If you’re looking for a simple way to save money while eating a healthy, real food diet, I thought you would be inspired by this comment left this week by Sile. Once she read my Eat Out Less post, this is what she had to say:
We didn’t eat out for the entire month of October. My husband thought it was to save money. While that was half my goal, the other half was to give him a taste of REAL food without the distraction of all the horrid stuff you can get from restaurants.
I will admit to having cravings for burgers and fries. However, I soon found that making a meatloaf and baking some potatoes fulfilled the craving! (and meatloaf freezes great even after cooking!) Just one month out and I really don’t miss eating out. Sure, cooking everything from scratch at home is more work, but I’ve been endeavoring to do extra cooking on the weekends to alleviate some stress (since I’m still working until the babies start coming). Mostly it’s just been getting breakfast food cooked and frozen (mostly whole wheat carrot waffles), but at least I don’t have to rush to make us a breakfast in the morning. It’s great that my husband hasn’t even reached for cereal in a long time. He was such a cereal junkie. One more thing to cross off my ‘let’s not buy that anymore’ list.
But I’m rambling. Not eating out = saving money + eating better!
I love this! Thank you Sile for sharing your experience with this, and kudos to you for taking on (and sticking with!) the challenge of not eating out during the entire month of October!
Homemade Pizza saves money, tastes incredible, and is much healthier!
How often do you eat out? What challenges you most when it comes to eating out (or rather, eating in?!)
Fabulous!
We don’t eat out very often. Mostly beacasue we can’t afford to, otherwise I’d love to do it about once a week. To our fave little pub that has the most yummiest snitzel night on a friday night with AYCE veg and salad bar. Oh and don’t forget the awesome meat tray raffle!
But really we are lucky if we ate out on average of one a month. Some months we eat out every fortnight, but then we won’t go out for months on end. It just depends on the budget.
I know what Sile means when she says about tasting real food. We do tend to eat out a bit when we go away on holiday. We do get sick of not having vegies, of the fried food and the blandness mostly. But with our new caravan coming and buying a thermal cooker I’ll be cooking most of out meals when we are away.
Thought you and your reader’s might be interested in this! Short and sweet deal!
http://homemakerhow-tos.blogspot.com/2012/11/nutiva-coconut-oil.html
Twice a month. Usually after church on sunday when Iam not working. Then go we go to the grocery store and home for the rest of the day.
We still eat out once in a while, but I’ve actually found that the more I educate myself about food, what restaurants actually serve you, and focus more on eating natural foods and buying local, the restaurant food loses it’s appeal and in some cases, tastes downright unpleasant.
About once a week. Even with a family of four I’m surprised how expensive it is. Now that my kids have entered the teen years and are always very hungry it’s horrible. I try and explain it to them each time they ask if we can eat out.
At the store you can buy a pack of sub buns for $2.50, meat, cheese, etc. go home and for $7 you have meals for 6 people, instead of one of their favorites (Subway)…eating for $25 as a family of four. They are starting to get it, but sometimes the wait time to get home from a late sports practice wins out on my tired momma body! It’s a process for sure, we all need to not give ourselves a hard time but strive each day to glorify the Lord and do our best.
Agreed!! I enjoy our home cooked scratch meals any day of the week versus eating out. But sometimes the need to let someone else take over the preparations & cleanup becomes priority for my barely hanging in there sanity :) I LOVE your ending to this comment :) sometimes it’s about being thankful I’ve got the extra cash to buy those subs! -or, whatever.
We very seldom eat out. I think the last time was in May. Since eating my home made food the stuff from fast food taste nasty. I can’t believe I use to be hooked on the fast food places.
We used to never eat out and then we became empty nesters and we have a lot of disposable income because all the kids are grown. We occasionally eat fast food breakfasts but mostly we eat at a family owned place that makes all their food from scratch. I know they do not use all the real food ingredients that I would but their food is as real as you can get away from home. We are loving our freedom and just being flexible without any kids around to worry about or feed anymore. (You never stop worrying about them so that was not entirely true!)
I try to eat in most of the time. We eat out on Birthday’s and considering my sister has 4 kids, plus her and her husband, me and my daughter, that’s plenty of birthdays and plenty of eating out. And plenty of “and’s” :)
We don’t have a specific time we eat out, but we do eat out! And my biggest challenge is that we are in sports and sometimes gone for two meals a day. I do pack a cooler of food, which defiantly helps, but when games are an hour away, and we don’t have ways to heat up leftovers in the car, we end up eating out. We have been inching our way to a whole food diet for about 8 months and we are so close! This one area (and sugar) seems to be what gets us the most.
Kim, Sports kill our family too… At the time when it is most important to eat healthy, nourishing foods, it is most difficult due to time constraints. I would love some help/ motivation in this area.
I homeschool our 4 children (who are amazingly helpful), and I coach a cross country team, and one of my sons plays football. We live out in the country, so when we leave the house, we are usually gone for a LONG time. I find it difficult to do breakfast, school, lunch, and have supper packed and loaded by 1:00.
I suppose cooking in advance would be supremely helpful, but the first step will probably be making us less busy!
