<p>How many brews have you had, Brew? Whewww!</p>
<p>^??? What the hell?</p>
<p>Well, now you have edited all your typos…your post was a mess before! :)</p>
<p>I don’t consider eating with my parents and me at home social- and when I have people over, I want to be with them, not slaving in the kitchen. That’s not to say I never have people over, but it’s usually for something easy, and not of the kind you’d get at a nice restaurant.</p>
<p>I don’t like to spend the whole day pre preparing a meal for when people come over either. Either way the time gets expended, whether the guests are present or not.</p>
<p>I can’t even fathom the logic that says buying a rotisserie, fondue pot, wok, grill top, crock pot, roaster, smoker, panini grill, and any other device possibly in use at a restaurant could offset the expense of eating out. That doesn’t make sense to me. Never mind the time spent learning how to prepare the dishes.</p>
<p>And I really am curious to find out how RELs family feels about this whole penny pinching never eat out thing. Do you go to a restaurant and gripe the whole time about how much cheaper it would have been at home? If you do, than I’m sure you’re correct in that it couldn’t be considered a social experience.</p>
<p>And regardless of where the food is sourced from, local restaurants are still local businesses with local owners and local workers, who I am supporting. I do go to the farmer’s market but often avoid the local grocery store for its higher costs, something you’ve been griping about for this entire thread. I’m sure buying your meat at walmart really help keep local businesses open.</p>
<p>Try typing with this broken keyboard.</p>
<p>Comes out like…</p>
<p>Tery typing with this berokern keryboaerdf.</p>
<p>I can’t even fathom the logic that says buying a rotisserie, fondue pot, wok, grill top, crock pot, roaster, smoker, panini grill, and any other device possibly in use at a restaurant could offset the expense of eating out. That doesn’t make sense to me. Never mind the time spent learning how to prepare the dishes.</p>
<p>Well, use some good logic! A crock pot, sixty dollars, or one dinner at a restaurant for $60.00. In ten years, you would have saved thousands of dollars by cooking at home. I, on the contrary, can’t fathom your logic.</p>
<p>I’m sure buying your meat at walmart really help keep local businesses open.</p>
<p>Well, that cow down the line came from some farmer here in the US; that farmer received my money to keep his farm running.</p>
<p>I don’t consider eating with my parents and me at home social</p>
<p>Well, what a shame! Some of the best discussions I have ever had were the ones around the dinner table at home. How sad that you have to fork out $60 to have social time with your parents.</p>
<p>I guess I just have to make y’all feel bad now…</p>
<p>Yes, I own every kitchen implement imaginable, except for a can opener. Yes, I make huge meals from scratch for my friends on a regular basis. When I have my friends over for meals, I do spend all day cooking - or at least half the day, because I’m horrifically efficient in the kitchen. (I once made two baked zitis, one risotto torta, brownies, panzanella, home-made salsa, and a few other things in three and a half hours flat.) </p>
<p>Yet, to say that this really saves me money is ridiculous. My biggest source of discretionary spending is food for my friends. Sure, I’ve thrown cocktail parties for 20 people for about $80 (thank you, Trader Joe’s), but that’s more expensive than, say, going out to a bar and having everyone pick up their own tab… at least from my perspective. Home-made souffles run me at about $10 per batch, mostly because I have to get good chocolate shipped in- and vanilla beans aren’t cheap. Ditto for chocolate bread with macademia nuts and cream cheese.</p>
<p>For me to prepare the meal I had last night at a a local italian restaurant at my house it would probably cost 50K. Instead we split a check of 42.00 after a 25% tip between 4 people, and all took home doggy bags that we can eat later on. </p>
<p>That sounds a little but crazy, but it is true. It also would have taken all day long. The meal was homemade sourdough bread, brick oven wood fired pizza (this is the big expense, i would have to knock out a wall to put a wood burning stove into my kitchen), homemade linguine in a white wine shellfish sauce of some kind, panini sandwich, and some sort of tuscan inspired veal dish. it is not worth it me to attempt to make any of these dishes.</p>
<p>So ariesathena, do you also feed home-cooking-deprived W&L freshmen who love Italian food and are happy to do the dishes?</p>
<p>Esquette -
I’m out on the West Coast for a while; if/when I’m in VA, I’ll be happy to adopt a hungry freshman. If no one minds vegetarian, I’m pretty good with salad, French bread, elephant garlic roasted in olive oil, and an eggplant/mushroom risotto torta. :)</p>
<p>~Aries, the Anti-Atkins</p>
<p>REL does not value his time it seems.</p>
<p>Let’s do some math on buying good quality equipment (and by the way, a crock pot is not really a cooking device, it’s a reheating device, and not something I need to spend $60 when I don’t eat leftovers and have a stove already)</p>
<p>Convection Rotisserie oven- $430
panini press- $100
wok- $150-$200
smoker- $450
grill top pizza stone for that wood fired experience- $100
grill- $300</p>
