Tips for cutting back on eating out?

[Deleted]

SO and I eat out a lot- nothing fancy, but neither of us particularly enjoy cooking and our current kitchen is to small to be really functional.

Since we'll be moving next month, we want to get into the habit of eating at home more. Neither of us are picky about food but I don't like to eat very much meat. Does anyone have suggestions that would help shift our eating habits?

[Overthemoon]

Meal plan for the week so you aren't scrambling to figure out dinner every day. Prep ahead as much as you can or keep meals ready to go in the freezer so you can pull them out and pop in the oven instead of going out. We use our slow cooker all the time and it makes the evenings so much easier.

[lilybug]

My XH and I were the same way before kids. The way we finally cut back was to make a schedule for who would cook each night (based on what was convenient for our work schedules). We'd sit down one night a week and browse recipes to plan meals together.

I think we gave ourselves one night a week for going out, one for delivery or fast-ish food (subs, tacos) and one for a non-planned dinner (sandwiches, cereal, leftovers). So we only had to plan two meals each to cook.

[urbancowgirl]

I plan a week's worth of meals and go to the grocery store once a week. We've done it this way for five years, so we have a good amount of tried and true recipes from which to choose. Not gonna lie, it can get tedious to plan a menu every. single. week. I try to try a new recipe once a week to keep things fresh. I follow a few food blogs for inspiration. (I especially like Closet Cooking.) I usually build in a weekly "freebie" dinner so that we can eat out if we want to. I also try to keep ingredients on hand for "easy" meals (pasta w/meatballs, breakfast platters, chef salads, etc.) in case we don't feel like cooking.

[lola]

Find easy way to cook the things you go out to eat for.

We eat out a LOT, and being in Chicago we can eat whatever we want, whenever we want. A  big thin for us has been figuring out what we're going out for, then learning how to make those things. My H loves cheeseburgers. So, even though I'm not a huge fan, I've learned to make a pretty good burger and I keep it in our meal rotation to keep us from going out for them once a week.

Menu planning and meal prepping are also huge. Clean and prep any produce you have on Sunday so it's ready during the week. Planning meatloaf? Mix it up on Sunday after you grocery shop, wrap it in plastic wrap, and freeze it. Pull it out Wednesday and stick it in the fridge. Bake when you get home from work Thursday.

[midnightrae]

Meal planning and shop based on your meal plan. If you are horrible at remembering to take frozen meat out like I am, set an alarm in your phone.

[Deleted]

Ditto on the importance of meal planning. We make bigger portions and freeze meals when possible. When my schedule changes unexpectedly, I can usually find at least one meal in the freezer. I also love my cheapo rice cooker. We eat a lot of brown rice, and it's easy to get a batch going in the rice cooker while I saute some chicken and steam a vegetable. I cook up leftover veggies at the end of each week and then freeze them. When I really don't feel like cooking I throw the veggies in a frittata; I can have dinner on the table in 20 minutes with very minimal effort. You can also save the leftover veggies and saute them with some leftover rice, soy sauce, and eggs for a quick veggie fried rice.

[livinitup]

We meal plan for the week and go grocery shopping once a week. I keep a good stock of pantry items and frozen things. I usually "shop" my pantry/freezer before I make my grocery list. Then I just buy salad stuff and ingredients to round-out my meals for the week.

In the summer we do a lot if sandwich nights, and grilled food. In the winter, I like soups and tomato sauce. I love leftovers and make a point of "cook once, eat twice".

[sawyerthedestroyer]

Meal planning helped us a lot.

This is going to sound really stupid and maybe a little Stepford, but I like to do a theme for each night of the week that way when I'm drawing a blank on what to plan for I just do something within that theme. It helps me at least.

So we have:
Meatless Mondays - something vegetarian that I probably found on pinterest.
Taco Tuesdays - tacos, tostadas, taco salad, fish tacos, enchiladas.
Spaghetti Wednesday - almost always spaghetti with red sauce from a jar because I'm lazy.
Comfort Thursdays - roast chicken or meatloaf.
Fish Fridays - flounder, salmon, trout.
Soup/Salad Saturdays - Crock Pot soups are usually in the winter and salads are in the summer. I like to use the leftover chicken from Thursday in the soup or salad if I can.
Sundays - we grill or use it as our freebie day where we eat out or get take-out.

Like I said, stupid, but it also helps because H knows not to go out and get tacos for lunch on Tuesday, for example.

[macmars45]

H and I have a small kitchen as well so I understand.

We make things that are fast during the week because we both come home from work really hungry. Spaghetti, tacos, breakfast for dinner, mac & cheese, pizza, rice, chicken (which we grill on our george foreman) etc. We make sure to buy plenty of fresh fruits & veggies/salad on the weekends so we can have at least semi healthy easy quick meals during the week. On the weekends we'll make taco meat (for use during the week), have baked potatoes, meatloaf or casseroles that take more time to cook.

