{"id":1071,"date":"2011-02-05T14:27:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-05T14:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/?p=1071"},"modified":"2011-02-05T14:27:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T14:27:42","slug":"eating-out-not-all-that-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/eating-out-not-all-that-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating Out:  Not All That Great?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Going out to eat.\u00a0 It&#8217;s supposed to be so great.\u00a0 That&#8217;s what all the ads sing, over pictures of sizzling steaks, creamy pasta, or tomatoes raining gaily down on cheese smothered nachos.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 253px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" src=\"http:\/\/i722.photobucket.com\/albums\/ww230\/mcolletterogers\/nachos.jpg\" alt=\"Typical Restaurant Meal of Cheesy Beef Nachos\" width=\"263\" height=\"199\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">They look good, but are you bored with the taste of monotone restaurant foods?  <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So why comments like those I heard last week from some new clients, parents of a 1-year old:\u00a0 &#8220;We eat out way too much,&#8221; they both agreed.\u00a0 What&#8217;s going on here?\u00a0 According to popular culture, we should never tire of eating out.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the epitome of good living!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;It&#8217;s boring,&#8221; said the husband.\u00a0 Not surprising.\u00a0 Most restaurants are now chains that can only profit by moving mass volumes of food.\u00a0 The only way to move masses of food, in turn, is by keeping flavors within a narrow mid-range, so they appeal to masses of people.\u00a0 So eat at chains long enough and your taste buds will surely get bored.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It&#8217;s expensive,&#8221; said the wife.\u00a0 You bet it is.\u00a0 Nobody cooks food for free.\u00a0 And when eating in huge chains, you&#8217;re paying not just cooks, hostesses, busboys and dishwashers but a lot of corporate upkeep, from marketing to CEO salaries to stockholder communications.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, the wife-mother concluded,\u00a0 &#8220;I feel better when I eat at home&#8211;and I think that it&#8217;s better for my nursing son, too.&#8221;\u00a0 Again, not surprising.\u00a0 It&#8217;s tough to profit off of vegetables (all that labor for chopping and cooking!), whole grains (not produced in quantities that allow for cut rate prices), and moderate portions of clean meat\u00a0 (where&#8217;s my supersized portion?)\u00a0\u00a0 Besides, who would actually eat that stuff, and who knows how to cook it and make it taste good without lots of cheese, butter, salt and sugar?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As a child, I remember eating out as an enormous <strong>treat<\/strong>, i.e., a special something we got to do on special occasions.\u00a0 But my mom was always prepared and capable of feeding her family without the helping hand of a restaurant.<\/p>\n<p>In the brave new world occupied by these new parents, however, eating out is no longer an occasional, enjoyable <strong>option<\/strong>, but an inescapable <strong>trap<\/strong>.\u00a0 Trapped is what happens when we and our kitchens aren&#8217;t set up for manageable meal-making.\u00a0 We&#8217;re left completely vulnerable.\u00a0 At that point, time pressures, lack of confidence, uncertainty and chaos are all free to gang up and leave us without any option but eating out.<\/p>\n<p>Do you have options?\u00a0 Are you as bored at home as at the neighborhood chains?\u00a0 Can you efficiently produce meals that meet your healthy eating ideals?\u00a0 Can you feed your children the way you want?\u00a0 There&#8217;s help!<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Check out the easy mid-winter, boredom busting meal in the next post<\/li>\n<li>Come to a <a href=\"http:\/\/everydaygoodeating.com\/whole_kitchen_classes_description.html\" target=\"_blank\">Whole Kitchen cooking series<\/a>, which is all about acquiring skills to make satisfying meals day in and day out<\/li>\n<li>Call Mary Collette for some <a href=\"http:\/\/everydaygoodeating.com\/page14.html\" target=\"_blank\">one-on-on kitchen coaching<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Tell your company or organization to contact Mary Collette for <a href=\"http:\/\/everydaygoodeating.com\/speakingoverview.html\" target=\"_blank\">a good eating workshop<\/a>; reduce health care costs and make employees happy at the same time<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If eating out is supposed to be so great, why are people increasingly disappointed about &#8220;eating out too much?&#8221;  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,22,1],"tags":[80,149,150,210,283,284,483],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-is-healthy-eating","category-healthy-cooking-money-savers","category-uncategorized","tag-boredom-in-the-kitchen","tag-cost-of-eating-out","tag-cost-of-good-food","tag-food-boredom","tag-healthy-cooking","tag-healthy-eating","tag-restaurant-meals","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}