Wielding Economic Power in the Kitchen

Cooking at home is cheaper than eating out.

True or not true?

Well… it’s obvious, right? Cooking at home is almost always cheaper than eating out—unless you’re eating filet mignon every night. And even then… a filet at home is still way cheaper than ordering one in a restaurant.

As inflation hammers our pocketbooks and drains our bank accounts, most of us are looking for ways to save money. Or earn more.

There are really only two ways out of the “not enough money” conundrum: spend less, or earn more.

We don’t eat out all that often. During Covid, we kind of lost the habit. What we did discover were meal-prep services like Fresh Prep. For about $50, we’d get two chef-y meals—often with leftovers—that were genuinely delicious. Fresh flavours, new tastes, and no guesswork with spices (the Big Cooking Mystery!). Even better, once we’d made a recipe once, we could recreate it again without paying another $50.

So when Covid faded and we started eating out again, we were… underwhelmed. The food often wasn’t as good as what we could make at home. And it was a lot more expensive.

We’ve gone out for special occasions—like my birthday. There’s nothing quite like a perfectly grilled medium-rare sirloin, especially when you don’t own a BBQ. It was expensive, but worth it. Ongoingly though? Mostly disappointing—and occasionally shocking.

A few weeks ago, we went to our local pub. One half order of nachos and one beer for me (water for my partner). Happy hour beer: $6.25. The half-order of nachos: $17.99. With tax and a modest tip, the total came to $32.

One beer. Half an order of nachos.

Pre-Covid, pre-inflation? Maybe $20. It was good. But it’s not becoming a weekly habit.

And then there was Domino’s.

A small gluten-free meat-lovers pizza for me. A medium veggie pizza for my partner. Delivered.

$57.

For two very small pizzas.

Highway robbery.

Dining out: convenient? Yes. Easy? Yes. Cheap? Absolutely not.

Our culture prizes anything that saves time and energy. DoorDash and UberEats do exactly that—we just trade our time and energy for cash.

So if cooking at home saves money, why don’t more people do it?

Partly because cooking has quietly become a lost art.

Basic cooking skills are no longer mandatory in high school. People can graduate without ever picking up a spatula. I remember sewing and cooking being lumped together under Home Economics. What the heck did cooking and sewing have to do with "Economics"?? It didn’t make much sense to me then—but now it does.

Sewing your own clothes used to save money. Fast fashion changed that. Cooking, though? Cooking still saves money. Treating it as optional is short-sighted. And honestly, I’d add gardening to the Home Ec curriculum too.

Another reason cooking fades out is logistics. Two working parents. Conflicting schedules. Soccer practice. Violin lessons. Someone forgot to take something out of the freezer. It’s often easier to order in, eat out, or give up and let everyone fend for themselves. Getting everyone to the table at the same time can feel impossible.

The cook loses it when someone leaves just as dinner’s ready.
“But you haven’t eaten yet!”
“Don’t worry—I’ll grab a burger.”

But often the real issue isn’t that people don’t know how to cook. It’s that they don’t know how to cook flexibly.

A stir-fry calls for sirloin—have you seen the price of sirloin? What about tenderizing a cheaper cut? Using chicken thighs instead of breasts? Or legumes—chickpeas or lentils? When ground beef gets expensive, lentil bolognese gives the meat version a serious run for its money.

It’s the difference between buying the same things out of habit and fainting at the checkout… versus seeing what’s on sale and adapting. Or—gasp—trying something new.

I used to hate eggplant parmesan. Not because I’d eaten it, but because… eggplant. Mushy. Suspicious. Then in 2006, at a conference, it was the only option. I poked at it, tried a corner—and oh my god. Amazing. I found a recipe later, and it’s now a regular.

I’d never have called myself a chef. At university, I had six reliable meals: chili, corned beef hash, fillet of sole, baked salmon, round steak, and tuna mac’n’cheese (KD-style). Over time, I added chickpeas, curries, lentils, eggplant. Spices still trip me up—I cling to recipes for quantities—but beyond that? I might even call myself a chefette.

And yes. Cooking at home has saved us a lot of money.

Which brings me to Starbucks. 

At Starbucks: 12-oz chai tea = $2.68

At home: $0.18 (tea bag) + $0.12 (milk) = $0.40

I’m paying for convenience. For someone else making it. It’s a trade-off.

And hey—it’s still the cheapest thing on the menu.

Further Reading

A couple of news articles about the decline in cooking skills and it's impact on home economics...

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/cooking-skills-decline-1.7064348

https://globalnews.ca/news/5155947/how-to-cook-at-home-more/

Cooking at Home has Ruined our Eating-out Experience

We love the cuisine of southeast Asia... Butter Chicken, Thai Yellow Curry, Garam Masala... heck... anything with curry!

