Oh, man, I used to have the same problem, and I feel you.
Thing that worked for me when I was in proximity of restaurants: identify the ones you actually like instead of the ones you go to because you're hungry and it's convenient (the souvlaki place with the best tzatziki EVAR, omg), and make actual plans to go to those places with a friend (because, let's face it: 10$ for dinner is kinda pricy if you go every day, 10$ for a two-hour chat with a good friend over food is not terrible... and it restricts the spending to times when you want to see people and have time to hang out).
Thing that forced me to figure out the next tips I'm gonna give: I moved to the country. The nearest (shitty) restaurant is a 20-minute drive away, NO ONE does delivery, and the nearest GOOD restaurant is a half-hour drive away, so meals out happen every few months and need to be planned. To deal:
- GOOD freezer meals. I batch-cook the casseroles my family likes (lasagna, veggie-heavy shephard's pie, fried rice, tofu curry) into either foil or glass containers and freeze. Get home at 6 and want dinner in an hour and don't wanna cook? Set the oven, pop in a dish, go do something else, come back in an hour to cooked food. The trick to this is that it does need to be a complete meal, otherwise you have to prep veggies and it seems like so much woooork and then take-out happens.
- Pizza cravings = frozen pizza instead of take-out = MAKE THEM AT HOME. I recommend the no-knead pizza dough (google the recipe, or check out the book from the library, but this variation works for me:
http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/10/lazy-pizza-dough-favorite-margarita-pizza/). Make as much of the dough as you can store in your freezer, roll them all out on pans or boards, add tomato, cheese, and whatever else you want, and freeze (and then wrap in foil). Last time I made this, I used part of the 50lb bag of flour I bought, cheese on sale (though I'm Canadian, it's still expensive), 2 #10 cans of tomatoes, some spices, and added tpppings to a few (my husband likes pineapple on pizza, and my toddler likes broccoli.). The dough was dead easy to make and took 5 minutes, prepping the 15 pizzas I made at once took about 45 minutes, wrapping up the frozen pizzas took up maybe another 10, and that's 15 meals that cost us approximately 1.25$ each and 14 evenings of dinners with zero prep work on the night of.
- Leftovers that can be adapted. I get SO BORED eating the same thing every night, but a roast chicken that turns into chicken fried rice, chicken stir-fry, and a chicken-and-cream pasta sauce? That I can deal with. While I don't think it lives up to it's name, Jamie Oliver's Save With Jamie has a bunch of really good suggestions for adapting leftovers into really good DIFFERENT meals.
- Might sound obvious, but: healthy snack at 4 pm means you're not starving when you go by the fast food places on the way home, means you're more likely to wait until you're home to eat.
