In or Out?
I cook a lot, especially during the summer. Weekends find me doing breakfast (egg sandwiches, biscuits, gravy, bacon and eggs or some sort of casserole), lunch which can be anything from sandwiches to a full four course meal and dinner, which normally comes from the crock pot. I also customize a lot – adding mac and cheese to the menu to accommodate a fussy eater or cooking a quick pizza for the kids while my husband and I eat Thai food.
All that cooking means when I get the chance to eat out I am delighted. However, in a recent conversation with some new friends my husband talked about how he really didn’t enjoy eating out. He far preferred to eat at home, even when the at home meal was just sandwiches and a side. Part of that might be that he rarely cooks :-) But I do have several friends whose husbands also feel that way. For them the wholesomeness and simplicity of home fare wins out over polishing off their company manners and heading to a restaurant for fancier fare.
Even among my friends that do enjoy eating out there is some debate about what kind of meals should be eaten when away from home. I don’t eat burgers that aren’t homemade and won’t even eat a salad from McDonald’s. Their food just doesn’t agree with my digestive system and I prefer to eat a quick sandwich at the house than eat there. One of my friends recently went to one of the more pricey restaurants in our town and disliked the way everything was a la carte. I hate to experiment with my food and tend to eat only dishes made from familiar ingredients and spices. I like family restaurants such as Olive Garden or Red Lobster. I rarely feel like truly “fine dining”.
So, different strokes for different folks. What about you? Do you prefer to eat in or go out? What restaurants do you like?
– Maggie AAR
Thank you for any beneficial blog. The place in addition may I get that type of real information printed in a very excellent fashion? I own a mission that we are at the moment working away at, and i have ended up on the consider such information.
We don’t do buffets any more mostly because as we get older, we can’t eat enough to make them worthwhile, whereas in a restaurant we can share a meal or take half of it home.
We don’t mind a quick burger somewhere if we’re on the road or whatever, but we prefer our own cooking to restaurant food, plus there’s the cost. Our daughter took us out for supper last night to Boston Pizza and DH and I shared a fifteen dollar hamburger. What we like to do occasionally is go out for ethnic food, since that’s something we can’t always cook at home. In Lethbridge, the closest small city to us, there’s a Mexican place and a Vietnamese place that we’ll go to.
When we’re at our place in Vegas, my favorite is El Pollo Loco. I just really like their food, it’s close, and they have a nice little condiment bar that you can customize your food with and I think it’s reasonably priced.
I LOVE to go out to eat. Probably too much. It would definitely save me money if I a) took my lunch from home and b) cooked in more. We did build a deck this summer which means we’ve grilled more, which is progress for us.
And although I’m a somewhat picky eater (and a vegetarian too), I DO like to experiment. I love going new places, particularly if they are local and not chains. But don’t get me wrong – if my husband and I want to eat somewhere quick, cheap and dependable, we’ll go to On the Border. We also have a great local Irish pub type place called McCabe’s that’s reliable, close and fairly inexpensive.
One thing we don’t do? Buffets. My husband hates them, so we just don’t do them.
I work in downtown Seattle so I definitely go out to lunch with co-workers or friends every so often. Most times our choices include Cheesecake Factory, Sullivan’s Steakhouse, Palomino or Top of the Hilton. And I do try to eat healthy, usually ordering salmon or Caesar salad with chicken (the latter entree might not be super healthy but it’s yummy).
I LOVE to eat out. But I’m afraid to. Here in Texas restaurants are no longer required to post their inspection scores for patrons, so you can’t know if where you’re eating has excelled, or barely passed, or is under two week probation to clean up or close. I worry too much about cleanliness and have seen too many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares to take a restaurant at face value. Even the best, most expensive restaurant can have rats and cockroaches in the kitchen. Scary.
That is scary. Hence my refusal to watch kitchen nightmares. :-)
Unlike you, I don’t cook a lot. But I totally agree with you about eating out and the type of restaurants I enjoy. And I refuse to go to McDonald’s.