Day 94: Food Preparation

Hi again everyone!

Today, I'm gonna be talking a bit about a few different ways of preparing meals, and how they compare in terms of cost, effort and taste.

Homemade foods are almost always the best tasting- or at least, I think of them that way. My dad cooks quite a bit, and he is rather good at it, so I've always associated homemade meals with good-tasting meals. The nice thing about them is, you determine what goes in to them, so you can decide how healthy, or unhealthy, they should be, as well as what they should taste like. They're pretty cheap, too- although it can seem expensive buying $15 worth of ingredients to make spaghetti bolognese, that's a bit misleading. A brick of cheese can last many batches, as can a package of ground beef, or a bag of noodles- and even then, one batch is good for half a week's worth of meals for one person, so when you work it out, each meal is actually pretty inexpensive. The downside is the time and effort- making a pizza takes just as long as ordering one, if not longer, and you have to be actively working (or at least watching the oven) the entire time.

Delivery food can be pretty good, though it really depends on the restaurant. There are pros and cons to delivery- it's pretty fast (especially if you have something to do while you wait, and don't just sit outside in the cold listening to music because you don't trust yourself to keep track of time), very easy (especially if you order online), and generally, it gets served still hot. On the other hand, it is expensive. Not only are you paying for restaurant food (which is already pricey), but you have to pay for delivery and a tip for the driver. That $15 I mentioned you'd need to get everything for at least one batch of spaghetti would hardly cover a large pizza from some places, let alone another $5+ for delivery and tips. Delivery is still good if you don't have time to cook for, say, a party, and you can order enough that it's not a 25% fee. The best thing is when places have free delivery over $20- you spend just as much as you would otherwise, but get more food for it.

Instant foods are really hit-and-miss. They take less time than both homemade and delivery, but they actually take at least a tiny bit of effort (arguably less than it takes to order delivery). On the other hand, most of them are pretty bland, and the ones that aren't are usually a bit unpleasant in terms of taste. They're also rarely nutritious. There are exceptions of course- some things, like frozen fish sticks, are decent in terms of nutrition (probably less so than fresh, but not much worse than some restaurants). I very seldom choose to have instant foods as a meal- more often, I find that there's nothing else I could have without putting well over half an hour of work in, so I settle for them. One plus, though, is that they can actually be really cheap- instant noodles can be less than a dollar per serving, and we've found some decent ones before where one serving is enough to be filling, and they come with 5 or so different sauces and seasonings per package (though honestly, we all ate way too many and got sick of them).

Anyways, that's it for today- hopefully you enjoyed this post!
(also, a quick aside- it seems the site I use changed their image hosting, so I might not be able to put my usual blog image in these. Hopefully this isn't permanent)