The Common Culinarian

I work in a profession that is notorious for not keeping regular hours. Fortunately, I seem to do pretty well when it comes to managing my time, so I can usually come home and relax a little before going to bed. But that doesn’t mean that I get the joy of exercising my passion frequently because I come home late, or when I get home I’m so mentally drained that  just want to veg out (dear readers, that’s what happened a few months ago when I stopped writing every day–but that’s a different post).

So, sometimes we just go out to eat. But, let me tell you just how expensive that can get. In February we spent nearly $800 on food between groceries and dining out. It was about 50-50 because we hosted a SuperBowl party, otherwise dining out would have killed groceries. March was a little better, but only because we had to exercise some restraint to pay for some of the largesse of February (we bought computers and booked vacation, as well as spent a million dollars on food). This is what prompted me to post about recreating a favorite salad at home.

Other times, we simply buy convenience foods and make something “semi-homemade.” We’ve been doing that a lot this week–Stacie learned how to make a really good pizza dough, but it takes about an hour and a half, which means if we both get home around 5:30, we’re not eating until 7 or later. So, we bought two pizza crusts and a jar of sauce, with some cheese. Cost us about 8 dollars, and we should have gotten 8 meals (2 people, 4 meals each) out of this, and saved us at least an hour and a half (I’m not factoring the time spend making a good sauce, though, which may add more time).

And, on the far end, we just make everything from scratch. This is probably the cheapest option–I spent as much on a bag of flour as I did on the pizza crusts, and I could make 30 or 40 crusts from that flour–but it’s also the most expensive in terms of time. There have been days where I’ve spent hours in the kitchen–first, because I love it, and second, because I needed to between making sauces, baking bread, or whatever, something needed my attention.

Thinking about this makes me realize why cookbooks emphasizing 30 minute meals are so popular–not very many people have the money to go out every night, and not very many people have the time to indulge in a large cooking expedition every night. Furthermore, it seems that the American palate has been conditioned to expect “Wow!” at every meal, or at least something better than bologna and cheese. So, we compromise on cost and time and opt for quick fix dinners. Have you thought about this lately? Is this healthy? Do you really need to have vodka cream pasta each night, or would a simple sandwich with a simple salad suffice?

I’m guessing so, but we don’t want it to suffice. At least we–well, some of us–aren’t eating out at every turn, wasting even more money to save time.