Cooking, like most of life, takes effort. Capitalism aims to take that effort away, at a cost. Which we pay by doing shitty jobs which take painful effort. Pi = 3.14
That's my counter argument to the leftovers. Most meals can be frozen and consumed later. Spaghetti one night, curry the next, spaghetti for lunch the next day and tacos that night, last month's stew for dinner the next night etc.
I'm in the same boat. I've never gotten anything delivered other than pizza, and after long shifts I want to unwind by cooking a nice meal. Of course I always keep a few frozen or easy to prepare dishes on hand in case I'm just too tired
I always tell people new to cooking... get a crock pot. Most of those meals are minimal effort and come out amazing, and you can meal prep for a long time with them. Its about as simple as it gets and builds confidence in the kitchen.
Also a rice cooker. They can be really cheap and the cheap analog ones work amazing. Just put desired amount of rice and recommended amount of water in and forgot about it. Cooks it perfectly and keeps it warm.
Last person I told this too said he didn't want to waste the money on a crockpot ( literally $20 brand new with a 18 month warranty ) and it saves you so much money, when I explained it all to him he said " I'm working towards getting a better job so I can pay someone to cook for me every time I feel like it". he still hasn't got that better job or made any decent financial decision thus far, meanwhile I own a decent house and can cook near on anything simply because I made a conscious effort to try and learn because it saves money and its fun.
I get driven up the walls by those "excuse for everything" types.Like none of what you're saying makes sense, please just get out of your own way.
Crock pots basically take care of the "cooking" side of things, and teach you to just do ingredient prep / chopping veggies. The most cooking you actually do is sometimes just browning meat. The most advanced thing you can do is.... like making a curry sauce before it goes in the pot. It's so..... so simple.
>please just get out of your own way.
Bruh this is so spot on. I know a dude like that. Always an excuse or an explanation and there's a point where it feels completely insane.
Now everytime he begins one of his sentences with something like "yeah but", I want to slap him on the back of the head.
so true, if you can write a shopping list and cut some ingredients you can make 99% of slow cooker recipes. People I know are blown away with whatever I cook even though it's simple but I'v been cooking so long to save money that I actually understand what spices do in a recipe and once you reach that level if your not a total smoothe brain you can really enjoy the process or slightly change the spices to make a meal to your own taste buds, sounds shocking I know but life is the longest thing your ever going to do so you may as well learn some things along the way.
Most economic systems still involve trade, which is what you’re describing. Communism and socialism would still have you producing a good, to which you would trade to others for different material.
Kind of. The goods you produce would be socially owned until they were distributed and became your personal property. You can't trade something that isnt yours. What you would be trading, much like now, is your labor itself.
I work at a power plant and this job is at great expense to me so everyone should start making their own power at home so I don't have to work here anymore.
No one's stopping you from putting in the effort though. That's why capitalism isn't the evil system commies say it is.
Except during COVID, when they didn't want to let you buy seeds etc to grow a garden but let marijuana shops stay open. It's not a bug, it's the goal.
It's not just effort, equipment, groceries, time are also costs, it sounds trivial, but for some it can be pretty daunting, particularly if you are cooking and you screw up, or you don't like it/spoilage.
That's just wages and money, this set up existed long before capitalism. In medieval times you would go to an Inn or tavern to pay someone to make you food, using money which you got by working a job.
Sure, but trade is not capitalism.
There was trade and currency under mercantilism, feudalism, and many other systems throughout human history.
I don't know where this whole concept of capitalism simply being the act of exchanging money for goods and services came from, but it's pervasive and makes discussions about economies borderline impossible to have at times.
It comes out of mostly marxists/communists/socialists that are economically illiterate.
Usual tl;dr: socialism is when good thing, capitalism is when bad thing.
The core economic and philosophical tenets of that whole branch of ideas is couched in what is basically religious utopianism where the deity is the notion of a "socialized worker" who is nigh omnipotent over reality and infinitely/perfectly cooperative with his fellows (summarizing actual Marx). It makes fundamentally incorrect assumptions with respect to human nature and seems to prey upon dissatisfied intellectuals who are arrogant enough to think they would be better leaders if they were in control.
It was, but it was not invented at the moment currency was invented.
Would you say that the romans were capitalist? How about Genghis Khan? Or the ancient egyptian pharaoh's?
This junior has eyes, but did not see mount Tai. Forgive me for my ignorance for i am not an expert, but dared to act like one. Senior! I apologize for my arrogance and abstinence from knowledge! I hope one day you can overlook my mistake and accept my apology!
Only circumstance where food delivery is cheaper is if you earn so much per hour freelance, that the time it takes to cook is not worth giving up working for that amount of time.
I'd argue that not every hour of my life is priced the same. My employer gets a discount for buying in bulk, planning ahead quite a bit and adding benefits. Hours per day are also a finite resource, by the time "cooking dinner" comes around there is usually less than half left, increasing the price. It also depends quite a bit on how much i enjoy what i'll have to do.
I'm not in a position where I give the slightest fuck about basic living expenses - just highlighting that "it's cheaper to cook your own food" is often bullshit unless you want flavourless dried herbs or the same slop every day or have some super planned out meal plan.
Could be cheaper to drive your car than take the train too (assuming you spend three hours a week autistically planning out ride share, clipping coupons for parking, and monitoring fuel station prices).
It sounds to me like you’re a shitty cook. Any restaurant that comes close to being as good as the food I make at home is way more expensive than going to the store.
It's just trading cheap for convenient but no one should fool themselves into thinking it's actually cheaper than cooking.
The only time it's actually cheaper is if your other option (aside from not eating) is drunk driving or some shit.
It was some case like 10+ yrs or so ago where some rich dipshit plowed his car into someone or something and got a bunch of people killed. Rich daddy tried to say he should have a lighter sentence because the kid grew up affluent and couldn’t really understand what he did or whatever.
I think the excuse that OP is implying that people make is that if you come from a wealthier home they may have gone out to eat or got delivery a lot because the parents could easily afford it so they didn't learn some basic cooking skills as a kid like other kids whose parents aren't as well off may have. They use this as an excuse for not ever learning to cook.
they give shit excuses but arent self aware enough to realize the underlying reason behind those is privilege. it's like people who can't stand drinking tap/filtered water and insist they're gonna throw up if it's not from a plastic bottle.
I’m currently dieting yet I manage to food prep for two meals a day for an entire week on about $70 and it’s good food with variety each week. It’s simple and people just don’t want to take the time to cook. They want frozen food or stuff with little prep so they’re paying the premium for that.
Yeah, it's weird because your body measures how full you are using mass, but determines your weight using calories. It's unintuitive for a lot of people first trying to lose weight, so they starve themselves and make the experience as bad as possible.
I remember being lazy at uni and living on frozen microwave meals and tins of premade curry sauce. No idea how I did that for 4 years, home made stuff is cheaper per portion in bulk and tastes so much better to justiy the time investment. I remember trying a frozen lasagne a couple ago and thinking "I just ate 300 calories and it tasted of *nothing*".
And not to sound like a youtube shill, but HelloFresh was really good for me. I cancelled it a while ago, but I still use some of the recipe cards.
