The purpose of this cooking blog was to force me to try new foods and to expand my cooking skills beyond the 10 or so dishes that I had mastered in the past. The other reason was to save money. Although I haven’t blogged about it much, I was adding up the cost of dinner this evening: 1 lb of chicken, 7 dollars and one bunch of asparagus that I got on sale for 3 dollars (we used olive oil, lemon juice and greek style seasoning on the chicken and steamed the asparagus and added olive oil, balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese if you were curious).
My husband and I are enjoying a tasty grilled chicken and asparagus dinner for just under 10 dollars. If we were eating at a restaurant this dinner would be well over 60 dollars plus. Heck (I am from Utah, we use the word heck in place of the “other word”) dinner at McDonald’s costs us more than 10 dollars and we had a friend over that we fed also. It sometimes blows my mind how much better we eat at home. The excuse for eating out for years was a lack of time, but when it comes down to it, eating out takes just as much time if not more.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a delicious dinner out. I am still improving my cooking skills (seriously wanting to take some gourmet cooking lessons after Christmas), but there are many better cooks out there, and a lot of them run delicious restaurants. The money we have saved between eating at home and my lunches at work consisting of leftovers is well over 500 hundred dollars a month. It sounds crazy! It is true, and we feel so much healthier for it. When we ate out I always wanted the most unhealthy item on the menu, at home we actually use up fresh veggies and fruit before they go bad.
