As an aside, I am an avid eater of el cheapo foods, and I find that pre-packaged foods at supermarkets are terrible deals - most of them are no cheaper than getting it at a restaurant. e.g. I could never figure out who was buying Spam at close to $3 a can - that’s MORE expensive than fresh pork chops!
Well I dunno 'bout the rest of you but I wanna eat at Queen Bruins house.
Every Day
So the answer really is that pre-packaged crap from the store can be more expensive that crappy fast food.
Big whoop.
It doesn’t support your broader more general assertion about cooking @ home v eating out. It only supports your specific, particular, peculiar case.
Yeah I know, it’s the 21st century. I want a self-cleaning kitchen and a butt-wiping machine, but last I checked I have to clean my own kitchen and wipe my own butt unless I get sufficiently wealthy that I can pay someone else to do it.
and you’re eating the same thing, twice a day, for four days in a row. Which is a lot of whatever meal it was in the first place.
And no, it doesn’t taste better the 5th time around, much less the 8th.
Economies of scale definitely work in the favor of larger families (or eating groups) - especially when you’re talking about perishable or semi-perishable items. For a single person, (and sometimes a couple) the ability to buy just the amount needed (or with huge portion sizes, merely one day of leftovers) may make takeout or restaurants a lower price than cooking for oneself and being unable to eat the entire loaf of bread/head of lettuce/etc. before it goes south.
still a “taco kit” is a fantastic waste of grocery money.
Sadly (looking at my waistline), that I understand.
A few quick rules.
Watch the grocery ads. If you don’t get the paper, you can read the ads online. The meats you want aren’t on sale every week, so buy a bunch when they are.
Skinless, boneless chicken breasts are extremely easy to make into stuff. Buy a dozen on sale. Wrap each one in wax paper, and put the whole bunch in a big tupper-thing in the freezer, except for the one or two for tonight’s meal.
Whole pork loins are on sale every few weeks. They come in a big vacuum-packed lump. The butcher in most stores will slice it up for you for free. It’s really one long muscle, folded in half for the package. Tell him an inch thick. If you’re grilling, an inch and a quarter. Again, freeze them except for tonight’s meal. The pork loin is just about the finest part of a piggy, and if you buy the whole thing, it’s astonishingly cheap.
Get tomorrow’s meat out of the freezer into the refrigerator today. (My fridge runs cold, so it’s two days for me.)
There is lots more to say, but that will get you started.
I just went shopping last night and a bunch of the OPs ingredients are things I buy so here’s my breakdown of his “expensive” meal.
$6 worth of chicken–I bought boneless, skinless chicken breast last night for $1.79/lb so that works out to 3.35 lbs of chicken for six bucks. I sincerely doubt they needed more than a pound of that for tacos, so that leaves 2.35 lbs of chicken for another day, or $4.21 to spend on dessert.
$1.50 for a tomato–this is a bit high. I bought tomatoes for .98/lb last night and they ran about three to the pound so I call BS on this–acknowledging that there are probably lots of places with iniquitously high winter produce prices. However, if you use fresh chunky salsa there’s no need for a separate tomato purchase.
$3.50 for a “taco kit.” :dubious: – I think I’d go for corn tortillas, which I can pick up for about .75/dozen or about $2 for five dozen (this is overkill for anyone who eats less Mexican food than I though!) Bulk chili powder at Winco runs about $3.50 a POUND–about twelve cents worth would be overkill for tacos. So let’s call it ten cents worth of chili powder, ten cents worth of cumin and maybe a nice fresh jalapeno to chop up in the meat for savor–I bought those last night and eight or ten of them ran me about 50 cents–call it ten cents for the jalapeno. Fresh chunky salsa runs about $1.50 a pint which is good for a whole buncha tacos. So, how’m I doing on the “kit”-- .75 + .30 + 1.50 = 2.55 but since my version eliminates the need for a separate tomato and there will be both tortillas and salsa left over it’s actually less than that, but let it slide.
I bought a 2 lb chunk of Tillamook medium cheddar (NOT “store brand!”) for $5.48 and if they used more than a half pound I’ll be very surprised, so call it $1.35 for cheese.