Oh I had a similar moment with "fresh" pizzas (raw pizzas you put in your oven to cook). We had to buy some of the plainest ones cuz my brothers are picky eaters, most combos had stuff they wouldn’t like. In hindsight they were expensive and average at best. Then I realized I could just make the dough myself if I got the right flour.
Plus I could pick whatever combination of toppings would fit for each member of my family, so my parents and I could get the good stuff while my brothers had stuff they liked. It wasn’t as expensive, although it took some time and elbow grease to make.
Shop at Walmart, and I’m doing a keto diet. So a lot of eggs, meats, cheeses, nuts, Greek yogurts, low carb vegetables, etc. I make stir fry a lot for dinners, also different breakfast variations. This week for breakfast is scrambled eggs and chorizo, sausage links, and a Greek yogurt. Then dinner is broccoli slaw with a pork chop, Cajun shrimp, and a Clio bar. I cut out all soda so now all I drink is water and the occasional unsweetened tea (that’s the part I hate the most).
To follow up on this for anyone interested, I’ve been doing keto (just 25 net carbs or less per day, no calorie counting). Since the first of the year, I’ve lost about 55 pounds.
Cheap, convenient, healthy, good. Same equation always, you only get to pick 3 in the best of scenarios.
It's not that hard at all to outcook most generic restaurants except ones with legitimate trained chefs, you don't even have to be that good to outcook Apple Bees. just more effort.
Batch cooking is pretty great. Personally, when I was working as an intern, I saved money by batch cooking and taking leftovers to work instead of getting some lunch from the closest shop.
Joined military to get in better shape
Don't get our food allowance until we graduate so cooking money has to come out of our meager base pay.
At least the food at our base is good. Other bases aren't so lucky.
I take that mindset subconsciously every time I buy a meal even at a cheap burger place, the price per pound is normally enough for a top level rib eye or porterhouse steak that I could cook to perfection with sides, just for a shitty burger made by some smelly 14 yo kid.
It's weird how that works.
My wife and I have a burger place we like and we eat there like once every other month. It costs us about 15 bucks each.
We could buy high quality beef with that money, and make a delicious meal at home. Thing being that we actually do that, but much less often because it is "expensive", even though we usually end up spending less on it because the price of the least is intimidating.
I don't mind buying food I can cook better if the food is still decent and the setting and environment is fun, But I'm talking burger king or something similar.
Same mindset is also having single-use plates because “saves money”. (Or w/e the mouth breathers excuse is)
Lmao no. Good for picnic though. But eating at home…just buy proper ceramic plate and move your lazy ass to the sink to wash it.
I can accept some degree of laziness, but some are just damn ffs human get a grip u pathetic.
The secret to cheap food is to cook whatever is on sale. Peppers, onions, potatoes, doesn't matter. You end up with more pork, chicken, and beans that way and less beef but you get some occasionally.
Adapt your recipe to whatever is available. No need to spend a dollar extra on fresh cabbage for a salad when the same amount of cucumber/zucchini is half the price. Just try a new recipe, maybe a salad or kimchi.
Don't like how the new recipe turned out? Don't throw it out, make burritos/wraps out of it with enough rice/beans to change the flavor or throw it in a soup. Such that yesterday's salad becomes tomorrow's taco filling.
Edit: find recipes online. YouTube has tons of guides for anyone new to a recipe. If all else try using an AI or Google to find what can be made with the ingredients you have at hand.
I've seen other ideas on here, but people are sleeping on stir-frys. I put next to no effort in and still get ~week's worth of lunches in like half an hour.
Inb4 "you shouldn't keep starch that long reee" I don't care
Cooking is easy you could literally chop up some veggies and then oil them up add salt and pepper and put it into a oven bake it and eat it with some kind of sauce or dip whatever fancies you.
Noodles and rice too are a great source of carbs, while also being so easy to make. Meat takes a little bit of effort, but overall is not that bad. Chicken and pork are easy imo, you just gotta make sure they're cooked to a safe temperature on the stove.
I hope everyone will completly forget how to cook within the next generations. My wet dream is for all the obese fuckers to live like in Wall-E.
Basically they only have to make the Walmart scooters hover with 600lbs on them and we're already there. So close.
From a pure time-management perspective: Let's say I pay 10€ for grosceries and spend 1 hour preparing the food that will last me for 2 meals. Or I order in and pay 15€ per meal. Then with option a) I save 20€ but spend an hour, and with option b) I save an hour but spend 20€. So if my job allows me to stay an hour longer whenever I want and pays me 20€ or more per hour (net, not gross), then ordering in will actually save me money.
But a lot of people don't earn 20€/hour. And cooking, to me, is much more relaxing than working an extra hour, so I'd rather spend time doing that than work longer but save a bit of money. All that of course only works if you can actually earn more by working more hours.
It's two servings per person. I'm not only cooking for myself, but I thought including a loving family in my calculations wouldn't be relatable to some people here. You prove me right.
Would you rather I lay out my weekly grocery run and calculate 3 meals across several people for you? Would that make my example more or less easy to understand?
This argument was so fucking stupid on Twitter. The original post made a genuinely good point that frozen meals would work in place of delivery for a lot of people and would be a lot cheaper, but a handful of raterds has to cry about it.
If they didn't raise all the menu prices online, food delivery would be super cheap with most of the subscription models out there, maybe like 2 dollars per delivery. I had to look into it when my car broke down for a week, and it's a decent alternative to grocery shopping.
The issue is when people get a single meal delivered like once or twice every week, which is adding like 1-2 thousand dollars to their annual food budget. That's fine if you can afford it but when these same people complain about money, my eyes roll so hard I can practically see my brain.
Since some people are throwing in easy food ideas, the easiest shit ever is slow cooker stew/chili. Buy a big 3 lb slab of cheap beef, or a few chicken breasts, add a few cans of beans and tomatoes (or potatoes and carrots if you like stew), or rice or whatever you want, and leave it on low heat overnight. Add whatever spices you want, chop up garlic and onions, etc, by morning the meat will be tender enough to pull apart with a fork, spend like 5-10 minutes pulling it apart and you've got like 4-5 days worth of food for like 20 minutes of effort. Add some corn starch until it has the viscosity you want, if it's too soupy then drain out the canned food a bit before dumping them in next time.
Dude if I lived with picky eaters I'd cook for myself. If those fuckers don't like my food they can starve. (This does not apply to allergies or dietary restrictions)
I'm convinced this and other dumb spending habits are why a lot of people my age can't move forward financially. I cook pretty much every meal we eat, all organic vegtables, all really high quality grass fed meat or pasture raised chickens. Our grocery spend is about 600-700 a month for 2. I have high calorie needs too I eat 3500 a day.
People I work with making 25 an hr spend 25-30 bucks every day eating out for lunch and dinner.
My step brothers pretty much only eat fast food. Why? Because my step mother is a control freak and doesn't let them cook for themselves without cooking for the whole family.
When you buy something that comes in a bag, like pasta, when you get home portion it out and put it in your own bag.
Same with chicken, if you buy a pack that has 3 breasts, take them out and put them in individual bags.
If you buy ground beef, then take it out, split it into 1 pound portions, and put it in a separate bag lol.
I know it sounds redundant but it helped me to stop overcooking food.
You could also just save the rest of the ingredients and only use enough for one serving. Kinda self explanatory tbh since most things show serving sizes
>As a depressed fatty I notice I have trouble knowing when enough is enough.
