Does no-one else find most restaurant food disgusting?
I can't cook, but my wife makes simple meals that are more consistent and better tasting than when I have eaten out. Perhaps related, she likes restaurants better than I.
This thread is figuratively making me nauseous!
Maybe not eat out at crappy restaurants? ;)
I LOVE eating out, but we try to keep it down to once or twice a week just because it's really not good for us, and it is so expensive... I mean even getting a burger and fries for $5 - I could make enough to serve 4-5 people the same thing for that much! We don't do sushi at home since we tend to love the sashimi more than the rice part and there are several fish places that we are addicted to, and we also love (unfortunately) some of the fried stuff, and I refuse to buy a deep fryer since that's already bad enough that we go out to eat for that every once in a while. For us, eating out has nothing to do with socializing with friends, and everything to do with the fact that we just love food - and spending time with each other... so it's been a bit easier for us to cut back on eating out since it doesn't hurt our social life.
Lately what we've been doing for hanging out with friends is having a movie night - and the food is cooked (by me) to go with the theme of the movie. We've been on an Italian kick since we were going through the Godfather movies and then jumped to Goodfellas, so there's been lots of meatballs, ziti, lasagna, and pizza, but the really cool thing is that now I have excellent, crowd-tested recipes for all of those dishes. I will never order pizza again! :D
I eat out for lunch maybe once a quarter if that. The husband used to eat out 3-5 times a week for lunch, but he's gotten much better at packing a lunch now. It's usually a sandwich and several pieces of fruit, but we'll throw in avocados, carrots, etc.. depending on what we bought that week. Although lately it's been leftover lasagna and this week will be from scratch tuna noodle casserole. I make extra large meals when I cook, and then we eat on it for almost the whole week. And no, we don't get tired of things - if we did, I'd just freeze half of it and thaw it out for another week. :)
I have no idea how much counter space and cleaning trouble those breakfast sandwich makers take, but we make our own breakfast sandwiches using english muffins, and use a coffee mug to cook the egg (spray a little oil inside, crack egg, scramble, cook around 1-2 minutes, and you have a perfectly round egg, add shredded cheese while cooking, or a slice of cheese to the sandwich - we call them "eggy muffins") and we don't have to have another unitasker sitting on our countertop.
I also love taking salads. I do a bag of mixed lettuce/spinach, add a container of freshly diced tomatoes and some shredded cheese, and usually throw in some fake crabmeat for protein (or a small can of chicken meat) with some creamy salad dressing. I toast my own croutons from stale bread and a little butter and garlic powder and it's better than that premade stuff, but you can also add in all of that TO the premade salad bag, and come out with a really filling lunch.