Learning to Eat More Meals at Home

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Eating More Meals at Home is a good place to start:

    If you read personal finance blogs long enough, you’re going to get the idea hammered into you that cooking for yourself rather than eating out all the time is a key part of getting your budget under control.  But what if you’re lazy, and a crappy cook to boot?  Then what? Well, I’m lazy, and I used to be a crappy cook [occasionally still am!].  But these days, almost 100% of our meals are cooked from scratch, by me.  This did not happen overnight, that’s for sure. So, here’’s what worked for me.

The author advises that people making the transition from dining out to eating at home should:

    * Start small — Pick one day a week to make meals at home, or two, or three. Start with easy recipes.

    * Start with simple ingredients — Don’t make it complicated. Don’t be afraid to start with prepackaged foods. (One of my favorite meals has always been a can of chili¹. It always will be. I just bought a case of the stuff at Costco yesterday for 86-cents a can.)

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    * Find a good source of recipes — Borrow some cookbooks from the library or from a friend. Find one you like. Learn to cook from it. Copy out your favorite recipes.

    * Use the Taco Bell approach — Learn to recombine a few basic ingredients into multiple tasty dishes.

I have friends who dine out for nearly every meal: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m sure they have a good time and eat well, but this is an expensive habit. Some people don’t eat at home because they don’t know how to cook. It’s easy to learn, though. And cooking is a skill that you can use for the rest of your life.

AskMetafilter often fields questions about cooking at home. Here are some of my favorite:

    * brilliant “dinner hacks”? “I am looking for unique ideas for making quick, easy, heathy, inexpensive dinners (in my case, for two) every night… or at least most nights. “

    * What do you think is the cheapest, healthiest, tastiest, easiest meal to prepare?

    * And for advanced cooks: How do you impress your dinner guests?

With just a little practice, you can learn to make tasty, nutritious² meals quickly. And in time you will find that you’ve mastered a particular recipe or two and can take pride in serving delicious food to friends and family. (I make a killer³ clam⁴ chowder.)

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