Low fat sour cream. $1.28/pint, .98/pint for full fat. Again, if more than a third of this is used in one taco meal someone’s kinda gross–but let’s call it half of the more expensive stuff so .65.
My taco meal comes out to:
1.79 for one pound of white meat chicken
2.55 for tortillas, seasoning, and salsa
1.35 for cheese
.65 for sour cream
6.34 TOTAL–
–for a very generous dinner for two–will probably leave enough leftovers for a decent lunch. I would’ve thrown in a can of refried beans (.58 when I bought them last night–Taco Bell brand, at that!) and some Mexican rice but then I like to cook. I also would have thrown in a head of lettuce (1.98 for three romaine hearts, maybe use one total = .66) because I like lettuce on my tacos.
Therefore, I submit that if this taco dinner had taken place at my house I could have fed two people with a LOT more food than originally presented, for under ten bucks.
OP, either you’re quite disingenous about the subject and are just being objectionable for the pure sake of it or the market staff see you coming long before you hit the door of the supermarket and are steering you into the Potemkin Village store next door which is reserved for those with more dollars than sense. Only you know for sure which is the case but that won’t stop the rest of us from drawing our own conclusions.
What about those huge bags of frozen chicken breasts from Sam’s or the like? Seems like a pretty safe bet that that would always be cheaper than buying them individually from the grocery store, sale or no. I haven’t compared though.
It depends on the sale. Most of the time, the Costco chicken is cheaper, but sometimes you can get a real deal at the supermarket. The advantage to the Costco chicken is that you can get it premarinated, if that floats your boat.
I just discovered freezing rice a few months ago. I just pop in the microwave for a few minutes, and it’s ready to go. I wouldn’t make Japanese sticky rice that way (you eat that plain, after the meal), but when I make Chinese food, the sauce smothers the rice, and I can’t tell the difference.
Not that rice is a hassle to make, but it sure is not to have it in 5 minutes, vs 30.
I see one thing wrong with this post (and its an opinion not a general statment)
if you can find an equivalent meal at tacobell then your definition of food is far far FAR off the mark. one thing that keeps me from eating out is that I have a freezer full of great homemade food that is better than anything you can get eating out, unless you go someplace thats at least fairly expensive. the Mexican place near me has fantastic food but you are definitely going to spend 10$ per person and that would be rock bottom. the usual price is around $15 each without drinks or appetizers.
quality is a big factor, I seriously will not eat Mcdonalds or tacobell, when dog food costs more per pound than the food they are selling you that should probably raise some eyebrows. (no I dont think dog food costs more than tacobell but its not that far off the mark)
also people worried about eating the same thing for days on end, dont. make a big batch of whatever, freeze up most of it. then make a big batch of something else and do the same. eventually you end up with 4-8 different dishes in your freezer that you can zap in the microwave that are all a hell of a lot better than fast food will ever be.
I’d really like to see a cost benefit analysis on this. I have no doubt that one person can eat cheaper by dining out as well as it being cheaper for 10 people to go to the grocery store. So say the dining experience is your average dinner meal (Applebee’s) and the grocery store materials would be their equivalent. How many people before you break even?
My guess, 4…as long as everyone has the same thing.
As has already been pointed out, you can eat quite well (one or two people) for a few bucks a meal at home. Even at Applebee’s you’re going to spend $10 -$15 after you get something to drink, and pay the tax/tip. I’d be surprised if you could eat dinner for less.
I have no doubt that you could eat at McDonald’s or Taco Bell for about what you’d pay to make a meal at home. There would be a “slight” quality difference, though. 
I was just at my local Costco today, and noticed the price of frozen boneless chicken breasts was about $9.50/kilo, which is about $4.32 a pound, which is here a decent price for boneless chicken. I think the fresh boneless breasts ran more like $14/kilo. The price will vary depending on location, of course.
