While we spent most of the month at home, there was a weekend away for a conference in Cupertino, CA.
We had a lot of good food this month, including some excellent Hunanese style Chinese food at Sizzling Gourmet in Cupertino.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.71 ($2.25 in October)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $11.62 ($10.70)
- Dinner eaten at home: $6.63 ($5.76)
- Dinner eaten out: $22.13 ($21.99).
Our lunches at home average in a fairly narrow band and this month is only a few cents per serve up from last month. Lunches prepared outside the home are also lower.
Our most expensive meal was at Cafe Torre in Cupertino at $34.34 per serve for good, but not great, Italian.
Our most expensive at home meal was our Australian Style Cobb Salad with the the dry aged rib eye at $11.97 per serve. This month’s meals at home are slightly over our long term averages.
Lunches at home cost 23% of the cost of eating food prepared outside the home, while dinners at home cost 30% the average of dinner out this month.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $348.60 per person in November. We actually spent $48.83 for lunches at home plus $127.84 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $176.67 in total.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $663.90 per person. We actually spent $145.82 for dinners at home and $132.79 for dinners out: $278.61 in total.
We saved $557.22 by preparing and eating most meals at home, plus we have better control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 18 different recipes for evening meals.