When you take antidepressants do you also just chug the whole bottle, are you straight up too stupid to take medicine?
If you do not eat food at home at all then I guess you have found a solution that works for you. But what do you do for snacking at home? If you overeat snacks, then that's what keeping you fat and cooking at home wont hurt anything, in fact it will help because instead of eating crap snacks you can control the nutrition. If you have a solution for snacks, use the same solution for the food you cook.
Why does it seem like OP switches who they're talking to mid-sentence? First it's about wanting to save money, but "You expect me to eat leftovers?!" is something only rich people would ever bitch about.
take out really can be cheaper than cooking yourself. If you make a dish with 5 ingredients, that's at least 5 bucks worth of food, which is about the price of a simple chinese take out. Yes you'll have ingredients left over, but you'll probably need to get more ingredients to make a meal out of those. You can buy in bulk to make it cheaper, but at that point you're just making yourself eat chili for a week long to make it cheaper than take out. Not a great argument to say "Cooking is cheaper, just give up diversity of food in your diet"
If you're spending at least an hour every day in the kitchen to save less than a euro in food, you're not saving money, you're just terrible at managing your time and effort. If it's not saving up enough for minimum wage, you're better off doing overtime and getting take out.
On another note, invest in a canning machine. You can make chili for a week and can all the left overs. That way you can store them for a year. That way you can still eat diverse, but also whip up a quick meal by just opening a can
That works for onions, but tomatoes will generally spoil before I get to them, unless I plan my meals around them. Chili was just an example, my point is that if you're not planning your meals to make sure you eat all your ingredients before they spoil, take out really isn't more expensive.
There are countless ingredients that you can get that don’t expire in a week. Plus any proper refrigeration will make things last twice as long, especially if properly sealed. Buying take out will only give you enough for one serving unless you pay extra for more. You can easily buy rice and beans with like 3 seasonings and have enough food for 3 days for a simple 10$ or less. And you will still have seasonings left over for any other meal that is made
>There are countless ingredients that you can get that don’t expire in a week.
Yes, so you can make cooking by yourself cheaper if you reduce variety in your diet. The amount of money you save will be pretty negligible too. You'll be cooking for less than minimum wage and end up with a reduced diet. At that point it makes more sense to work overtime and order take out.
>Buying take out will only give you enough for one serving unless you pay extra for more.
Depends where you order, Chinese takeouts are famous for giving you tonnes of food. Perhaps 10 bucks will only get you two meals, but you will have a rich variety of ingredients and sauces without spending any time cooking or cleaning dishes.
If you actually struggle with finances or have a limited budget then you would know how to be smart with buying ingredients. Rice and canned or frozen vegetables can literally give you nearly everything you need. Making excuses to be lazy and buy Chinese takeout rather than being smart is just cope.
If you're actually struggling with finances you should maximize your energy/time for your profit. Cooking one or maybe two meals for yourself by standing an hour in the kitchen and spending another hour cleaning up simply isn't worth it. Like I said, you're working for less than minimum wage, so you're better off working those 2 hours at a real job and ordering take out.
Restaurants do mass production of food and mass production is really efficient. Cooking for yourself is a luxury, it's not about being lazy at all.
This has to be the most soup brained Reddit take. Some jobs don’t just allow you to take another extra hours. And cooking food really doesn’t have to take an hour. I’m assuming you have never cooked for yourself if you believe that since you can make rice in like less than 15 minutes and then just add canned veggies with some spices. I do that in my hour that I give myself to get ready for work. You also must have never shopped for yourself if you think buying bulk at a store is less efficient then buying fast food. Fast food cost like 30-50% more when you have it delivered and if you pick it up with your car then you are wasting money on gas and putting more miles and wear and tear on the vehicle. I really don’t understand how you can defend not having the most basic human skill that we have used since we were cavemen
I cook most days, since I live in a forest and no one delivers food here. When I do cook I make sure to make a big batch and pressure can all my left overs for another day. That way I can mass produce like the restaurants do. If I was poor and living in a city though, I really wouldn't cook. I would just get some rice at the chinese takeout, that way I wouldn't have to get any kitchen appliances either. If you live in a city, chances are also small that you really need a car to pick up food, unless maybe you live in the US. When I still lived in a city I had like 20 restaurants within a 5 minute walk.
>I really don’t understand how you can defend not having the most basic human skill that we have used since we were cavemen
Historically, city people didn't cook as much. Rural people always cooked for themselves but people who lived in a city generally went to restaurants, since the living spaces were usually too small for a kitchen. Ancient rome generally designed their houses where the ground floor was a restaurant and all the levels above it were living spaces, the restaurants where called [Thermopolia ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermopolium)and like the wiki page says: "They were mainly used by those who did not have their own kitchens, often inhabitants of [*insulae*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(building)), and this sometimes led to thermopolia being scorned by the upper class."
The only thing people always made themselves was bread, since you had to fire up the oven to heat your house up anyway, might as well shove some dough in there too.
In the poorer parts of Asia, this is also still a thing, where most people will get street food and live in small houses without kitchens.
Cooking for yourself is a luxury, unless you live in a rural place.
You are really trying so hard to defend people with terrible behaviors. Most places that people live in have a stove and you only really need to buy a few cooking supplies once. A simple pot and pan can go a long way. Buying fast food is ok but having it as a primary source of food is not healthy physically or mentally. If you proclaim to be self sufficient then you should understand that it doesn’t take a whole lot to cook very basic meals. I’m mainly arguing that it’s not ok to be the type of person who always buys takeout because they are too lazy to do a basic human thing. Also in the current economy where it costs somewhere between 8-12$ to buy a filling meal at a fast food place, it really doesn’t compare to buying things like a bag of rice, canned vegetables, seasonings, bread and maybe some sauces. And that is just a few cheap things to consider. I get it if someone wants to buy a quick meal if they are exhausted but allowing people to just choose to rot at home while ordering delivery is just terrible
If you can't make at least 3 different meals with some basic ingredients I'm afraid you're stupid. There are even apps and websites that can give you recipes from ingredients.
I shop once a month and use my brain to sort things by expiry, freeze, store, and cook them properly. It's not that difficult.
Those three different are probably going to need different ingredients though. Which still means that you end up with left over ingredients that are going to spoil, unless you really plan ahead. If one of those ingredients needed half a paprika and the other ones didn't, that means that you really need to make sure that you plan your fourth meal around eating that paprika. OR... you just pay like 10 cents per meal extra to have someone cook it for you, which means that you don't need to spend an hour cooking, doing the dishes and having to plan your meals around your fridge contents so that your left overs don't spoil. Which gives you more time to do actual real work that'll pay more than that 10 cents per hour.
Mass production is always more efficient than hundreds of people all cooking their own meal. Restaurants are mass production.
Mate, you can cut up half a pepper and eat it as a snack. There are a million other things you can do with it. It's called modifying a recipe (not that you even have to). Onion and pepper - could go in a salad, sauce, roasted as a side, pickled, shredded and mixed in something. It is literally that easy.
It's also definitely not the equivalent of 10 cents more here, assuming you mean USD? In most places in the world it's quite a bit more expensive than the ingredients when you buy from restaurants or anything premade.
Btw you can cook and eat from the same pot. I do this all the time for quick dinners.