The real issue is that most of the individually frozen chicken breasts can contain up to 15% added water–I don’t much like paying white meat chicken prices for salt water, no matter how nice it is to pull a flat, single chicken breast out of a resealable package! I buy the family packs, and buy sandwich size ziplock bags at the dollar store, then put two breasts (about enough for one meal for two, most recipes) into each bag and freeze them. We also do the same for large chunks of pork (yesterday I found carnita meat for .98/lb and loin for 1.48/lb in family packs) divide them up into chops or smaller chunks and freeze them as well. We have a chest freezer (FREE from Craig’s List!) and keep it topped up–we also go to the Franz bakery outlets to get day old bread to freeze. That Asiago sourdough everyone pays 4.50/loaf for at Costco? I get it for two bucks and freeze it–yummiest stuff imaginable. Each time you buy five bucks worth of stuff at Franz’s they give you a free item–no limits.
There are so many ways to eat like royalty for peasant wages and I think I know all of them… 
Though I love Costco, you need to be aware of the sale price of things at the supermarket. It is often the same or less than you can get it at Costco, for smaller quantities. The supermarkets know the Costco prices very well, and are quite competitive, if you hit them at the right time. Our Luckys has a family size food section - I haven’t compared prices for that food with Costco, since I try to avoid Luckys whenever possible.
When I lived by myself, I ate for much less than I could if I ate out. You need to design portion control correctly. You can split mounds of ground beef into patties, and then use a few for meat loafs or ground beef meals, besides as hamburgers. You can use half a bag of frozen vegetables. I didn’t make stews, since that required me to be home too much (this was pre-crockpot) but that works also.
It takes a bit longer to amortize your spice investment, but there is no reason one needs to cost more than two. Without the kids my wife and I eat more cheaply than when we had four - not from portions, but from not buying stuff they decided was good on Saturday and were tired of on Wednesday.
There are a couple of good first cookbooks out there. When my daughter was cooking for herself at college we got her one where all recipes involved five ingredients or fewer. I’ve never used them myself, since my father’s family was in the restaurant business, and he taught me to cook in Boy Scouts. When I was in college I had a ground beef cookbook. I practiced with it so much that my wife admits that my meat loafs are better than her mothers. But cookbooks are good things, so long as you don’t start with ones that are too complicated. They also answer the simple questions, like how the heck do I cook this vegetable.
We’ve found that the Weight Watchers cookbooks are very good, with fairly simple recipes. You need to love red peppers though, since nearly ever recipe uses them for color.
You can do your own comparisons, in terms of price, size of pieces, and the coating of ice on the frozen breasts. When I buy them, it’s usually in packs of 3 or 4 breasts, “fresh,” which sometimes are partly frozen. Sometimes, they’re store-brand, more often they’re Tyson or Perdue. Boneless-skinless breasts these days are huge, nine or ten ounces each, easily two servings. You can also find frozen portion-sized chicken breasts, trimmed down to a uniform 6 ounces. For reasons I can’t quite define, I steer clear of those.
I know nothing of Canadian food prices. The last batch we bought here was $2.27US per pound.
It is implicit in much of the upthread advice, but to state it explicitly:
To save money cooking at home, you need to make it a regular practice.
At least cook at home more often than you dine out in any running 3 day window. If you only have time to cook on weekends, make enough to have leftovers at least 3 days during the week.
As for the value of your time: When the need arises I can throw a a yummy nutritious dinner for Kevbabe and myself togethor in about half an hour. Add 10 minutes amortized grocery shopping time, and 10 minutes of cleanup, and a half an hour to actually eat. So cooking at home cost ONE of us ~1.5 hours (rounding up) and the other .5 hours. = 2 person hours. Driving to a nearby resteraunt, dining, and driving home takes a minimum of 1.5 hr, and that ties us both up, so 3 person hours used dining out. Now add in the time we spent at work so we could pay the higher resteraunt tab, and eating out burns up much more of our time than dining in.
I no doubt skimmed over it, but among the staples others have mentioned, I’ll add fresh onions. The more I learn to cook, the faster I burn through the onion basket. They keep well, seldom are expensive, and add excellent flavor to many dishes.
A twist on what others have said: To eat cheap you need to buy what is on sale, and plan your meals around that. Kevbabe and I mostly do this prior to going to the store, using the grocery store sale ads that arrive in the mail. This cuts down on our impulse purchases, because we arrive at the store with a list and stick to it (well mostly), and also lets us plan some meals or cunsult the recipe library when making our decisions.