<p>Sorry, I think I’ll take my $1580 and eat out twenty six times instead- during which meals I could have any variety of the food I could have made with that equipment. And since I priced out good quality equipment, it cost more; I’m sure you’re going to tell me a wok from walmart would work, but I’m reasonably sure the caphalon platinum would last a good deal longer.</p>
<p>and by the way, your logic that buying your meat at walmart supports some farmer somewhere makes me laugh- you really think that a conglomerate like walmart gets its meat from farmer joe down the street? No, like McDonalds, the meat comes from huge farms with thousands of cattle for the sole purpose of becoming that nitrate filled steak you paid $2 a pound for. There’s no way it would be so cheap if it was small scale. At least when I pay a restaurant I’m directly giving the profits to a local restauranteur- not the walmart family.</p>
<p>Agreed. I shudder to think that, instead of all of my kitchen stuff, I could have a Manolo collection that would make Carrie Bradshaw drool. </p>
<p>Every cheap thing that you buy either breaks or doesn’t cook/chop/saute/grill food well, so it’s not really worth it. I buy most of my stuff at outlets, on sale, but there’s the time/gas factor of making those trips to get $150 saute pans for a mere $40. </p>
<p>But, well, I’m a gourmand and I love to cook, so the cost of my kitchen stuff is my entertainment. I spend money there that I don’t spend on movies or bars or clubbing.</p>
<p>Wow, I haven’t read through this entire thread, just here and there, but I think you guys are really piling on! </p>
<p>It’s not true that you need a huge, expensive kitchen to prepare tasty meals. And to eat nutritious meals you don’t need time–only a crockpot and a wok–good ones available for under $50 each.</p>
<p>I can’t believe how much money some of you guys spend eating out! Hmm–I hope this is not the same crowd that complains when you get your EFC??</p>
<p>My parents have never complained, but setting limits to spending money on college that the government doesn’t necessarily agree with is legitimate and an EFC not in line with your personal budget is more cause for complaint than going out to eat when you don’t have time or don’t want to cook…</p>
<p>I went on vacation with 11 other people back in may for 1 week, and we ate out for dinner two evenings and cooked at our rental house all of the other days. During the course of the week we spent $1200 on food for our house. That’s right, $1200 for one week for 12 people. (that’s including 5 dinners, 6 lunches, 6 breakfasts. and some random snacks… alcohol not included) I have never eaten so good in my life. We broke into groups and cooked full four course meals every night for dinner, had wonderful wine/champagne with every meal, etc. We had thai food night, vietnamese night, italian night, mexican night, and seafood night. Lunches consisted of hotdogs/hamburgers/grilled cheese/pb&j. I would say on average it took each group approximately 3 hours to prepare their meal for the group. It would have been much easier for all of us to go out to resteraunts and enjoy our vacation however we decided we could eat a lot better for a lot less money if we cooked those specific meals at our house and eat them together as a group at the kitchen table. Could we have eaten cheaper at resteraunts? Certainly - we did on the two nights we ate out which came to about $8/person. (OBX isn’t the cheapest place on earth to eat out) Could we have eaten the same food cheaper at resteraunts? Heck no. </p>
<p>My point is that even cooking at home can be more expensive than eating out - it just depends on what you are cooking. Regardless, it’s nobodys business how someone spends their money or what they are spending it on. Everyone can come up with things that they would consider to be a waste of money. REL says food, I say Cable TV… but If I want to spend 5 bucks eating out with my friends on Friday nights, then I am going to do that. If you want to spend 100 on a nice dinner with friends, then do it… but don’t wine to me when you don’t have enough money to pay your insurance this month. It all comes down to your ability to budget. If you want to pay $50/month on cable TV… then by all means do so, but i’m going to use that $50 to pay for my friday night dinners for 10 weeks ;)</p>
<p>farawayplaces,</p>
<p>I don’t think most of us make it a point of eating out a on a regular basis. But if the bug hits us and we want something we can’t prepare at home we go out and eat out.</p>
<p>Simple as that.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It makes me wonder if you know how shawarma is prepared… Who has a fridge that large in a bloody apartment?</p>
<p>
</p>
<pre><code> Just goes to show that you have no concept of cooking whatsoever. A crock pot is not a reheating device, good Lord, it isn’t a microwave. It is a slow cooker, cooking such dishes as chili, stew, or pot roast. But for garsh sakes, it is not a reheating device.
</code></pre>
<p>Sorry, I think I’ll take my $1580 and eat out twenty six times instead</p>
<p>You’ve got to be kidding me. So, you’re telling me that you will eat only twenty six times in your life? If anything, you are proving my point. You will probably eat thousands of times throughout your lifetime, so going out to eat twenty six times is a better deal than getting a luxury suite of cooking equipment. Well, UVMLauren, I tell you, you have changed my perspective on cooking. I am going to go out to eat twenty six times and have the time of my life. Thanks so much! Amen.</p>
<p>REL: Why do you feel the need to ***** about stuff others do that doesn’t even affect you? There’s no lack of stuff that DOES affect you.</p>