While May would normally be a quiet month, this year the Foodies travelled to Australia for the weeks around Mother’s Day. Traveling and staying with Family is a mix of “free” meals, some home prepared, and a little more eating out than at home. There were also two travel days where food was included in the air fare, which is hardly free, but hard to account for!
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.47 ($1.62 in April)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $8.10 ($8.36)
- Dinner eaten at home: $5.60 ($6.63)
- Dinner eaten out: $14.82 ($18.35)
While lunches prepared at home returned to a more typical level, our evening meals at home are somewhat lower, largely because we were buying ingredients in Australian dollars, but paying for them with US dollars, thus effectively reducing the price of supermarket items, and eating out, by 25%. Several meals out were similarly “reduced.”
Our most expensive meal was in Sydney on the last night of our trip, at an Oxford St cafe at $28.13 per serve (and that’s after the currency conversion) Our most expensive at home meal was NY Strip Steak, with Cauliflower Gnocchi in Blue Cheese sauce at $13.42 per serve.
Lunches at home cost 30% of the cost of eating food prepared outside the home (a higher percentage because Australian lunches outside the home take that average down), while dinners at home cost 38% the average of dinner out this month.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $251.10 per person in May. We actually spent $32.06 for lunches at home plus $105.28 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $137.36 in total.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $459.42. We actually spent $112.06 for dinners at home and $88.94 for dinners out: $201.00 in total.
We saved $372.16 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.