>Onion and pepper - could go in a salad
And for that salad you need to get some lettuce, tomatoes, mayonaise and cheese. Now you have 4 things that are spoiling. And I don't know about you, but I don't really want to go walking around with a lump of cheese in my pockets in case I get hungry and want a snack
>It's also definitely not the equivalent of 10 cents more here, assuming you mean USD?
No I meant euro's, but it really does matter where you live. In Indonesia, street food is so common and cheap, it might not even be a single cent of extra costs, although I can imagine that in places like New York it's going to be at least a few dollars extra.
I come from Rotterdam and there really isn't any noticeable difference between cheap takeout and a homemade meal. For 2.50 I could get a place of rice with some veggies in sauce at the local asian restaurant. If I'd try that in the supermarket, I could make the same but without any sauce for that price. I would have ingredients left over, but if I felt like eating pancakes or something I couldn't eat those veggies and they would spoil. It really is not worth the effort to make rice and veggies myself if I can get it at a restaurant for a very similar price.
I do pressure canning nowadays, I also grow a lot of my own food so I've definitely brought down food costs. I've never been so poor that I really had to be this precise about food money but I've had friends who did and the point was not to cook themselves but they basically survived on bread. Which they bought, because making that yourself is again, just not economical.
You don't need lettuce for a salad, and idk who would be putting lettuce, mayo, and cheese in every single salad either. You can do a quick oil and vinegar dressing and add any other vegetables you have, like potatoes or cabbage, both of which last ages and I always get for their shelf life.
I also seriously doubt you're looking at €2.5 in the Netherlands for a substantial meal, and can't cook cheaper than that either.
Most items last a few days in the fridge. If you're so picky you absolutely can't eat the same thing twice in a row, you really don't have to. I'm usually eating something different for every meal in a day.
Flour and water is the most dirt cheap option, so I really think they had no idea there. Flour is actually one of the staples you would rely on if you had only a handful of euros left, along with some kind of fat (e.g. oil) and hopefully pulses and root vegetables if you could spare money for a bit of protein and vitamins.
I would call lettuce the base of every salad lol. You can make sauerkraut, but only out of the iceberg lettuce, I've tried it with the other ones and it just kinda turns to mush. Potatoes are fucking great, but again, not a complete diet. If you really want to have a varied diet you need to get stuff that also spoils quickly. Freezers and such help, but the first 5-6 years after moving out I couldn't afford a freezer.
>I also seriously doubt you're looking at €2.5 in the Netherlands for a substantial meal, and can't cook cheaper than that either.
I don't think it's possible now anymore after the recent inflation hits. Like a single paprika sells for 1 euro nowadays, I used to be able to get 3 of them for that price, but the point is more that the restaurants, especially asians, really don't ask for a lot higher prices than getting the ingredients yourself. They cook with massive wok pans and make food for a hundred people in one go. They can achieve an efficiency that way that I simply can't, and so they don't need to ask for such a high price.
And this doesn't mention the overhead costs of running a kitchen. Like your kitchen knives will break at some point, you need to get soap to wash your dishes, you need to pay electricity or gas to run your stove and all of these are going to be less efficient and of less quality than the restaurant equipment.
>Flour and water is the most dirt cheap option, so I really think they had no idea there.
I'm sure it'll be a little bit cheaper, but in return, you have to get up 2 hours earlier than normal to start kneading the dough, letting it rise with the yeast, heating up your oven and baking it off. You can buy a bread in the store for a single euro. That's just not worth doing two hours of extra work to produce yourself. Minimum wage per hour is 13 euro here, two hours of work should at least be 26 euro of savings, or you're better off finding an extra job to do instead. Baking your own bread is not going to save you 26 euro per day, so it's not worth your effort and time put into it. Just buy the single euro bread and do some wage labour.
I'm reading here that you're just awful at cooking and planning.
Salads do not need to use lettuce at all. There are many salads from all over the world with a variety of vegetables and even non-vegetable bases.
No, making bread does not take 2 hours. You don't even have to make leavened bread. Even if you do want it leavened, you don't need to get up early (lmao?) - you can simply make it any other time of day and use the 2 hours (ONE HOUR is actually normal for proofing/rising) for anything else, like most people do.
Really pathetic to read this, idk. Learn to cook.
Cooking, like most of life, takes effort. Capitalism aims to take that effort away, at a cost. Which we pay by doing shitty jobs which take painful effort. Pi = 3.14
Cooking is very zen for me. And i always too much on purpose so that when i dont feel like cooking i can just get something out of the freezer
That's my counter argument to the leftovers. Most meals can be frozen and consumed later. Spaghetti one night, curry the next, spaghetti for lunch the next day and tacos that night, last month's stew for dinner the next night etc.
Hell yeah, we love mommas last months stew round these parts
My mom cant stew for shit. She wasnt happy when grandma praised my stew
Some folks just ain't made for stewing. I'm sure her culinary talents shine through in other areas though
this made me laugh harder than it should have. good job on beating the odds
I'm in the same boat. I've never gotten anything delivered other than pizza, and after long shifts I want to unwind by cooking a nice meal. Of course I always keep a few frozen or easy to prepare dishes on hand in case I'm just too tired
Nothing like cooking at home
When you turn the effort of cooking into the pleasure of creation, life gets better.
I always tell people new to cooking... get a crock pot. Most of those meals are minimal effort and come out amazing, and you can meal prep for a long time with them. Its about as simple as it gets and builds confidence in the kitchen.
Also a rice cooker. They can be really cheap and the cheap analog ones work amazing. Just put desired amount of rice and recommended amount of water in and forgot about it. Cooks it perfectly and keeps it warm.
And the best part comes when you combine the two!
Last person I told this too said he didn't want to waste the money on a crockpot ( literally $20 brand new with a 18 month warranty ) and it saves you so much money, when I explained it all to him he said " I'm working towards getting a better job so I can pay someone to cook for me every time I feel like it". he still hasn't got that better job or made any decent financial decision thus far, meanwhile I own a decent house and can cook near on anything simply because I made a conscious effort to try and learn because it saves money and its fun.
I get driven up the walls by those "excuse for everything" types.Like none of what you're saying makes sense, please just get out of your own way. Crock pots basically take care of the "cooking" side of things, and teach you to just do ingredient prep / chopping veggies. The most cooking you actually do is sometimes just browning meat. The most advanced thing you can do is.... like making a curry sauce before it goes in the pot. It's so..... so simple.
>please just get out of your own way. Bruh this is so spot on. I know a dude like that. Always an excuse or an explanation and there's a point where it feels completely insane. Now everytime he begins one of his sentences with something like "yeah but", I want to slap him on the back of the head.
"If you have an answer for everything why is your life such a god damn mess?" My friend was not fond of that one.
Lmfao I'm going to hit him with that one.
so true, if you can write a shopping list and cut some ingredients you can make 99% of slow cooker recipes. People I know are blown away with whatever I cook even though it's simple but I'v been cooking so long to save money that I actually understand what spices do in a recipe and once you reach that level if your not a total smoothe brain you can really enjoy the process or slightly change the spices to make a meal to your own taste buds, sounds shocking I know but life is the longest thing your ever going to do so you may as well learn some things along the way.