Also, H and I only factored 4-5 eat out meals a month into our budget. We don't go over that because it's not in the budget. (Not sure if setting a limit would work for you & your SO.)

[cereal K]

Another person here on the meal planning train. We're usually pretty shot on time, so I've amassed a list of easy, quick meals we like that we can throw together on a weeknight. Having a plan and having all of the ingredients on hand make it soooo much easier to stick with in.

[snickers]

I used to eat out a lot...then I went online and read some of the reviews for the places I loved. When I saw their violations I stopped wanting to honour as much lol!

[urbancowgirl]

Jun 9, 2013 11:37:57 GMT -5 sawyerthedestroyer said:

Meal planning helped us a lot.

This is going to sound really stupid and maybe a little Stepford, but I like to do a theme for each night of the week that way when I'm drawing a blank on what to plan for I just do something within that theme. It helps me at least.

So we have:
Meatless Mondays - something vegetarian that I probably found on pinterest.
Taco Tuesdays - tacos, tostadas, taco salad, fish tacos, enchiladas.
Spaghetti Wednesday - almost always spaghetti with red sauce from a jar because I'm lazy.
Comfort Thursdays - roast chicken or meatloaf.
Fish Fridays - flounder, salmon, trout.
Soup/Salad Saturdays - Crock Pot soups are usually in the winter and salads are in the summer. I like to use the leftover chicken from Thursday in the soup or salad if I can.
Sundays - we grill or use it as our freebie day where we eat out or get take-out.

Like I said, stupid, but it also helps because H knows not to go out and get tacos for lunch on Tuesday, for example.

We do Meatless Mondays and Taco Tuesdays, too!  Great minds...

Friday is usually our freebie day and I like to try new recipes on weekends when I have more time to cook.

[nomad100]

We menu plan. For us, that is the main thing that keeps us away from eating out.

We also prep stuff ahead of time (stuff for salads, snacks for lunches, etc.) We also pre-cook stuff like rice, couscous or potatoes on Sunday so we can just reheat during the week.

We use the crockpot a lot. Probably more in the summer than the winter since we are more conscious of not heating up the kitchen (no central air).

We make extra portions and have specific leftover/forage in the fridge nights where you are on your own to get yourself dinner since there is plenty of stuff in the fridge.

On our menu for this week:
Sunday: BBQ chicken on the grill with a side salad and corn on the cob
Monday: Flat bread pizzas with a fruit salad
Tuesday: Strawberry Chipotle marinated Pork roast with wild rice and green beans
Wednesday: Salsa Verde Enchiladas (chicken cooked in the crockpot) with a side salad
Thursday: Forage in the Fridge
Friday: Forage in the Fridge
Saturday: Out to dinner for MIL's birthday

[Deleted]

Thanks everyone! I appreciate all the tips.

[redheadk]

I subscribe to emeals bc I got a great deal on one of those deal sites. We do the clean eating for 2 plan and it's plenty of food for the 2 of us and DD, plus normally some leftover for lunch the next day. The recipes are normally pretty simple but good. There is typically at least one vegetarian meal, one or two fish/seafood meals, and then the rest have meat. The very best part is that it makes the shopping list for you so it's meal planning without any work.

I love the app because you can choose to skip meals on it if something isn't to your taste and it will adjust the shopping list accordingly.

[dragonfly08]

Definitely meal plan. That means you're able to prep some stuff in advance and you don't waste time deciding what's for dinner (only to possibly find you don't have what you need once you've chosen a meal!).

Also, if possible, make extra. There are two ways to approach that...one is to include something in your meal that that you plan on repurposing in the next few days for another dish. Have roast chicken tonight, and chicken salad sandwiches tomorrow or the next, for example. The other approach is just to batch cook at least your entree...make two or three times the amount for about the same prep/cook time, then freeze the leftovers for future use. I like casseroles (lasagna, tetrazzini), stews and chili for this since they're pretty much an entire meal - protein and veg - ready to go. Add a salad and/or bread when you defrost it and you're done.

The crock pot is a big help, too. Toss the stuff in, come home to dinner. Also an easy peasy way to make extras.

I'll have a leftover night once in a while. We all end up eating something different...the kids can choose from whatever odds and ends I scrounge up in the fridge, pantry and/or freezer that I want to get rid of because it's either been there a while or there's not enough of it to make a full meal for all of us.

[hautemommy]

We were eating out 2-3 times a week. I saw on someone's blog about emeals and signed up. It has REALLY helped us. It plans the meals for us, I even have an app that downloads the grocery list and recipes. They have a lot of plans to choose from, we use the healthy gourmet. Here's my link if you want to sign up (I get free weeks if you use) emeals.com/account/go.php?r=382122&i=b2

[nomad100]

Oh, and for us it was a process in getting onto the menu planning/no eating out band wagon.