Oh my word..we eat out waaay too much. It’s been out of control lately. I’m super picky and specific when grocery shopping, reading labels with a furrowed brow and all. I only buy organic produce and grass-fed beef. However, for some very strange reason, I can mentally justify eating out as long as I choose “better options”. It’s mind boggling, isn’t it?! Especially considering we have two small children. One week, I figured they ate out almost EVERY meal. Talk about Terrible Mother of the Year Award. But God gives grace to us mommas. So thankful for that. He’s also given me wisdom and an interest in health and nutrition, of which I’m not using properly. I need to take His grace and get to work!
My main reason for eating out is laziness, really. Every mom is tired at the end of the day, so I can’t use that excuse. We rarely ever ate out growing up, so it still feels like a treat to me when we go out, and that’s also part of it. It’s just fun. But I can tell my body is feeling it’s ill effects.
And really, we don’t have the income to be eating out so much.
Meal planning and then grocery shopping is for some reason so overwhelming to me. I think because the two times I’ve tried it, it took hours or so it seemed. Again, laziness. Not trying to beat myself up; just being honest. Feels good to let it all out.
Anyway, your comment section is probably not the place to do that! =) Sorry for the novel! But thank you so much for all your inspiring and encouraging posts toward healthy living!
Kari,
I was wondering the same thing. I am so careful at home but can totally justify eating out because its our entertainment. Like you we did nott get to eat out as kids except for “special” occasions. Once a year we would go into the city for school clothes shopping and we got fast food lunch that day. That’s the only time we ate out when I was a child and that day each year was so special to my sister and myself. So I wonder if we can’t break the habit due to that? I admit I’m to lazy at times to and just feel like after all I do I “deserve” it. Bad habits I know but one small step at a time.
have a suggestion to help you. If you come up with 4 weeks of menus and grocery lists you van just rotate them. It is no big deal to repeat the same menu every 4 weeks!
Your meals do not need to be complicated and you do not need to cook every meal. Children do not mind sandwiches for lunch and you could even start with some of the healthier cereals for breakfasts.
It will get easier once you get started. You can do it!
My husband and I eat out way too much! Nearly all of our entertainment/fun money each month is reallocated into eating out. I feel like we’re constantly in either hardcore cook-at-home mode, or we go on an eating out binge. We usually go out for lunch on Sundays with friends & family but we’re working on cutting out all other eating out. We definitely eat more & lower quality food when we go out, which is not helping my efforts for my husband and I to get into better shape!
It’s helping now that my son is getting to the age where we would need to buy him a kids meal — i’m a frugal person and it kills me to have to spend and extra $5 or so on a meal for him too.
We really do the best when I take time out the week before and plan out meals for the next week. Meal planning is a huge money saver and also helps me keep on track for cooking at home most nights.
As a Gluten free/dairy free family we hardly EVER eat out! It’s better for us to eat at home rather than spend $ to get sick at a restaurant.
We are dating again after 22 years of marriage so we eat out every week now. We try to stick to places with healthier, organic, whole foods. A little more expensive, but we share, wich cuts the cost.
My husband’s lunches! He eats out frequently while at work because I so strongly dislike packing lunches!
I don’t mind packing lunches but I despise cleaning the containers when he gets home!! Like, ugh!! One more thing to add to cleaning up on top of dinner dishes & everything else! And it’s just the last dang straw lol. I use all glass or reusable containers…I could save myself some grief if I would use the tossable ziplock baggies & paper bags but it has always made me feel guilty. But I imagine more waste goes into purchased lunches anyway….
I feel your pain! My husband has a tendency to forget them at work for a few days and then they look like a science project by the time he brings them home!
We really enjoy eating out and don’t do it as often as we used to (before we had kids!) but we still do more often than we probably should health-wise and budget-wise.
This may sound funny but one of my biggest obstacles is when the kitchen isn’t clean. If I haven’t gotten around to cleaning up or if I haven’t cleaned as I go I tend to look at all the work I have to do BEFORE I even start cooking and want to just order a pizza.
I’m with you. How dare our kitchens not be self-cleaning by this point! ;)
It is kind of annoying to get home after a long day at work and have to clean the kitchen before I can start preparing the evening meal, and we’re already crazy hungry.
Wow! I saw this this morning (finally I’m caught up with the blog! yay!) and it floored me! ^_^ Holy mackerel! Thanks for showcasing my comment!
I did a whirlwind of cooking yesterday and have two casseroles in the fridge for the week, plus a loaf of bread, 12 rolls to go with the soup I made for the week’s lunches, some whole wheat oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and vanilla muffins.
I had a big list of stuff to accomplish over the weekend, but it never all gets done. But I’m always grateful for what does get done because it makes the week so much easier!
Oh, another thing that we do in my house is I have my husband plan, prepare and cook one dinner a week. He’s not a very experienced cook, and there is often a great deal of flailing in the kitchen (“Honey, where do you keep…?” “Does this look right to you?” etc) when he’s doing it. I have him stick with very basic recipes for the most part (he has me check them to make sure they fit within the realm of “real food” and that we have all the ingredients in the house), and so far everything he has made has been good.
He’s also really happy when I declare something he’s made is yummy. :)
I can’t wait until we buy a grill next year so I can have him do more than one night a week. ;)
We rarely eat out….usually just once a month for date night or other special occasion. I just feel that it is cheaper, healthier, and tastes better to eat at home.
We get paid twice a month and I do menu planning twice a month…so there is always adequate food in the house to make something yummy!