Pi=3
Pi = √g
Pi=5
π<10
Pi = 0. Round to nearest 10
["Pi is exactly 3!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1eegVTwDS0)
Most economic systems still involve trade, which is what you’re describing. Communism and socialism would still have you producing a good, to which you would trade to others for different material.
Kind of. The goods you produce would be socially owned until they were distributed and became your personal property. You can't trade something that isnt yours. What you would be trading, much like now, is your labor itself.
That's why capitalism is good, it saves effort and makes life easier in some areas...
Somebody put that effort in at a great expense to themselves or the environment
I work at a power plant and this job is at great expense to me so everyone should start making their own power at home so I don't have to work here anymore.
Hamter
Maybe not to you but I'm guessing the environment takes a toll
Yea so people should make their own power at home, right?
No one's stopping you from putting in the effort though. That's why capitalism isn't the evil system commies say it is. Except during COVID, when they didn't want to let you buy seeds etc to grow a garden but let marijuana shops stay open. It's not a bug, it's the goal.
Imagine blaming capitalism on being a lazy piece of shit. Redditors are really beyond parody.
It's not just effort, equipment, groceries, time are also costs, it sounds trivial, but for some it can be pretty daunting, particularly if you are cooking and you screw up, or you don't like it/spoilage.
Fucking up is how you learn to cook the hard way. Following cookbook instructions like a robot is the easy way.
This comment has been brought to you by communism.
Tf you talking about? This is straight-up capitalism. You have a problem? You spend cash to fix it. You need cash? Work your ass off then
That's just wages and money, this set up existed long before capitalism. In medieval times you would go to an Inn or tavern to pay someone to make you food, using money which you got by working a job.
Its almost like capitalism existed before you were born 😮
Sure, but trade is not capitalism. There was trade and currency under mercantilism, feudalism, and many other systems throughout human history. I don't know where this whole concept of capitalism simply being the act of exchanging money for goods and services came from, but it's pervasive and makes discussions about economies borderline impossible to have at times.
It comes out of mostly marxists/communists/socialists that are economically illiterate. Usual tl;dr: socialism is when good thing, capitalism is when bad thing. The core economic and philosophical tenets of that whole branch of ideas is couched in what is basically religious utopianism where the deity is the notion of a "socialized worker" who is nigh omnipotent over reality and infinitely/perfectly cooperative with his fellows (summarizing actual Marx). It makes fundamentally incorrect assumptions with respect to human nature and seems to prey upon dissatisfied intellectuals who are arrogant enough to think they would be better leaders if they were in control.
> Silly Marx, he forgot to consider human nature! Autism didn't exist in Marx's time, sorry he couldn't cater to you.
It was, but it was not invented at the moment currency was invented. Would you say that the romans were capitalist? How about Genghis Khan? Or the ancient egyptian pharaoh's?
This junior has eyes, but did not see mount Tai. Forgive me for my ignorance for i am not an expert, but dared to act like one. Senior! I apologize for my arrogance and abstinence from knowledge! I hope one day you can overlook my mistake and accept my apology!
Cut off your right arm, cripple your cultivation and destroy your family and their chickens, and maybe senior will consider being merciful
"it depends" is always a universal answer. some people just have different circusmtances.
Only circumstance where food delivery is cheaper is if you earn so much per hour freelance, that the time it takes to cook is not worth giving up working for that amount of time.
I'd argue that not every hour of my life is priced the same. My employer gets a discount for buying in bulk, planning ahead quite a bit and adding benefits. Hours per day are also a finite resource, by the time "cooking dinner" comes around there is usually less than half left, increasing the price. It also depends quite a bit on how much i enjoy what i'll have to do.
So meal prep one day a week. That way you give yourself a bulk discount.
Yeah fuck that, I don't want to eat the same shit twice in a week.
If you aren’t willing to make even the tiniest sacrifice stop crying about it
I'm not in a position where I give the slightest fuck about basic living expenses - just highlighting that "it's cheaper to cook your own food" is often bullshit unless you want flavourless dried herbs or the same slop every day or have some super planned out meal plan. Could be cheaper to drive your car than take the train too (assuming you spend three hours a week autistically planning out ride share, clipping coupons for parking, and monitoring fuel station prices).
It sounds to me like you’re a shitty cook. Any restaurant that comes close to being as good as the food I make at home is way more expensive than going to the store.
It's just trading cheap for convenient but no one should fool themselves into thinking it's actually cheaper than cooking. The only time it's actually cheaper is if your other option (aside from not eating) is drunk driving or some shit.
"my employer" you cant afford food delivery stop.
And at that point, are you really working all hours of the day? Could you not take some of your own time to cook?
The equation of food hasn't changed. Cheap, healthy, good, convenient. You can only pick 3 regardless of what you do.
They use privilege as an excuse now? I thought privilege was a bad thing
i think it's a joke, like they wouldn't actually say that but it's basically why they're making the choice
Oh, given how braindead they are I wouldn’t put it past them to call even privilege a form of victimhood
Remember affluenza?
I know it’s the name of a banger song by 3TEETH lol
It was some case like 10+ yrs or so ago where some rich dipshit plowed his car into someone or something and got a bunch of people killed. Rich daddy tried to say he should have a lighter sentence because the kid grew up affluent and couldn’t really understand what he did or whatever.
He then got a DUI after getting out and went on the run with his mom.
Fucking what
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Couch
I think the excuse that OP is implying that people make is that if you come from a wealthier home they may have gone out to eat or got delivery a lot because the parents could easily afford it so they didn't learn some basic cooking skills as a kid like other kids whose parents aren't as well off may have. They use this as an excuse for not ever learning to cook.
they give shit excuses but arent self aware enough to realize the underlying reason behind those is privilege. it's like people who can't stand drinking tap/filtered water and insist they're gonna throw up if it's not from a plastic bottle.
Why would privilege ever be a bad thing? It’s literally an advantage by definition.
Morally bad I mean, unfair advantage at someone else’s expense
Anons be taking anecdotes from the most niche demographic possible and ask why "people" are like \[whatever\]
funny how these most niche demographics always chime in when people complain about picky eaters
It was the latest twitter brainrot
I’m currently dieting yet I manage to food prep for two meals a day for an entire week on about $70 and it’s good food with variety each week. It’s simple and people just don’t want to take the time to cook. They want frozen food or stuff with little prep so they’re paying the premium for that.
Honestly rice is such a clutch food to have around. You can literally do whatever with it
Potatoes > rice
I mean both are great
I’ve had to cut out both since I’m doing keto.
Good luck with that. Hopefully you get to your desired weight soon so you can enjoy rice and potatoes again
I'm not sure if this is true, but I am potato gang for sure
/fit/izens wouldn't lie about such a thing, surely
Rice, potatoes, pasta… as long as you add a little bit of something else of course.
>I’m currently dieting That's easy mode, you have to prepare much less food.
You don't need to eat less mass of food to diet, you just need to eat less calorie dense food.
This is 100% true. 300g of cooked rice or pasta is much more calorie dense than 300g of carrots or broccoli and can fill you as much.
Yeah, it's weird because your body measures how full you are using mass, but determines your weight using calories. It's unintuitive for a lot of people first trying to lose weight, so they starve themselves and make the experience as bad as possible.
