I’ve never even seen diced onions. But are they pure?
My kids always wondered why my nachos turned out better than theirs. After quizzing them I found that they bought already shredded cheese. I buy a block and shred it myself in the Cuisinart. When the store shreds it they must spray some kind of preservative on the shreds, since store shredded cheese doesn’t melt as well as my shredded cheese.
Yes it is kind of a pain, but well worth it.
Do you have a Trader Joe’s nearby? They definitely sell diced onion, in the produce/salad refrigerator. Safeway near my does as well. Check your local supermarkets. (And unrelated, but when supermarket salad bars first arrived, some article pointed out that they might be a cheap way of acquiring vegetables that were already cleaned and chopped into manageable sizes. So if, for example, you only need a few ounces of cauliflower for a recipe, it might make sense to buy it from the salad bar rather than buying a whole head of cauliflower, particularly if you toss most of the whole head.)
You forgot to add the cost of building the kitchen in the price of your first sandwich.
The mayo will last for a long time, as will the pickles and chips and Tabasco sauce.
This is the same kind of nonsense spouted by those who say that going to a restaurant is cheaper than cooking since you have to buy all those spices. And people wonder why they can’t save any money.
Why would anyone buy minced garlic? Buy a garlic press - problem solved.
All food is a matter of compromise, from hunting/gathering/fishing/growing every ingredient at one extreme to ordering ready-to-eat food for delivery at the other extreme. Unless you’re eating a very specific dish, some ingredient or another came from elsewhere. Some compromise by using minced garlic or diced onion or whatever in their dish. Others are making bread from wheat they grew at home, threshed, ground and kneaded into dough. There’s no one right way to make and eat food.
Also dishes that require lots of odd ingredients that I wouldn’t want to have to buy for one meal, or ingredients that require massive amounts of prep time.
And as for this; I realize you’re kind of kidding, but it does make a point. Of course you can prepare mixed drinks at home for less than a bar charges. And of course you can cook and eat food at home. But you go to a bar for reasons other than just consuming the drink. You go there to socialize with friends, family, strangers or even just the bartender. You go there to sit in what may be a nice room enjoying a drink that is well-presented. Similarly, part of the reason for eating out is the socialization, the atmosphere, the attractive plating.
What does ‘pure’ mean? Here in the produce section you can buy little plastic tubs of mirepoix, cut fine or coarse, for about $2 to throw into soup or stew. Or all onions. Or there are frozen diced onions.
Just so you know, I almost never eat at a restaurant because eating at home is almost always cheaper (and you don’t have to tip the server). Also, the pickles and chips will not last for very long at all at my house. The point I was trying to make was that if someone suddenly wants some random dish that you are not prepared to make, get ready to spend some money.
Not sure how you do that… the 1.75 liter bottle of Tito’s is about $28 by itself 
Seriously… I cook for way less than going out. It isn’t like I factor in the cost of one bologna sandwich… I will get 6-12 out of that cost.
Exactly. Though I do understand that apartment dwellers may not have the storage space for much in the way of pantry goods/floorspace for a freezer. But for those who have the ability to have a pantry and possibly a small freezer, it can be fairly cheap to keep enough stuff on hand to eat cheaply and in good variety.
Hard to beat good ‘home cooking’ which is an entirely different class of food than ‘fancy restaurant cooking’. I have a fondness for good sausage gravy on biscuits. Commercial biscuits are generally off limits now [palm shortening] and the gravy is pathetic [not enough sausage, or the gravy part is gluey and nasty] I am lucky that I can cook homestyle or restaurant [and a number of different homestyle cuisines though my favorite is still German from my Amish antecedents.]
I grew up baking the household bread and baked goods with my mom - for about 10 years. I can pretty much make bread in my sleep - though to be blunt, houswifery is working around a schedule just like any job. If I am in a bread production mode [it depends on my health and work status] I start by having a good sour dough starter which I prefer to dry yeast. I get up, spend 5 minutes either feeding my starter, or getting the basic dough together. While the dough is hanging out rising for the next day’s baking, I do house cleaning type tasks. [Or when I telecommuted, started my work day] Next morning, punch down and knead, then back in the bowl to rest. Clean something. Second knead and form, clean up the kitchen and get the oven ready for baking. Pop it in to bake, clean something. Take it out and let sit on the counter cooling. Clean something. In the 2 to 3 hours, I can have an entire 2 bedroom house/apartment cleaned, and then it is time to start dinner. I don’t know about anybody else, but I learned my homemaking skills from my Mom old school.