Used to be that one of our favourite treats was to eat-out at either our favourite Indian restaurant or our favourite Thai restaurant. But then... with a tailbone injury... my partner was unable to enjoy the sit-down experience at restaurants, so we switched to take-away or take-out. Still super yummy and we would alternate between Thai and Indian. Sooo good.

Now, of course, with Covid-19... eating out is fraught with issues so take-out is taking off. But, to be honest, take-out (and eating out) is expensive and... our experience with the meal prep service (FreshPrep in this case), opened my eyes to the fact that... cooking ain't that hard.

After trying and succeeding at various Indian curries... I decided to tackle one of our favourites, the Holy Grail if you will... Thai Yellow Curry. It didn't look that hard... yellow curry paste, coconut milk, tofu (instead of chicken), onions, potatoes, carrots, pineapple. Easy peasy. Or so it looked.

The trick with most of these things is the spices... and in this case... the yellow curry paste. You could make a yellow curry paste from scratch but... that requires all sorts of ingredients which I was not going to hunt down. Far better to just hunt down yellow curry paste. Can't be that hard, right? Wrong.

Mae Ploy
Best Thai Yellow Curry Paste

None of the regular supermarkets (including Superstore) carried yellow curry paste. They were well stocked with green and red curry paste... but not yellow. I finally ran a tiny jar to ground in Walmart, having seen it listed online. I was not pleased. But a bit of research revealed that my answer lay with Amazon... which had the BEST yellow curry paste... or so the reviewers said. I ordered Mae Ploy Yellow Curry Paste... and waited patiently for it to arrive.

I could have used the Walmart stuff but, to be honest, it looked more red than yellow and... I wanted this experiment to be a success. After I got the Mae Ploy (which was indeed yellow!), I tracked down a Thai Yellow Curry recipe with great reviews. The recipe looked dead easy and... it was. Dice up an onion, sautee the paste, add coconut milk (we used light coconut milk), add in the carrots... make sure to cook the potatoes separately, otherwise you'll have mushy potatoes... fry up the tofu separately... and then add in the pineapple and tofu towards the end. Serve over rice...

Verdict? OMG... super yummy!!! We licked our plates... it was sooooo good. A cooking success!! Score it a 10/10...

Except... a week or so later, my niece and sister were visiting us, and on one of our outings, we decided to pop into our favourite Thai restaurant and order take-out... it was just easier. We got Thai Yellow Curry and my sister and niece got Pad Thai (another favourite of ours)... and we ordered some veggie spring rolls (thin pastry wrapped around a veggie mixture and then deep fried). We came home and tore into the food but... the yellow curry was meh... not that great. The spring rolls weren't how we remembered them and... the Pad Thai was yucky.

OK... so maybe they were just having a bad day. A few weeks ago, we decided to try a Thai place in a neighbouring town, as we were heading home after a day trip. They got great reviews and so we ordered... yellow curry with spring rolls. The spring rolls we munched on the way home and they were OK but not great. And the thai yellow curry? It was thin and watery and tasted almost exactly like the stuff from our favourite restaurant. Not great.

We cooked my thai yellow curry again and... it was amazing! Sooo... it's not our taste buds... but we have wrecked the whole take-out Thai food business for ourselves. I found a Pad Thai recipe the other day (again... it's all in the sauce) and... it was amazing. Sooo... we find ourselves in the enviable position of being able to cook better Thai food than the Thai places. Sigh.

This has been my Mom's complaint for as long as I can remember, not about Thai food, but about eating out in general. She's always disappointed when she goes out to eat... it's never as good as what she can cook at home. And now... I commiserate with her... Why pay $50 for a take-out meal when I can make the same stuff for $10... and it will taste way better?!

Spring rolls

Except for the spring rolls of course... that is our sticking point. And samosas too...

Except... as I wrote that, I opened a new browser tab and typed "spring roll recipes"... and... voila dozens of recipes. I selected one at random and the author gives two options... fry them in an oil bath in a wok (we have a wok!) or... bake them. Huh... that's definitely an option...

By the way... there are two types of Spring Rolls... the fried ones and then the cold ones which are usually wrapped in translucent rice paper and eaten cold. Two very different things. We made the cold spring rolls (a.k.a. Salad Rolls or Summer Rolls) last year and they were super yummy as well!

Suffice to say... we may be tackling the fried spring rolls next... then we can say good-bye to our favourite Thai take-out place... 

