September 2020: Summary and Observations

Pandemic isolation continues and we’ve decided to do take-out every alternate week, now that we have three potential meals that we know will still be good when they’re on the table at home. This month we did a hybrid meal – the Dinner version of the Marinated Skirt Steak – from The Country Deli, and augmenting it with fried eggs prepared at home. We substituted Home Fries for Mashed Potato and it was a pretty good simulation of Foodie Philip’s favorite Skit Steak meal.

Because we split what is intended as a meal for one, between both Foodies, the take-out dinners are about double the (single serve) take-out lunches

The averages for this month:

  • Lunch prepared at home $2.17 ($2.71 in September)
  • Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $9.21 ($8.47)
  • Dinner eaten at home: $5.75 ($5.71)
  • Dinner prepared in a restaurant $16.54 ($17.70)

The variations month by month are quite small.

We ate six lunches and one dinner, of 60 meals in the month, that were prepared outside the home. 

Our most expensive meal of the month was the  Dry Aged New York Strip with Slow Cooked Broccoli at $14.12. Our evening meal average cost is right in the middle of the expected range. Oddly, that exact same meal was or most expensive of August!

Although The Country Deli intended it as a meal for one, we shared our single take-out meal for $16.64 per serve with tax and tip.

This month, lunches at home cost 24% of the cost of eating lunches prepared outside the home. Our evening meals prepared in the home are 35% of the cost of The Country Deli.

Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $276.30 per person in June. We actually spent $52.11 for lunches at home plus $55.23 for lunches purchased or eaten out:  $107.34 in total, which is much closer to our long term average.

If every evening meal cost us the same as our one this month, it would be $499.20 We actually spent $166.65 for dinners at home and $16.64 for dinners out, or $183.29 in total.

We saved about $485 by mostly eating at home, and we have a lot more control over what we eat.

Over the month we prepared 25 different recipes for evening meals.

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