Eating in vs eating out

Debt Hater and Fabulously Broke recently blogged about the costs of cooking at home versus eating out every meal. Honestly, I think eating out every day would be bliss – but it’s a luxury FB says gets old, fast, and sometimes you just want a simple basic meal instead of heavy, restaurant fare. Something I can totally understand.

We spend around $120 a week on groceries for the two of us. Sometimes it’s more, especially when we get lots of fruit and veg. (This also usually includes bits and bobs like cleaning products and toilet paper). I have to admit, we’re usually out of food by the Saturday and eat breakfast and lunch out. But the $120, by and large, covers most of all our basic meals.

If we were to eat out three times a day, it would cost us $294. That’s cutting it really low, too – I’m talking a pie or roll from the bakery for breakfast, and an average food court/fast food meal for lunch and dinner. It would probably also be enough for sushi, a salad or something similar at that price.

Breakfasts – 14 x $3  ($42)
Lunches – 14 x $9 ($126)
Dinners – 14 x $9 ($126)

Ouch! Dinners alone would be the equivalent of our weekly shop. I’ve thought about this topic a lot, but never actually sat down to crunch the numbers. Looks like it’s definitely worth it for us to cook and eat at home.

(Just as a side thought: why are all the quintessentially NZ foods so greasy and fatty? Fish and chips, pies, sausage rolls…)

Photo / midorisyu

Pantry staples

Believe it or not, it wasn’t until I’d been living away from home a couple of years that I started to stock my kitchen cupboards with things like flour, rice and stock. I pretty much lived off pasta and strirfrys and as for baking? Nuh uh. The one time I ever tried to make a cake, I managed to produce this beautiful tri-coloured marble cake – rock hard on the outside and rubbery on the inside. It was in no way edible, even by the lowest standards. I was SO disappointed; I’d spent over an hour mixing ingredients and painstakingly layering the colours. Sigh.

Now, at least, I can manage super basic cakes/muffins/biscuits. And we now have staples on hand which means if we haven’t planned out a specific meal, chances are we’ll still be able to whip up something for dinner. Not like the good old days…

On any given week, you’ll pretty much find in our cupboards:
-rice
- pasta
- beef and chicken stock
- flour
- sugar
- tomatoes
- corn
- eggs
- onions
- soy sauce
- chili powder
- curry powder
…and potatoes. It may be the poor man’s food, but I can’t get enough of them! Fries, chips, roasted, mashed, boiled, hash browns…I love them in all their varieties.

We’re also working on expanding our spice collection (currently stands at less than 10, due to the fact each jar costs almost $5. We picked a buy-one-get-one-free voucher from one of those instore demonstrators last week though, which was neat).

Am I missing anything? Should I be buying other things that I just never realised I can’t live without?

Photo / foooey

The grocery game

Personally, though I’ve done virtually no travelling – and certainly not on my own dollar – I think food in Auckland is somewhat overpriced.

Let’s do a comparison, shall we? Worldwide readers, feel free to chime in!

(I’m aiming for budget brands/lowest sale prices here; bread, for example, can run up to almost $5 a loaf, and chicken up to over $20 a kilo)

2 litres of milk – $3.20
Cheapest loaf of bread – $1.40
Boneless chicken breast (with skin on) – $9.99 kg, at the lowest
Cucumber – 99c in summer, 2.99 in winter
Kelloggs cornflakes - $2.99 for 500g, on sale
Tomatoes – around $1.99 kg in summer, up to double or more in winter
Potatoes – $1.99 kg, although we sometimes buy in bulk which is slightly cheaper
Cabbage – $1.49
Bananas – $2.50 a kg
Beef mince – $5.99 kg, at the lowest – up to a ridiculous $13.99 sometimes at the supermarket for the premium stuff
Cheese – between $8 and 10 a kg, at the moment?
Muesli bars – varies by brand, between $2.50 and $3.50 at the lowest for a 6pack
2 litres of ice cream – $3.50, at the lowest
1.5kg flour – $2.50
1 kg sugar – $2
Eggs – we usually get a 20 tray for $5
Pasta 500g – $1.10
Pasta sauce – $2.99 for 700g (cheap stuff) or $3.50 for 500g (better stuff, on special)

T’s birthday

In our years together, T has had a string of disappointing birthdays.

