Money Saver Tips: Cooking at Home vs Eating Out
Who doesn’t love a good plate of lasagna? Layers and layers of sinful cheese melted in between layers of pasta and meat sauce. Yummy! But going out to your local Italian restaurant can get pricy. For someone who isn’t a Rachael Ray and is saving money wherever I can, I decided to make my own because I can cook Italian.
Was Cooking at Home Really a Money Saver?
After making my lasagna at home last week, I decided to really see what it cost because my grocery bill was slightly higher than usual. I added up how much the noodles, ground beef, sauce (yes – I’m a jar user), ricotta, parmesan, mozzarella and a few eggs cost me. We also had some veggies on the side, so I added that to my total. The tally kept going up and up, and to my amazement it cost almost $20. That seemed like a lot for a dinner meal when I’d been averaging $3-4 a plate for dinner.
How Did It Compare?
Then I remembered it was a pan of lasagna, not just three plates. If I was going to call this a money saver, I had to compare apples to apples, so to speak! The average price of a plate of lasagna at a restaurant chain is $14.50. It’s usually a huge portion and could feed two people, so let’s do a comparison:
At-home lasagna (+veggies):
- Cost: $20
- Yield: 8 healthy-sized portions
- Average cost per plate: $2.50!
Restaurant lasagna:
- Cost: $14.50
- Yield: 2 healthy-sized portions
- Average cost per plate: $7.25
- (And no veggies!)
A Bargain After All…
You could argue that you are paying for the ambience, staff and experience when you go to a restaurant, and I would agree. Eating out is nice. But if you are on a budget and saving money, which 95% of the population should be doing, then you make terrific lasagna at home instead of ordering it at a restaurant.
Then when you do go out to eat, you order something that you know you wouldn’t cook at home, like the shrimp and grits I had at a French bistro two weeks ago. Forget about it! I know my limitations, so I’m saving money on Italian because I have to pay for French.
…And we all know lasagna is better the second day anyway!
The Money Saver Tip Takeaway
I learned not to assume that I know the cost of something when I’m trying to make a comparison. When I checked the real costs for my homemade lasagna, it turned out I was saving a lot more than I thought!