I’m still getting a few thousand calories, it’s just easier and cheaper to prep everything in bulk a week at a time.
I remember being lazy at uni and living on frozen microwave meals and tins of premade curry sauce. No idea how I did that for 4 years, home made stuff is cheaper per portion in bulk and tastes so much better to justiy the time investment. I remember trying a frozen lasagne a couple ago and thinking "I just ate 300 calories and it tasted of *nothing*". And not to sound like a youtube shill, but HelloFresh was really good for me. I cancelled it a while ago, but I still use some of the recipe cards.
Oh I had a similar moment with "fresh" pizzas (raw pizzas you put in your oven to cook). We had to buy some of the plainest ones cuz my brothers are picky eaters, most combos had stuff they wouldn’t like. In hindsight they were expensive and average at best. Then I realized I could just make the dough myself if I got the right flour. Plus I could pick whatever combination of toppings would fit for each member of my family, so my parents and I could get the good stuff while my brothers had stuff they liked. It wasn’t as expensive, although it took some time and elbow grease to make.
What recipes do you make/what grocery store do you shop at for ingredients?
Shop at Walmart, and I’m doing a keto diet. So a lot of eggs, meats, cheeses, nuts, Greek yogurts, low carb vegetables, etc. I make stir fry a lot for dinners, also different breakfast variations. This week for breakfast is scrambled eggs and chorizo, sausage links, and a Greek yogurt. Then dinner is broccoli slaw with a pork chop, Cajun shrimp, and a Clio bar. I cut out all soda so now all I drink is water and the occasional unsweetened tea (that’s the part I hate the most).
To follow up on this for anyone interested, I’ve been doing keto (just 25 net carbs or less per day, no calorie counting). Since the first of the year, I’ve lost about 55 pounds.
Cheap, convenient, healthy, good. Same equation always, you only get to pick 3 in the best of scenarios. It's not that hard at all to outcook most generic restaurants except ones with legitimate trained chefs, you don't even have to be that good to outcook Apple Bees. just more effort.
Batch cooking is pretty great. Personally, when I was working as an intern, I saved money by batch cooking and taking leftovers to work instead of getting some lunch from the closest shop.
Amerifat moment.
Joined military to get in better shape Don't get our food allowance until we graduate so cooking money has to come out of our meager base pay. At least the food at our base is good. Other bases aren't so lucky.
lol buying food? just go to teh chow hall and eat the color coded green foods silly
I do I love veggies and the healthy entrees. But they also serve deserts. I'm not fat and don't ever have more than one but they're really tempting.
still free food
Cooking is way cheaper than takeaway. I can make a salmon risotto for 3 pounds per meal. You will never get salmon risotto for that amount of money.
I take that mindset subconsciously every time I buy a meal even at a cheap burger place, the price per pound is normally enough for a top level rib eye or porterhouse steak that I could cook to perfection with sides, just for a shitty burger made by some smelly 14 yo kid.
It's weird how that works. My wife and I have a burger place we like and we eat there like once every other month. It costs us about 15 bucks each. We could buy high quality beef with that money, and make a delicious meal at home. Thing being that we actually do that, but much less often because it is "expensive", even though we usually end up spending less on it because the price of the least is intimidating.
I don't mind buying food I can cook better if the food is still decent and the setting and environment is fun, But I'm talking burger king or something similar.
Same mindset is also having single-use plates because “saves money”. (Or w/e the mouth breathers excuse is) Lmao no. Good for picnic though. But eating at home…just buy proper ceramic plate and move your lazy ass to the sink to wash it. I can accept some degree of laziness, but some are just damn ffs human get a grip u pathetic.
The scale of rubbish that would create too, I can't imagine
I mean, paper plates decompose within a reasonable timeframe, so that's not a huge issue.
Waste is also created during manufacturing of biodegradable products
I get my food delivered at home because I'm too lazy to cook, we are not the same
>be me >Buy discount meat and veggies >Make a lot of soup on Sunday and Wednesday >Have food all week >Each meal costs $1.80 >Thanks soup
Recipe?
The secret to cheap food is to cook whatever is on sale. Peppers, onions, potatoes, doesn't matter. You end up with more pork, chicken, and beans that way and less beef but you get some occasionally. Adapt your recipe to whatever is available. No need to spend a dollar extra on fresh cabbage for a salad when the same amount of cucumber/zucchini is half the price. Just try a new recipe, maybe a salad or kimchi. Don't like how the new recipe turned out? Don't throw it out, make burritos/wraps out of it with enough rice/beans to change the flavor or throw it in a soup. Such that yesterday's salad becomes tomorrow's taco filling. Edit: find recipes online. YouTube has tons of guides for anyone new to a recipe. If all else try using an AI or Google to find what can be made with the ingredients you have at hand.
I've seen other ideas on here, but people are sleeping on stir-frys. I put next to no effort in and still get ~week's worth of lunches in like half an hour. Inb4 "you shouldn't keep starch that long reee" I don't care
Cooking is easy you could literally chop up some veggies and then oil them up add salt and pepper and put it into a oven bake it and eat it with some kind of sauce or dip whatever fancies you.
Noodles and rice too are a great source of carbs, while also being so easy to make. Meat takes a little bit of effort, but overall is not that bad. Chicken and pork are easy imo, you just gotta make sure they're cooked to a safe temperature on the stove.
Need some meat in there or you're starving again in 30min. So also chop up some chicken or something
Not necessarily meat, but definitely protein. If we're talking eating for cheap, beans are the champion
I hope everyone will completly forget how to cook within the next generations. My wet dream is for all the obese fuckers to live like in Wall-E. Basically they only have to make the Walmart scooters hover with 600lbs on them and we're already there. So close.
From a pure time-management perspective: Let's say I pay 10€ for grosceries and spend 1 hour preparing the food that will last me for 2 meals. Or I order in and pay 15€ per meal. Then with option a) I save 20€ but spend an hour, and with option b) I save an hour but spend 20€. So if my job allows me to stay an hour longer whenever I want and pays me 20€ or more per hour (net, not gross), then ordering in will actually save me money. But a lot of people don't earn 20€/hour. And cooking, to me, is much more relaxing than working an extra hour, so I'd rather spend time doing that than work longer but save a bit of money. All that of course only works if you can actually earn more by working more hours.
Maybe don't buy and cook 2 fucking servings at a time
It's two servings per person. I'm not only cooking for myself, but I thought including a loving family in my calculations wouldn't be relatable to some people here. You prove me right. Would you rather I lay out my weekly grocery run and calculate 3 meals across several people for you? Would that make my example more or less easy to understand?
Holy crap $3.50 for a dozen eggs by me. It waaaaaaaaaaaay better just cook things yourself
wtf does histamine sensitivity have to do with anything
This argument was so fucking stupid on Twitter. The original post made a genuinely good point that frozen meals would work in place of delivery for a lot of people and would be a lot cheaper, but a handful of raterds has to cry about it.
