During April we continue in isolation due to the epidemic.
Instead of dining in at our favorite local restaurants, we got to experience them as take away. It’s also pretty clear that there are some meals that are best eaten quickly after being prepared.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.69 ($2.45 in March)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $8.11 ($9.13)
- Dinner eaten at home: $6.21 ($5.83)
- Dinner eaten out: none, but for comparison $10.00, which would otherwise be our minimum “meal out” spend.
Our lunches at home average in a fairly narrow band and this month’s average is almost exactly the same as last month.
We ate 10 of the 64 meals in the month that were prepared outside the home, all lunch.
Our most expensive meal for the month was our Bone In Pork Chops at $12.58 per serve.
This month, lunches at home cost 33% of the cost of eating lunches prepared outside the home. Dinners at home nominally cost 62% of those prepared outside the home.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $243.30 per person in January. We actually spent $59.17 for lunches at home plus $81.07 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $156.12 in total.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $300 per person. We actually spent $192.37 for dinners at home and $0 for dinners out, or $192.37 in total.
This month’s savings from preparing most of our food at home is $194.51 and we had a lot more control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 22 different recipes for evening meals.
