Our farm has a pond and a swampy area in the one pasture. We put bat houses up all over the place and have a decent population. Sitting on the porch sipping wine we go from bird watching to bat watching and peeper listening. I rarely see or get bitten by skeeters.
Back in the old country (Los Angeles) dining inside or out made zero difference to me. Now that I’m in this windy, rainy shithole in the Midwest, if the weather’s nice and there’s the option to be seated outside, I will take it every single time. If my apt had a patio, I’d eat on it every single warm day we have. Okay, probably not every warm day, but a lot of them.
I really love eating outside- bbq, camping, patio dining at restaurants,etc. However, we don’t eat outside at home. My porch is just too tiny to sit down for a meal. However, it’s perfect size for drinking al fresco while reading a book. The plants and hummingbirds keep me company and although it’s hot as hell here, our a/c is so effective, I usually retreat to the porch from 7 pm- 9pm.
To me, eating outside is something you do as part of something else, not something you do for its own sake. And I would never see the point in eating the same food outside that I would normally eat inside. Outside dining is for food that is cooked outside. Or for foods that aren’t really cooked at all (aka the sack lunch).
If I could avoid it I would never go inside the apartment, so I definitely eat outside as much as possible.
I just wish we had a house of our own or a deck or pretty much anything to make it easier to be outside other than a 4’ x 4’ piece of concrete that is completely taken up by my grill and the area to open the screen door I added to the apartment. Outside of the concrete is about 2 feet of somewhat level grass leading to a very steep hill, so it is pretty hard to find anywhere to deploy the folding chairs. No chance at all at a table.
Yes. When at home I like to watch the boob tube while eating but I also like eating outside so I got a telly and put it outside so I can do both.