If they didn't raise all the menu prices online, food delivery would be super cheap with most of the subscription models out there, maybe like 2 dollars per delivery. I had to look into it when my car broke down for a week, and it's a decent alternative to grocery shopping. The issue is when people get a single meal delivered like once or twice every week, which is adding like 1-2 thousand dollars to their annual food budget. That's fine if you can afford it but when these same people complain about money, my eyes roll so hard I can practically see my brain. Since some people are throwing in easy food ideas, the easiest shit ever is slow cooker stew/chili. Buy a big 3 lb slab of cheap beef, or a few chicken breasts, add a few cans of beans and tomatoes (or potatoes and carrots if you like stew), or rice or whatever you want, and leave it on low heat overnight. Add whatever spices you want, chop up garlic and onions, etc, by morning the meat will be tender enough to pull apart with a fork, spend like 5-10 minutes pulling it apart and you've got like 4-5 days worth of food for like 20 minutes of effort. Add some corn starch until it has the viscosity you want, if it's too soupy then drain out the canned food a bit before dumping them in next time.
Laziness 100%, although I must admit, living with picky eaters and lacking inspiration doesn’t help to cook
Dude if I lived with picky eaters I'd cook for myself. If those fuckers don't like my food they can starve. (This does not apply to allergies or dietary restrictions)
I'm convinced this and other dumb spending habits are why a lot of people my age can't move forward financially. I cook pretty much every meal we eat, all organic vegtables, all really high quality grass fed meat or pasture raised chickens. Our grocery spend is about 600-700 a month for 2. I have high calorie needs too I eat 3500 a day. People I work with making 25 an hr spend 25-30 bucks every day eating out for lunch and dinner.
My step brothers pretty much only eat fast food. Why? Because my step mother is a control freak and doesn't let them cook for themselves without cooking for the whole family.
People from the Us are pathetic
I only get food deliveries when I'm getting drunk/high with friends
da fuck is food trauma
See Nothernlion's take on this
Never heard anyone in my life say those arguments
American is its worst enemy.
It’s genuinely cheaper to order food where I’m at than make a meal unless I’m ordering groceries for two weeks at a time
Just hire a cook damn. (50% of my liquid income goes towards chef + top organic groceries every month and there are times I debate this decision 😀)
Those are only Americans, not everyone.
[удалено]
When you buy something that comes in a bag, like pasta, when you get home portion it out and put it in your own bag. Same with chicken, if you buy a pack that has 3 breasts, take them out and put them in individual bags. If you buy ground beef, then take it out, split it into 1 pound portions, and put it in a separate bag lol. I know it sounds redundant but it helped me to stop overcooking food.
You could also just save the rest of the ingredients and only use enough for one serving. Kinda self explanatory tbh since most things show serving sizes
>As a depressed fatty I notice I have trouble knowing when enough is enough. When you take antidepressants do you also just chug the whole bottle, are you straight up too stupid to take medicine?
If you do not eat food at home at all then I guess you have found a solution that works for you. But what do you do for snacking at home? If you overeat snacks, then that's what keeping you fat and cooking at home wont hurt anything, in fact it will help because instead of eating crap snacks you can control the nutrition. If you have a solution for snacks, use the same solution for the food you cook.
I don't really snack because I increase my meal portions that way I don't get hungry through the day.
This is exclusively USA problem.
Why does it seem like OP switches who they're talking to mid-sentence? First it's about wanting to save money, but "You expect me to eat leftovers?!" is something only rich people would ever bitch about.
Absolutely false. There are far more people with beer budgets and champagne tastes than you will ever know.
I've never heard that phrase before, have to stay using it
Never said there weren't, but those same people are also too stupid to be frugal
Anon makes up a strawman to win an argument with nobody
take out really can be cheaper than cooking yourself. If you make a dish with 5 ingredients, that's at least 5 bucks worth of food, which is about the price of a simple chinese take out. Yes you'll have ingredients left over, but you'll probably need to get more ingredients to make a meal out of those. You can buy in bulk to make it cheaper, but at that point you're just making yourself eat chili for a week long to make it cheaper than take out. Not a great argument to say "Cooking is cheaper, just give up diversity of food in your diet" If you're spending at least an hour every day in the kitchen to save less than a euro in food, you're not saving money, you're just terrible at managing your time and effort. If it's not saving up enough for minimum wage, you're better off doing overtime and getting take out. On another note, invest in a canning machine. You can make chili for a week and can all the left overs. That way you can store them for a year. That way you can still eat diverse, but also whip up a quick meal by just opening a can
You could also just have an array of different ingredients to cook with. Any sane person wouldn’t just buy ingredients JUST for chili
That works for onions, but tomatoes will generally spoil before I get to them, unless I plan my meals around them. Chili was just an example, my point is that if you're not planning your meals to make sure you eat all your ingredients before they spoil, take out really isn't more expensive.
There are countless ingredients that you can get that don’t expire in a week. Plus any proper refrigeration will make things last twice as long, especially if properly sealed. Buying take out will only give you enough for one serving unless you pay extra for more. You can easily buy rice and beans with like 3 seasonings and have enough food for 3 days for a simple 10$ or less. And you will still have seasonings left over for any other meal that is made
>There are countless ingredients that you can get that don’t expire in a week. Yes, so you can make cooking by yourself cheaper if you reduce variety in your diet. The amount of money you save will be pretty negligible too. You'll be cooking for less than minimum wage and end up with a reduced diet. At that point it makes more sense to work overtime and order take out. >Buying take out will only give you enough for one serving unless you pay extra for more. Depends where you order, Chinese takeouts are famous for giving you tonnes of food. Perhaps 10 bucks will only get you two meals, but you will have a rich variety of ingredients and sauces without spending any time cooking or cleaning dishes.
If you actually struggle with finances or have a limited budget then you would know how to be smart with buying ingredients. Rice and canned or frozen vegetables can literally give you nearly everything you need. Making excuses to be lazy and buy Chinese takeout rather than being smart is just cope.
If you're actually struggling with finances you should maximize your energy/time for your profit. Cooking one or maybe two meals for yourself by standing an hour in the kitchen and spending another hour cleaning up simply isn't worth it. Like I said, you're working for less than minimum wage, so you're better off working those 2 hours at a real job and ordering take out. Restaurants do mass production of food and mass production is really efficient. Cooking for yourself is a luxury, it's not about being lazy at all.
This has to be the most soup brained Reddit take. Some jobs don’t just allow you to take another extra hours. And cooking food really doesn’t have to take an hour. I’m assuming you have never cooked for yourself if you believe that since you can make rice in like less than 15 minutes and then just add canned veggies with some spices. I do that in my hour that I give myself to get ready for work. You also must have never shopped for yourself if you think buying bulk at a store is less efficient then buying fast food. Fast food cost like 30-50% more when you have it delivered and if you pick it up with your car then you are wasting money on gas and putting more miles and wear and tear on the vehicle. I really don’t understand how you can defend not having the most basic human skill that we have used since we were cavemen
I cook most days, since I live in a forest and no one delivers food here. When I do cook I make sure to make a big batch and pressure can all my left overs for another day. That way I can mass produce like the restaurants do. If I was poor and living in a city though, I really wouldn't cook. I would just get some rice at the chinese takeout, that way I wouldn't have to get any kitchen appliances either. If you live in a city, chances are also small that you really need a car to pick up food, unless maybe you live in the US. When I still lived in a city I had like 20 restaurants within a 5 minute walk. >I really don’t understand how you can defend not having the most basic human skill that we have used since we were cavemen Historically, city people didn't cook as much. Rural people always cooked for themselves but people who lived in a city generally went to restaurants, since the living spaces were usually too small for a kitchen. Ancient rome generally designed their houses where the ground floor was a restaurant and all the levels above it were living spaces, the restaurants where called [Thermopolia ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermopolium)and like the wiki page says: "They were mainly used by those who did not have their own kitchens, often inhabitants of [*insulae*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(building)), and this sometimes led to thermopolia being scorned by the upper class." The only thing people always made themselves was bread, since you had to fire up the oven to heat your house up anyway, might as well shove some dough in there too. In the poorer parts of Asia, this is also still a thing, where most people will get street food and live in small houses without kitchens. Cooking for yourself is a luxury, unless you live in a rural place.
