April is NAB month, so we spent the best part of a week in Las Vegas for that trade show.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.36 ($2.31 in March)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $9.16 ($9.18)
- Dinner eaten at home: $5.23 ($5.42)
- Dinner eaten out: $7.73 ($14.55).
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 back to our typical range.
We ate a lot more meals out of the home because of the NAB trip, but overall evening “out of home” meals were less, mostly because we had packaged Indian one night, and an In and Out Burger another.
Our most expensive at home meal was the Flat Iron steak at $14.44.
This month, lunches at home cost 26% of the cost of eating food prepared outside the home, while dinners at home also cost 68% the average of dinner out this month.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $274.80 per person in January. We actually spent $37.74 for lunches at home plus $119.06 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $156.80 in total.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $231.90 per person. We actually spent $109.90 for dinners at home and $30.93 for dinners out: $140.83 in total.
This month’s savings from preparing most of our food at home is $209.07 and we had a lot more control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 20 different recipes for evening meals.