pinch salt and pepper $0.02
1 cup cream $0.50
1 cup stock $0.50
2 tablespoon olive oil $0.10
1 tablespoon vinegar $0.10
1 box pasta $0.50
1 bag store salad $1.50
Feeds 2 @ less than $5 per person, sautéed shrimp with herb and cream sauce served over pasta, plus salad with oil and vinegar dressing. Cheaper than any restaurant anywhere.