Oh, and Butter Chicken (minus the butter and the chicken)... is also on my To Cook list... maybe with Samosa and then we an bid good-bye to our favourite Indian place as well...

Trying Tofu

Tofu. Ick.

No, seriously, I hate tofu. I hate the texture of it. I hate the idea of it... soft, tasteless, dissolve in your mouth ickiness.

I am not a big fan of tofu.

I know I've eaten it because I've had lots of Thai food that has snuck tofu in under the radar. "Wait... was that a piece of chicken... that didn't feel like chicken... ick!". I never got to the point of doing a seek pick-out mission in my Pad Thai... not like I would do with mushrooms. I just tried to pretend it wasn't there...

And, going whole-food, plant-based... well... you know tofu and I were due to have a show-down. I know it's a great source of protein but I had also heard all sorts of horror stories about it mucks with your hormones and causes breast cancer. So... I kept a wide berth around tofu. We could just eat legumes... yes... lots and lots of legumes.

Last fall, we tried a meal delivery service and... one of their meals was sesame-crusted tofu. We thought... let's give it a try... it can't be that bad.

Just take a hunk of tofu, cut it in half horizontally... coat it with sesame seeds and fry it up. Easy... and it looked tasty on the picture (at left). Right?? Looks good, doesn't it! But... photos can lie...

As we tried our first bite of pillowy tofu... both of us looked at each other. "Umm... not the greatest... let's try another few bites." After two bites, my partner couldn't take it anymore. I think I made it halfway through my slab of tofu but... eventually even I had to admit defeat. We looked at the poor, sad tofu... then at each other and both agreed... "Let's go get take-out burgers". That was our one and only fail with that particular meal delivery service.

Fast forward nine months and we are trying another meal delivery service... one that offers animal-protein-free options (i.e. vegan). And... as part of that... they use a lot of tofu. We were a bit skeptical but... a friend of ours who eats plant-based had said that the trick with tofu is to cut it into cubes and then stir-fry it... make it nice and golden and crispy. This new meal delivery service seemed to use that method. So... we sucked up our courage and tried again.

The first meal we had from this new meal delivery service was a teriyaki stir fry with tofu... and... cue the music... it was amazing. We both licked our plates. What the heck?? It was easy to cook... and... it was yummy and, since it used extra-firm tofu, we could almost convince ourselves that it was a piece of well-cooked chicken. (see pic below) Yum!

We dove into tofu recipes with both feet and have tried different options... some from the meal delivery service and some from home.

Last week we made a Yellow Thai Coconut Curry with potatoes, carrots and tofu. It is one of our favourite meals from Thai restaurants and we thought... we'll try it at home, except, instead of chicken, we'll make it with tofu. It was seriously scrumptious.

Now... I know what you're thinking. Our massage therapist expressed the same concerns... tofu is bad. It mucks with your hormones and causes breast cancer.

No.

You would need to eat boat loads of tofu and drink tanker trunks full of soy milk to get those sorts of problems. In moderation (like all things), one or two servings of soy products (soy milk, tofu, edamame beans, etc) per day is beneficial. And, like most things, try and get soy in the least processed form... the more processed it is... the worse it can be (like all foods).

When I met with a dietician last fall, she recommended soy products for menopausal hot flashes. I asked her about the "dangers" of soy products and she told me what I just told you. For those interested, Runner's World has a nice overview of the whole soy debate. There are other articles out there but I liked this one because it was fairly comprehensive and accurate.

Now... the one thing with stir-frying tofu is... it has to be fried in oil... which isn't great so... we are going to pull back the reins of this method of consuming soy and restrict ourselves to once or twice a week. We still have our excellent stable to legume recipes and are going to treat stir-fried tofu recipes (like Yellow Thai Coconut Curry and Pad Thai) as treats... Sigh...

Sauté without Oil?? What!

Did you know you can sauté without oil? I had no idea! The dietician at the hospital suggested this when I met with her last year. She showed me graphs and charts of all the different cooking oils and none of them are really healthy, especially when you are looking for a high-heat oil. And, no, coconut oil, despite all the advertising is NOT good for you... it has a ridiculous amount of saturated fat.

But... the idea of sautéing without oil had never even crossed my consciousness. Oil was just a necessary evil, I thought... Turns out, you can actually sauté with water. Yep... who knew? Just use small bits of water at a time (1 to 2 Tablespoons) and it works really well.

We cook a lot of curries and we usually start by sautéing onions. All we do is add a bit of water to the pan, let it heat up and then toss in the onions. As the water evaporates, just keep adding more water in little bits and keep stirring. It's cut down on our oil use drastically... at least for frying and stuff. We still use olive oil in salads because that has healthy fats, or so we are told.