The first was terrible – probably the worst. He was in a car accident the night before (thankfully no one was hurt). But he was uninsured, and got completely screwed over by the other party’s company, despite not being at fault. Then the next year he was sent out of town for work, so we weren’t even in the same city. He did, however, spend something like $100 at a bar. And finally last year we had drinks at home, ending in heinous flatmate having a bustup with his crazy girlfriend and ordering her out of the house, only to have her storm through and throw a rock through his back windscreen.

Nothing spectacular this year either (cheers, recession ) but at least it wasn’t disastrous. I left uni early, getting a ride home with a classmate, got home shortly after lunch, and we drove over to his sister’s for a visit. She actually shares the same birthday as him, but she’s 5 years older! I felt bad that we didn’t get her a present, but we ended up buying her cigarettes which she was desperately in need of. Damn smokers.

Then we debated back and forth about what to do – the day started off with torrential rain, but eased up and got sunny later on. But it was still too cold to warrant doing anything outdoors…

We settled on going out to a nice dinner at the Angus Steakhouse which boasts the biggest steaks in town – and they are not lying!

They were huge, massive, enormous! I got through half of mine, with a little help from him, and he managed about a quarter of his.

They even have cute menus with a picture of a cow, telling you where each type of cut comes from on the animal. (Sorry vegetarians!)

And the salad bar was to die for. All you can eat, with pastas, potatoes, rices, regular caesars and coleslaws and even a couscous type thing which was divine.I’m wishing I’d taken photos… but at least I got a picture of our steaks. And that’s after we’d eaten our fill; what’s in the shot is what we took home in our doggy bags.

His leftovers...

.. and my leftover

So although I didn’t get him anything, I (obviously) paid for our meals – $32 for any steak, plus uinlimited salad – and $20 for him to spend on himself. A nice, quiet and uneventful birthday. That, and his friends came around on the Friday for the traditional beer jug – or boot, in this case. Observe…

The beer boot, warming up in the hot water cupboard and waiting for the foam to settle

I’m really not down with the 21st traditions, having been raised by typical Asians, so all this kinda shiz seems silly to me, but I just go along with it! I’m just grateful nobody expected me to drink any beer on my 21st birthday *shudder*

Dinner

Surf, turf, potato salad and chunky, cheesy bread. With my steak cut up into bite sized pieces, just for me. Like a baby. (I’m such a child when it comes to eating prawns, ribs, burgers, steak, it’s not funny). And a king size block of white chocolate to pick at for dessert. *contented sigh*

Lunches at work – to bring, or to buy?

Always the Planner and Broke Grad Student recently posted about bringing your own lunch vs buying it.

I bring my lunch every single day. Occasionally I allocate myself $10 for one lunch out (while I worked fulltime over the summer I did that once every couple of weeks, and I usually went to Revive and used one of their vouchers which they send out in their weekly e-newsletter). I usually have something like pasta, sandwiches, salad, leftovers, fried rice or soup, along with fruit, a muesli bar and crackers/cookies/my own baking. Yeah, it gets repetitive, but for as long as I can remember I’ve never really had exciting lunches. For most of primary school I had tuna sandwiches (I don’t know how I did it) and after I first moved out and was living on a shoestring, I ate jam sandwiches for months on end (can’t stand the stuff now!) So as long as I rotate the main component every so often, it works for me.

It doesn’t take me that long to make my lunch – just a few minutes the previous night most of the time. Eating out takes time. You have to leave the building, decide what you want, walk there, order and wait for your food. THEN you get to eat it. Places like Subway and restaurants with ready made food, that’s not an issue, but if you go to a food court or something you could be waiting for a good 15 minutes. That’s a pretty hefty chunk of time! I only have a half hour for lunch, although nobody is too strict about that. By the time I get my food and walk back to the office, my lunch break’s pretty much over. And sometimes work is just too busy to take any time to go out. What then?

