We usually cook at home and pack leftovers for lunch at work the next day, so not much has changed. We haven’t done takeout since we got home from vacation a week ago yesterday.
We may do it at some point, but with both of us home all day and plenty of groceries, there really isn’t a reason to. I enjoy cooking and am not working right now, so I have plenty of time to play with new recipes. Today I made 2 kinds of chickpea and greens stew (chard for me and kale for Tom Scud, who isn’t supposed to eat chard). Then I made a batch of Ethiopian spiced butter, and a batch of doro wot is in progress. Then there will be a batch of Ethiopian cabbage, carrots, and potatoes. There may be a batch of bread dough later to do its second rise in the fridge overnight and bake tomorrow.
I’m not arguing, but I think it’s worth pointing out that the reason for eating at restaurants is more than “better food.” There’s the fact that someone does all the work cooking, serving and cleaning up after the meal.
My wife is a very good cook, but she puts *a lot *of time and effort into each meal. While I enjoy the end product, I like to take her out so she doesn’t have to do it every day. (and yes, I do help with the chopping, etc., and the cleaning. I like to avoid that too).
Plus, we can’t easily recreate Thai, Indian, or sushi dishes.
We almost always cook our own meals. Mostly my wife, but not entirely. We get veggies delivered from a local rooftop greenhouse company that delivers once a week. They also carry a few staples like milk and eggs. That, along with what is in our freezer could keep us a good long time. But there are a few things we’re running low on.
Although I clicked on no change in habits, we would normally have celebrated our anniversary (pi day) by going to a restaurant, this time we omitted it.
More delivery, I’m trying to keep local places alive. Winter is brutal on Chicago restaurants and post St Patrick’s Day is when Chicagoans emerge from hibernation. I expect at least half of the restaurants in walking distance to close permanently.
I make most of our meals at home. I am planning on going to the store less often (once a week or less instead of every few days), using our local produce delivery company more often (every week instead of once or twice a month) and getting takeout or delivery from our local dining establishments who can’t be open for dine-in business right now (probably a couple times a month - wish it could be more but for a lot of reasons it can’t). I’ve also started to go freezer diving and we’ll see what’s in there that I’ve forgotten about!
But except for me buying breakfast at a McDonald’s drive-through a couple times a year, we almost never eat out. Our last time in a sit-down restaurant was last August, and before that it was November 2018.
We want to support some local restaurants, especially some Asian ones, so we have ordered some pickup foods more than normal. We also got Taco Bell the other day.
Burger King is giving away free kids meals with any purchase this week, so we’re doing that as well.
Yeah, some foreign dishes and those which require obscure ingredients or hours of prep time are good for restaurants.
But I like doing dishes. And there are lots of simple and good things to cook. The thing I made today, from the Times, required boiling some pasta, cooking some cut up bacon in olive oil and butter, throwing in a cup of frozen peas, then some heavy cream, then the pasta, some lemon juice from our lemons and Parmesan cheese from Costco. Couldn’t be easier.
I must say being retired gives you more freedom, since you don’t have to work around the schedule of kids or cook when you get home and you’re tired.
I love Ethiopian food, but it’s a cuisine I’ve never mastered. When I lived in Egypt I was able to get berbere that tasted right, so I could manage a few stews (but no teff available there, so no proper injera) but otherwise I’ve never been able to replicate the spice flavors. I stopped trying years ago and kind of forgot I’d ever tried. But with the easy availability of almost any exotic spice these days, I should probably try again.
So I demand your recipes, along with your sources of any particularly esoteric ingredients.
Slightly more eating at home. We generally go out to eat 3-4 times a month, but we’re also stress-cooks and stress-bakers, spending time in the kitchen to soothe our anxiety.
This weekend I made bread, and roast chicken and potatoes and sweet potatoes and broccoli and salad and hummus and a seafood pasta. My fifth-grader made a chocolate buttercake with orange Italian buttercream and an ombre sunset design. My wife’s gotten the short end of the stick, not getting to do much cooking, so she’s reserved some time for baking later in the week.
“Something else.” Before, we cooked about 65% of dinners, take-out (eat at home) 30%, and eat in restaurants 5%.
Now, the numbers are more like 80%, 20%, and of course 0%.
The biggest change is my school-age child’s lunches, which are now all home-made, whereas before they were half “home-made, but eaten in a restaurant-like setting,” and half “equivalent to eating out in a restaurant.”
My husband and I would always have at least one breakfast out on weekends, and anywhere from 2-5 other meals out during the week, depending on what was going on in our lives. But except for ordering pizza last Saturday, I’ve been doing all our meals at home. On one hand, it’s been fun trying new recipes. On the other, lots of dishwashing!
I’m single and don’t dine out because I think it a single diner looks pathetic. I do eat a lot of prepared meals from the local grocery store because by the time I get home from work, the barn or the gym, I’m too tired to cook. Now that the gym and the barn are closed I’m cooking more. I forgot how good freshly prepared food is, and that I like cooking.
We’re not on lockdown here…yet. We’re both still working. We usually (pre-virus time) get fast food or pizza takeout on Friday nights and sometimes Saturday or Sunday. Last Friday I attempted to pick up dinner from Culvers. The drive-thru line wrapped around the outer perimeter of the parking lot. There were at least 20 cars in line. I can’t imagine how long that wait would have been. In good times, Culvers is the slowest of the fast-food. So I decided it wasn’t worth it. We ate what was left of the chicken tortilla soup that I had made earlier in the week. The grandkids were over on Sunday and requested McDonald’s. The line wasn’t bad there. Maybe 4 cars ahead of me.
So I’m guessing we’ll cut down on our takeout. Maybe do pizza delivery once in a while instead. Good for my waistline and my wallet!
In before-times we ate out 4-5 nights a week and boy do I miss it already. Our freezer and pantry were pretty full, we have a farm market nearby, and have visited Aldis once recently.
We are cooking at home a lot now. My gf is working from home, so she eats lunches at home.
I’ve been doing a shit-ton of dishes. About 5 years ago my gf mentioned how she enjoyed working outdoors on our yard, but she hated doing dishes. I don’t mind doing dishes. So the dishes became my job. We have a dishwasher, but I’d rather do them by hand. Maybe quarantine will change my mind yet.
I have a tub of berbere in the pantry from when we visited Tom Scud’s sister in the Twin Cities - there are tons of Ethiopian immigrants there, and I love to check out interesting ethnic grocery stores. There are tons of berbere recipes online, but I can’t vouch for any of them.
Here’s the doro wat recipe I used. I used the spiced butter and added more of the spices, and marinated the chicken in the lemon juice for ~ 1 hour instead of adding the lemon juice at the end.
