Photo by D’Arcy Norman
I like to cook. But even I sometimes eat out. I realized I shouldn’t assume everyone has the same reasons as me. So how about it? Why do you eat out?
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I dieted for nearly all my life, limiting myself to 1200 calories a day but something went off and in my brain and I couldn’t stand the thought of obsessing about what I was able to eat that day, constantly hungry and tallying calories.
I put “busy day”, but more accurately would be “I’m sick of fighting with my kids to eat something healthy and I’m too damn tired of it all to bother cooking tonight. I just want a salad, and I’ll have to cook something else for the kids and I just don’t want to fight tonight.”
It comes after a long day. . .I think it would just be easy to go to a restaurant and let someone else do all the work. Of course, by the time I get 6 kids ready to go and we have all agreed on something, gotten to the restaurant, been seated, and are waiting for our food I am usually thinking that I could have made something quick and easy at home that would have been so much less hassle.
When my children were growing up it was often because I was too busy or too tired to cook. Now if I’m too tired I make something really quick — like eggs or a sandwich or reheat leftovers and call it a meal.
When I do eat out now, and it’s pretty rare, it’s either because of socializing with friends and family or to have something specific that a restaurant makes better than I do — or that I don’t have the tools/ingredients to make. That limits the restaurants that I’ll frequent. And sometimes I just want to be waited on.
There is no ONE answer to that. Socializing with friends – yes. Date night – yes. Spent the whole day doing yard work and am exhausted (although that usually means pizza/chinese delivery) – yes. Sometimes it is just that I’m brain dead and don’t want to decide… or the thought of cooking a big meal AND cleaning up afterwards is too much. Sometimes it is because I need to go to the store because critical ingredients are missing and I didn’t manage to go. Often though I think if it were just me… I’d just heat up soup or fry an egg or eat the same leftover casserole for the third day in a row. But the family would revolt.
I remember early in my 1st marriage, I refused to learn to cook anything chinese or mexican. Because if I did, I knew I’d never get a break from cooking. That was just about the only time we’d go out to restaurants.