Luckily, most of my coworkers bring their lunch. A few gather everyday at noon in the lunchroom, without fail. Others eat at their desks. (I’m a desk eater!) Like ATP, most people at work  socialise in passing – in the hallways, in the lift, while making tea or by the water cooler. So I don’t feel ostracised for bringing in food.

I’m also a person who gets kind of paralysed by choice. I’ve gotten even worse of late, because eating out used to be a big treat when I was little. We rarely ever ate Wendys, Subway, BK, KFC, or imitation butter chicken/chow mein, etc. It’s not that I’ve overloaded on any of those things – they’re still expensive, after all! – but now I’ve eaten all of them enough to no longer be impressed. Very little appeals to me anymore; in fact when BF and I are looking for a quick dinner, it inevitably turns into a marathon quest because nothing looks or sounds especially good to us. It’s the same with lunches in town – they’re incredibly overpriced, and too often don’t even taste good.

Mac and cheese – universally loved?

I read an article in Canvas, cribbed from Psychology Today, a while ago about the strange eating habits people have. Nearly 20 per cent of people are repelled by raw tomatoes. Nearly the same amount just don’t like trying new foods, and 60 per cent of us eat just about the same thing for breakfast every day. I know I do! I used to eat cereal and toast when I was young. Then I used to just eat toast, then I switched to cereal. This year has been bitterly cold though and I’ve switched to porridge just because I don’t want to be pouring icy cold milk down my throat first thing when I get up. (Yes, I actually kind of like porridge, loaded with brown sugar).

I get really, insanely strong food cravings, and sometimes I can literally smell and taste whatever it is I want. Sometimes it’s sweet, like donuts or cheesecake or cookies. Sometimes it’s hearty, like pasta or stew. Sometimes it’s just plain trashy, like food court fried rice or butter chicken. It’s hardly ever something that’s really good for me, like sushi or salad (although I do enjoy both of those). There are all kinds of theories about food cravings, like craving a certain kind of flavour = lack of this or that nutrient in your diet. But this article reckoned cravings have more to do with culture and childhood than anything else.

There’s a lot of things I never ate growing up, and I just don’t see the appeal now. Like rice pudding, Dr Pepper, jerky, pork belly, crackling, jelly and lollies. (Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate in virtually all its incarnations. But I just don’t like lollies much; I think it’s the super plasticky, fake texture. I do, however, quite like sour lolllies on occasion don’t ask me why). And seriously, something as wobbly as jelly just shouldn’t be consumed!

Apparently, foods that are almost universally liked are fried chicken, fries, chocolate, cookies and packet mac and cheese – apparently people seem to respond to the orange colour, ha. Jeepers. Not one remotely healthy thing on that list!

We shopped at Countdown this week, and had to get things like batteries, a multiplug board and mop in addition to groceries. But with the help of my Visa Rewards Card (which is accepted there) we got out spending $113 out of pocket. Of course, I got home and realised I forgot to get any fruit, but we have some fruit salad somewhere in the pantry.

Although Countdown is pricier than PnS, it also has some really good specials from time to time. EG:

Cheese – 500g Anchor, 4.99. Saved 4.10 (finally prices are starting to come back down!)
Griffins malt/wine/arrowroot biscuits – 2 for $3.50 (except you always have to buy both to get the discounted price, which can be a pain)
Meadowlea margarine – 2 for $5. Saved 2.50
Watties canned cooking sauces – 2 for $4.60. Saved 1.80
Leaning Tower pizzas – 2.99 ea. Saved 2.70

And CD are usually pretty good about scanning through the correct prices, too.

My first go at baking cookies…

Damn you BF, for lying to me. You said cookies were the easiest thing in the world to make!

We squeaked in at just under $120 for groceries this week. Hurrah!

So it’s not going to be a particularly exciting or healthy week. Which is just as well, as it’s going to be a busy and stressful one, and the easier the dinners are to throw together, the better.

Sunday: Rolls with chicken and salad
Monday: Chicken kiev
Tuesday: Pork belly and fried cabbage
Wednesday: Nuggets and chips
Thursday: Shepherd’s pie
Friday: Nuggets and mashed potato
Saturday: Fried rice

Yes, I still love chicken nuggets and so does BF. Don’t judge…