1. Food cost. If you have a family of 4, to go out to dinner costs around $40.00 plus tip not including dessert. Even fast food is not cheap anymore. A meal at home for a family of 4 costs around $10.00 including dessert.
For example, homemade bread: water, unbleached flour, yeast, salt, sugar, butter, and cream. Mix all ingredients in the a bread machine from Wal Mart. Each loaf is about 30 cents and no preservatives...none.
2. Convenience: By the time you get everyone out the door, drive there, possibly wait to be seated, order, eat, pay, and drive home it takes about 2 hours.
To make a meal from scratch at home with clean up it takes about an hour when your kitchen is set up for cooking. This means that the freezer has choice cuts of meat like beef, chicken, pork, and seafood already portioned in small baggies ready to be defrosted, seasoned, and baked or cooked in a pan.
Also, your vegetables are cut and bagged as soon as you get them home from the grocery store so there is no cutting for each meal. A dessert was already made on the weekend and it is easy to cut a piece of cake or bake some cookies. Planning ahead becomes the easy path to an already busy lifestyle.
Getting home and not even knowing what to cook makes it unbearable. When we begin to plan our meals mentally a few hours before dinner, the mind becomes set up for cooking long before we bring out the first pot.
For example, A can of soda has 10 teaspoons of sugar(corn syrup to be exact) in it. A batch of brownies has just 3/4 cup of real sugar.
3. Food choices: I can barely put into words the difference between the quality of ingredients of homemade versus restaurant food. It’s like night and day. Even boxed food has fillers and preservatives.
The only way to a balanced life is to cook at home. Cooking begins in the mind long before you get in the kitchen. Taking responsibility for 3 meals and 3 snacks a day for ourselves and our family is the initial step.
Creating a well run kitchen is the second step. Planning a few hours ahead and setting aside some ‘prep time’ is the third step.
Processed and restaurant food was made to have a long shelf life. Homemade food only lasts a few days. There is a reason for that. Homemade food would never make it in a tub driven in a truck cross country.
Also, processed food is made with fillers like soybean oil, whey protein, corn starch, bleached flour, sugar, corn syrup, food dyes, and preservatives. Eating food out of boxes decorated with colorful pictures of fruit and vegetables are not fooling us into thinking we are doing well.
Homemade food is made with choice cuts of meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and dairy. Sugar is limited. Butter and olive oil instead of soybean oil.
Now the industry is talking about genetically modified crops like soybeans, corn, and beet juice instead of sugar. All these add up to really bad food choices.
4. Bonding time: Having most meals at home brings the family together. Everyone can pitch in to make food the center of the household. Our children have virtual lives; avatars sort to speak. In order for us to bring them back to reality, we must make activities fun and worthwhile. Clean up time for kids or even cooking some simple recipes encourages them to learn to feed themselves and a lifetime of healthier eating.
5. Luxury: We live in the greatest country on Earth. The American grocery store with all its food choices is like paradise. Just ask people that have lived in other countries at how different our abundance really is. We are afforded the greatest luxury on Earth. To be able to feed our families the best food known to man. It does not matter if you live in a mansion or not. The sheer luxury to be able to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies or a bowl of mashed potatoes is priceless. So indulge and make cooking the main event in your life. And even when we veer off balance, our gorgeous American kitchens are waiting our return ready for us to bring our eating habits back into balance.
