Can our family go without take out, delivery, and restaurants for four weeks? I have no idea. When I asked Bill, he looked at me as ig he thought I needed to be committed to an asylum.
Honestly, we do not eat out as frequently as we once did but there are many nights when my choices are tainted by laziness or when convenience trumps practicality. So, for the next four weeks, our family is adding a new challenge to the Healthy Family Project. We will avoid eating anything not cooked within our home.
Why eat at home?
One of the most obvious reasons to skip the restaurants is the expense. In the last ten years, we have wasted more money on fast food, take out, and restaurants than anything else. Staggers my mind to try to figure the exact amount.
The other reason is about control. If you cannot see your food being prepared, how do you know what is in it? You don’t. How do you know the person preparing the food follows the standards you would have in your own kitchen? You can’t.
“Eat Out at Home” recipes
As a part of this challenge, I am going to share recipes for “out to eat” treats made right within our home. Among the recipes, you can expect The Great White Chicken Pizza, BBQ Pork Carnitas, Spinach-Artichoke Stuffed Chicken Breasts, and more.
Will you accept the Eat Out at Home Challenge?
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We stopped doing any kind of eating food prepared outside our home (eating out, take-out, even deli/bakery food) over a year ago. We kept getting sick, and several times it was definitively traceable to our eating-out food– one incident even leading to my hospitalization and a $4k deductible that we’re still in debt over. The “convenience” just stopped being worth it when I realized that food workers often go to work sick, despite what establishments will tell you when you call and ask about their policies. I stopped even doing deli/bakery items because I personally knew a lady who worked in one and would never call in sick…even when she was dealing with stomach bugs, she’d drag herself to work and infect countless others by preparing their food.
I really don’t miss it (though the kids sometimes do), and we’ve saved lots of money AND some needless sickness.
I am so looking forward to all your recipes. I fall into a slump regulary cooking the same old things all the time. 🙂
You can do it, four weeks is nothing!!
Most of the time it is too expensive for out family of 9 to eat out. Every once and a while we splurge and either go out or grab some take out. The last time (I wasn’t feeling well) my husband went to get take out it cost us almost $50 (never send a hungry husband to pick up food without a list)! We were floored! May not seem like much to others, but to us it is. I hate wasting money. I’ll be following along. I could use some more yummy recipes to serve my family. We’re also trying to be more frugal with our food budget, and trying to stock up our emergency pantry. We just had to do a ‘pantry challenge’ and used up most of our stock, so I’m starting over (you need to rotate anyway, right? Lol).
We made it the whole month of January without eating out — but we were on a spending freeze. February hit and we’ve had pizza twice and chinese take out. I’m in and look forward to some new recipes!
We eat out once a week, so about 4 times a month. Not going to take you up on the challenge, but we could do it if we wanted to. We just don’t want to. Four times a month is not really that much. Yes, it is about $150 a month, but that we can afford and keep it to around that amount.