Sourdough starter is about on par costwise with buying dry yeast, but takes a smidge of work every couple days to keep alive. Not a big deal if you plan for it. But the ability to control the ingredients makes for a better wuality loaf overall IMHO - I don’t like a lot of additives. My bread tends to be flour, water, yeast, salt. Occasionally I add some form of dairy [milk or melted butter] oil [olive or melted butter] or egg. Sometimes seasonings [garlic and herb]
Pretty much ditto =)
And now sous vide setups are common and reasonably cheap. I had a sous vide specific kitchen tool [more or less the civilian version of Sous Vide Supreme] and as I remember, it ran me around $700 back in the early 2000s. My current set up is an Anova stick sous vide, and a specific rectangular ‘tupperware-ish’ plastic container that has an Anova sized hole and is specific for sous vide wands. It has a cute metal rack to hold the sealed foods away from the stick. I think the whole thing wand and all was under $150US sourced on Amazon.
What makes flour kosher, aside from during Passover? Just a factory that certifies no meat or cheese mixing?
Haven’t been to TJ in awhile, will check next time. I’ve never seen it at Safeway, but then I don’t go there often either because they’re expensive.
Ha. We had one of those heaters in the house I grew up in. Once when my brother was a toddler he squirmed away from my mother when she was drying him after a bath and burned his butt on it. He had this lovely barcode “brand” on his butt for years. We still occasionally tease him about it…and he’s eligible for Medicare next year.
I have never rented an apartment that didn’t come with a freezer.
They probably mean a chest/deep freezer
I decided to make my own vanilla, and picked up a fifth of the cheapest vodka the discount grocery down the road from me sells. (I’ll have to go elsewhere for the vanilla beans.) The teenage cashier asked me, “Headed to a party?” and I replied, “This kind of thing wouldn’t happen at the kind of party I would attend, and believe me, a lot of the ‘fun’ goes away once you’re legal.”
I then told her what I was going to do with it, and that this bottle will probably outlive me. 
Good. But I’ve heard the “I can’t afford to cook at home because of spices” stuff a lot. Unless you plan to throw the stuff away, you can’t charge the full cost of a purchase to a single meal.
The Times last Sunday had an excellent supplement with recipes requiring only one pot. We spent more than usual at the store buying ingredients for it. Still cheaper than eating out.
[QUOTE=aruvqan;22153004
I grew up baking the household bread and baked goods with my mom - for about 10 years. I can pretty much make bread in my sleep - though to be blunt, houswifery is working around a schedule just like any job. If I am in a bread production mode [it depends on my health and work status]
I start by having a good sour dough starter which I prefer to dry yeast. I get up, spend 5 minutes either feeding my starter, or getting the basic dough together. While the dough is hanging out rising for the next day’s baking, I do house cleaning type tasks. [Or when I telecommuted, started my work day] Next morning, punch down and knead, then back in the bowl to rest. Clean something. Second knead and form, clean up the kitchen and get the oven ready for baking. Pop it in to bake, clean something. Take it out and let sit on the counter cooling. Clean something. In the 2 to 3 hours, I can have an entire 2 bedroom house/apartment cleaned, and then it is time to start dinner. I don’t know about anybody else, but I learned my homemaking skills from my Mom old school.
[/QUOTE]
When our first kid was little my wife baked a lot of bread, and even sold some of it to restaurants near by. The one negative of home baked bread is that since you don’t put in preservatives, you need to eat it fast or freeze it. Also true of good bread you get from a bakery.
This is true (unless you throw all of the leftovers away). On the other hand, you sometimes must make an initial expenditure that is much, much greater than the cost of the first, single meal before you can have that first, single meal.