Learn How to Cook at Home to Save Time and Money

Have you gone to the grocery store with every intention of preparing meals at home, only to find that you're missing crucial ingredients, the necessary time (and energy), or some cooking know-how to pull a menu together? There are few things more frustrating than buying food and having it go to waste because we just weren't prepared for the task. It can seem like everything from road signs to commercials to well-meaning friends are conspiring to keep us dining out.

So before you start a meal plan and buy groceries, take a look at some of the things that could be holding you back and sabotaging your efforts on the home front.. Here's a guide to finding out why you're eating out and then finding ways to make eating at home an even more rewarding and renewing ritual than you ever thought possible.

Why do you really eat out?
The Latte Factor fallacy - it's not the coffee we're after.

There's the obvious answer first - "I don't know how to cook." That's easy to address in the list of steps below. But there's another more important reason that keeps us headed out instead of home.

In our society, eating out frequently isn't just about getting food. It's relaxing. It's social. The waiter who always knows your order. The familiar faces at happy hour. The biggest flaw in giving up that daily latte, and why so many people haven't, even when money's tight, is that it ignores the social aspect of the routine. Eating out, whether enjoying happy hour with friends, or connecting with familiar faces over morning cappuccino, is a social habit. If getting breakfast tacos with coworkers, or chatting with neighbors over barbecue is in your routine, cooking tacos at home by yourself, is not going to feel rewarding. In fact, it could actually feel like punishment. So recognize what you really get from eating out, and look for other ways to meet that desire, without spending so much dining out.

The advice for this goes along, conveniently, with the advice I give to people who don't know where to begin to learn to cook.

1.) Take classes. Local colleges, high end grocery stores, Whole Foods and other "natural foods" focused chains, frequently have inexpensive (or even free) cooking classes. Start there. This serves several functions at once. It increases knowledge and confidence in preparing your own food, gets you in touch with others that might share your tastes, and helps keep you excited about preparing food for yourself and your family.

2.) Go to a food prep franchise. These businesses (see list below) provide everything you need - prepped ingredients, utensils, easy to understand instructions and help from staff members, to help you prepare a week's (or more) worth of meals for your family in a short period of time. Not only do you have everything you need to get it done fast, but you also get an idea of how to build menus for yourself in your own kitchen.

3.) Start entertaining. It sounds like much too big a step to go from barely able to warm up soup - to holding dinner parties, but the step doesn't have to be huge at all. Instead of happy hour, try holding a very casual taco night with warmed taco shells, seasoned hamburger, and taco toppings. The important thing is to get other people involved in your cooking endeavor.

Are you running away from home?

Now that you have some basic skills under your belt, it's time to take it home. In the first section we looked at why we eat out - but now it's time to ask yourself the other side of the question. Why aren't you eating at home? It's not precisely the same question. Frequently, it's not just lack of food in the fridge that's keeping us out - it's the way our kitchen, or even our house is set up.

If we're dreading coming home to a dirty kitchen, where we'll have to clean the kitchen before we can even cook, then clean it again when we're done - well, it's no wonder we'd rather eat somewhere else. If we're avoiding our entire house because it's a mess than that's an even bigger issue, for another article. All that matters is that in order for us to want to be home to cook and eat - we have to want to be there. Having a clean house (at least a clean, organized kitchen) is essential to making cooking at home a rewarding, renewing experience, and not a kind of punishment.

With two dogs, a cat, and with my husband and I hardly ever home, taking control of household chores is a constant challenge. Choose your battles. Address the fundamental things first - your kitchen and bathroom(s), for health reasons if nothing else, need to be clean. If you're going to cook at home, your kitchen needs to be ready.

One resource that I go to again and again is a book called Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson. It's an outstanding guide to everything you could ever want to know about running a household. In the chapter titled "Food", Mendelson covers everything from finding the time for cooking (you have more than you think), to making meals without recipes, to what to stock in your kitchen. With Mendelson's book, or a similar guide, you can take back your kitchen - even your whole house.

Sneaky Home Cooking Myth: Eating at home isn't always cheaper

It truly depends on what you eat. If you normally eat at fast food joints, cooking at home may, initially especially, cost you more. In order to make sure your food bill stays in line with your budget, you have to take a close look at what you're eating. Start small if you have to and just replace a few meals at a time - like bringing your lunch. Then, experiment with a few simple meals.

For both financial and health reasons, I really don't like convenience foods (frozen dinners, box dinners, heat-and-eat soups and stews). There's a reason they're cheap - but even that's deceptive. How much real food are you actually getting with that frozen meal? If you look at the ingredients on some of these, you can find a whole lot of ingredients that aren't food - they're preservatives, texturizers, dyes, and other additives to make the food more appealing - but add nothing to nutritional value of the food. That's not to say you won't find it in my kitchen - you will. However, I'm very particular about what we eat in that regard. There are more organic varieties and healthy options then there used to be, but check those labels.

What if you just love the meals in restaurants and you're afraid home cooking just won't be up to par? Check out CopyKat.com's restaurant knock off recipes. You won't be disappointed.

Finally, be patient.

Just remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, and your cooking-ready kitchen won't be either. So be patient and be realistic. This isn't going to happen overnight, particularly if you need a crash course in cooking.

Resources

Need support and a quick education, try these meal prep chains, which can be found at Wikipedia.org on the Super Suppers page:

- At Home Dinners, a similar company offering, meal assembly and assembled entrees per customer's likes and dislikes. Fresh ingredients and homemade sauces are their specialty. Based in Plano and Frisco, Texas.
- Dinner My Way, same concept, but customers can select which meals you want, instead of all the menu items. Minimum of 3 meals that serve 4-6 people.
- Dinners Ready, another meal assembly kitchen with locations throughout the United States.
- Dream Dinners, the originator of the meal assembly franchise concept.
- Entrée Vous. A meal assembly kitchen that uses fresh herbs, chops fresh vegetables and offers 14 family sized entrees every month.
- Entrees Made Easy, a meal assembly kitchen that utilizes a full-commercial kitchen to make everything in the store from scratch rather than a from a can. Also a franchise with local ownership.
- Let's Eat, a gourmet meal preparation kitchen.
- My Girlfriend's Kitchen is a leading meal prep company with locations across the country that are franchises owned by local owners.
- SupperThyme USA. Locations throughout the United States with local owners. Also serves health foods and kids food.
- Super Suppers, another company with a similar concept.
- The Easy Entree. Locally owned and independently operated in Bellingham, Washington.
- The Secret Chef, A locally owned (Doylestown, PA) Meal Assembly Company that specializes in fresh food (organic choices available).