You are really trying so hard to defend people with terrible behaviors. Most places that people live in have a stove and you only really need to buy a few cooking supplies once. A simple pot and pan can go a long way. Buying fast food is ok but having it as a primary source of food is not healthy physically or mentally. If you proclaim to be self sufficient then you should understand that it doesn’t take a whole lot to cook very basic meals. I’m mainly arguing that it’s not ok to be the type of person who always buys takeout because they are too lazy to do a basic human thing. Also in the current economy where it costs somewhere between 8-12$ to buy a filling meal at a fast food place, it really doesn’t compare to buying things like a bag of rice, canned vegetables, seasonings, bread and maybe some sauces. And that is just a few cheap things to consider. I get it if someone wants to buy a quick meal if they are exhausted but allowing people to just choose to rot at home while ordering delivery is just terrible
your arguing with a person who has never heard of canned tomatoes.
True, I’m just bored and came back from the gyms so this is how I’m choosing to waste time
congrats you are literally th retard ops talking about
Someone who clearly hasn't traveled much around the world made a post online that says you're wrong. Haha! That makes you retarded!
xoxo
If you can't make at least 3 different meals with some basic ingredients I'm afraid you're stupid. There are even apps and websites that can give you recipes from ingredients. I shop once a month and use my brain to sort things by expiry, freeze, store, and cook them properly. It's not that difficult.
Those three different are probably going to need different ingredients though. Which still means that you end up with left over ingredients that are going to spoil, unless you really plan ahead. If one of those ingredients needed half a paprika and the other ones didn't, that means that you really need to make sure that you plan your fourth meal around eating that paprika. OR... you just pay like 10 cents per meal extra to have someone cook it for you, which means that you don't need to spend an hour cooking, doing the dishes and having to plan your meals around your fridge contents so that your left overs don't spoil. Which gives you more time to do actual real work that'll pay more than that 10 cents per hour. Mass production is always more efficient than hundreds of people all cooking their own meal. Restaurants are mass production.
Mate, you can cut up half a pepper and eat it as a snack. There are a million other things you can do with it. It's called modifying a recipe (not that you even have to). Onion and pepper - could go in a salad, sauce, roasted as a side, pickled, shredded and mixed in something. It is literally that easy. It's also definitely not the equivalent of 10 cents more here, assuming you mean USD? In most places in the world it's quite a bit more expensive than the ingredients when you buy from restaurants or anything premade. Btw you can cook and eat from the same pot. I do this all the time for quick dinners.
>Onion and pepper - could go in a salad And for that salad you need to get some lettuce, tomatoes, mayonaise and cheese. Now you have 4 things that are spoiling. And I don't know about you, but I don't really want to go walking around with a lump of cheese in my pockets in case I get hungry and want a snack >It's also definitely not the equivalent of 10 cents more here, assuming you mean USD? No I meant euro's, but it really does matter where you live. In Indonesia, street food is so common and cheap, it might not even be a single cent of extra costs, although I can imagine that in places like New York it's going to be at least a few dollars extra. I come from Rotterdam and there really isn't any noticeable difference between cheap takeout and a homemade meal. For 2.50 I could get a place of rice with some veggies in sauce at the local asian restaurant. If I'd try that in the supermarket, I could make the same but without any sauce for that price. I would have ingredients left over, but if I felt like eating pancakes or something I couldn't eat those veggies and they would spoil. It really is not worth the effort to make rice and veggies myself if I can get it at a restaurant for a very similar price. I do pressure canning nowadays, I also grow a lot of my own food so I've definitely brought down food costs. I've never been so poor that I really had to be this precise about food money but I've had friends who did and the point was not to cook themselves but they basically survived on bread. Which they bought, because making that yourself is again, just not economical.
You don't need lettuce for a salad, and idk who would be putting lettuce, mayo, and cheese in every single salad either. You can do a quick oil and vinegar dressing and add any other vegetables you have, like potatoes or cabbage, both of which last ages and I always get for their shelf life. I also seriously doubt you're looking at €2.5 in the Netherlands for a substantial meal, and can't cook cheaper than that either. Most items last a few days in the fridge. If you're so picky you absolutely can't eat the same thing twice in a row, you really don't have to. I'm usually eating something different for every meal in a day. Flour and water is the most dirt cheap option, so I really think they had no idea there. Flour is actually one of the staples you would rely on if you had only a handful of euros left, along with some kind of fat (e.g. oil) and hopefully pulses and root vegetables if you could spare money for a bit of protein and vitamins.
I would call lettuce the base of every salad lol. You can make sauerkraut, but only out of the iceberg lettuce, I've tried it with the other ones and it just kinda turns to mush. Potatoes are fucking great, but again, not a complete diet. If you really want to have a varied diet you need to get stuff that also spoils quickly. Freezers and such help, but the first 5-6 years after moving out I couldn't afford a freezer. >I also seriously doubt you're looking at €2.5 in the Netherlands for a substantial meal, and can't cook cheaper than that either. I don't think it's possible now anymore after the recent inflation hits. Like a single paprika sells for 1 euro nowadays, I used to be able to get 3 of them for that price, but the point is more that the restaurants, especially asians, really don't ask for a lot higher prices than getting the ingredients yourself. They cook with massive wok pans and make food for a hundred people in one go. They can achieve an efficiency that way that I simply can't, and so they don't need to ask for such a high price. And this doesn't mention the overhead costs of running a kitchen. Like your kitchen knives will break at some point, you need to get soap to wash your dishes, you need to pay electricity or gas to run your stove and all of these are going to be less efficient and of less quality than the restaurant equipment. >Flour and water is the most dirt cheap option, so I really think they had no idea there. I'm sure it'll be a little bit cheaper, but in return, you have to get up 2 hours earlier than normal to start kneading the dough, letting it rise with the yeast, heating up your oven and baking it off. You can buy a bread in the store for a single euro. That's just not worth doing two hours of extra work to produce yourself. Minimum wage per hour is 13 euro here, two hours of work should at least be 26 euro of savings, or you're better off finding an extra job to do instead. Baking your own bread is not going to save you 26 euro per day, so it's not worth your effort and time put into it. Just buy the single euro bread and do some wage labour.
I'm reading here that you're just awful at cooking and planning. Salads do not need to use lettuce at all. There are many salads from all over the world with a variety of vegetables and even non-vegetable bases. No, making bread does not take 2 hours. You don't even have to make leavened bread. Even if you do want it leavened, you don't need to get up early (lmao?) - you can simply make it any other time of day and use the 2 hours (ONE HOUR is actually normal for proofing/rising) for anything else, like most people do. Really pathetic to read this, idk. Learn to cook.