A full month at home and only one evening meal eaten outside the home. Because it is Winter, we cooked a lot of stews and soups.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.17 ($2.24 in January)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $3.87 ($9.24)
- Dinner eaten at home: $5.95 ($5.29)
- Dinner eaten out: $10.10 ($21.00).
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 down quite significantly because we didn’t eat in anywhere for lunch.
Our only meal out this month was our user group pizza where we all contribute $10.00 each.
Our most expensive at home meal was a bone in heritage breed pork chop at $18.10
This month, lunches at home cost 56% of the cost of eating food prepared outside the home, while dinners at home also cost 56% the average of dinner out this month.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $108.36 per person in January. We actually spent $52.16 for lunches at home plus $11.60 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $63.76 in total.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $280.00 per person. We actually spent $154.75 for dinners at home and $10.00 for dinners out: $164.75 in total.
This month’s savings from preparing most of our food at home is a low $159.85 although we still had a lot more control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 20 different recipes for evening meals.