During May we continue in isolation due to the epidemic, so there was no eating out.
We have narrowed our range of take-out meals to those that travel well enough to not be compromised.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.44 ($2.69 in April)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $9.87 ($8.11)
- Dinner eaten at home: $5.14 ($6.21)
- 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 lunches of 64 meals in the month that were prepared outside the home.
We had our most expensive meal of the month twice, because we repeated the Rib Eye with Steak Fries and Garden Salad twice for $9.71 each time. Our evening meal average cost at the low end of the expected range.
This month, lunches at home cost 25% of the cost of eating lunches prepared outside the home. Dinners at home nominally cost 52% of those prepared outside the home.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $305.97 per person in January. We actually spent $60.94 for lunches at home plus $59.21 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $120.15 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 $159.28 for dinners at home and $0 for dinners out, or $159.28 in total.
This month’s savings from preparing most of our food at home is $326.54 and we had a lot more control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 24 different recipes for evening meals.