We started out with the goal of planning a couple of meals a week. Then a whole week. Then prepping in advance. Then making double portions so we could freeze half. We didn't try to tackle it all at once. Next up for us is Once a Month Cooking. That has been next on the list for like a year.

Don't feel like you have to make the big switch to menu planning overnight. Ease into it. I think you will be more likely to stick with it.

And there is nothing wrong with going out. If you enjoy it, build it into your weekly menu plan.

[Overthemoon]

Oh, another thing that makes meal planning a lot easier for me is using Pinterest. I have a board for entrees, a weight watchers entrees board, a salads board, etc. and I save every favorite recipe and new ones that look good. I find it so much easier to look there every week and pick ones that look good vs. trying to come up with the meal plan off the top of my head. Plus it helps us stay out of a food rut.

[grover]

When we first started meal planning, a lot of food went to waste because we'd decide that we really didn't want to eat (or cook) what was on the menu and going out to eat sounded so much easier/better.

We finally realized that cooking isn't something we want to prioritize our time on. Our solution has been to find some recipes that yield 4-8 servings, and cook fewer times per week. Took a little time to get used to eating the leftovers, but H would prefer that over freezing the leftovers. For example, two Skinny Taste recipes we use once a week (we rotate) are the baked broccoli mac and cheese (gives us 2 nights of dinners + 1 lunch usually) or the chicken sausage/pasta/escarole dish (gives us 3 nights of dinners). Menu planning is a lot easier and takes less time when we only need to figure out 3-4 meals for the week, and we've also noticed both our eating out and grocery store totals decreasing as well.

[midnightmare81]

A biggest thing for us that helped was learning how to make the things we would normally eat out, as another person suggested. Some restaurants even have some of their recipes online, such as olive garden. We rarely go out now, and when we do, we either use Groupon, take advantage of lunch specials, or do things like half price apps at Applebees. This way we feel like we are going out, but we are still saving money.

I do what most people here would not suggest. I do NOT meal plan. I am weird with food and have to be in the mood for something. If I "have" to eat it that night, I am more likely to NOT want it. I usually stock up on things we use a lot of when they are on sale, and then we just make what we want with what we have. We usually have a broad variety of stuff, and H is really creative, so we can usually make something we want.

[pantsparty]

I'm not great at meal planning, but I do make an effort to 1) buy lots of meat when it's on sale and 2) make enough either for leftovers, or to freeze. So usually when we're grocery shopping for the week, I see what I have in the freezer and back up my meals from there. Since it's only 2 of us, we usually have enough leftovers to last a couple of days. If we don't eat them quickly, I will freeze them and then take them out every so often and have those for lunches.

[noodle]

H and I are often on different schedules so I try to make things that can be frozen as single servings. I'm not great about meal planning, but if I know I have chicken breasts already frozen in marinade in the freezer, I'll skip the take out and make the chicken.

So I usually try to always have: veggies for salad, a couple types of frozen veggies, chicken breasts individually frozen in ziploc bags in marinade (no microwave, but 15 minutes in a bowl of water will thaw it if I forget to throw it in the fridge before going to work), homemade tomato sauce or meat sauce frozen in individual servings, quick cooking brown rice, quinoa, and pasta. With that in the fridge/freezer/pantry, even without planning ahead I can usually get dinner on the table within 45 minutes of getting home. Plus I try to make 1 meal a week that I haven't made before and if I like it that goes in my recipe file to make again.

[Deleted]

No tips from me.

[dapotato]

i'm the lone "11-13 times per week" on the other poll, but it wasn't always like this. the only thing that really worked for us, because we both work a decent amount, was to meal plan and cook as much as we could on the weekend. then on weekdays, all we had to do was heat up whatever of the 3-4 things we had cooked. i was also a little more flexible in my meal planning than some. i'd pick 3-5 things that sound good to make but not assign them to specific days. that way, if i was home a little later than usual from work one night, i'd just pick the quickest thing to make. and i always made extra for lunch and/or dinner the next day.

[speckledfrog]

Ditto everyone, make a meal plan. It's much easier to say WTH, let's just eat out when you don't have anything lined up.

Also freeze some meals so you have an easy option.

[Deleted]

I'm on the app, or I'd be in that category, too, dapotato.

[Deleted]

Also.

Whenever this topic comes up, nothing that anyone posts sounds remotely appetizing to me. Lol.

I will eat out for life. It's ok because I probably won't live that long.

[speckledfrog]

Jun 9, 2013 15:34:20 GMT -5 @misoangry said:

Also.

Whenever this topic comes up, nothing that anyone posts sounds remotely appetizing to me. Lol.

I will eat out for life. It's ok because I probably won't live that long.

Food snob.

I think the difference may be that you don't actually want to cut back on eating out.  I'd eat out all time if I had the money and waistline to do it.  Instead I make do with my plate of of substandard crap.