Movin’ on up

We’ve been doing so much better in the not-eating-out-all-the-time department.  In fact, if I am remembering correctly, we’ve only been out to dinner twice in the last two weeks.  Once I seriously did not feel like cooking, so we called up Pamela and Vic and went out for pizza.  Then on Wednesday, I think it was, we went out for sushi.  We hadn’t been out for sushi in so very long, and I was having a serious craving for sushi and wasabi and edamame.  The sushi dinner was a bit expensive, coming out to $50 for the three of us, but the pizza dinner was super cheap.  Can’t beat an entire dinner for three people costing just $25!  That’s because we shared a large pizza (cheese, tomatoes, and pieces of fried eggplant — yummy!) as well as an antipasto salad, and that was more than enough food for the three of us.

Here’s something to think about if you’re trying to save money too.  Don’t get a soda when you eat out!  Generally sodas will run you at least $2, most of the time $2.79, at a restaurant.  Sure, you get unlimited servings (most places), but how much soda are you really going to drink?  And keep in mind that it costs the restaurant probably a dime for what they’re charging you for the soda.  That in itself is enough to keep me from buying it.  I hate being overcharged like that!

The only time I buy a drink is when I go to an Asian restaurant.  Most place the tea is really cheap, like $1, and it’s good.  For some reason, I don’t feel like I’m getting the full effect unless I am also drinking the tea.  Green tea for sushi, and oolong in Chinese restaurants — yum!

You know, the latest KFC commercial is driving me batty.  Check this out

So the premise of the commercial is that it’s cheaper to eat at KFC than it is to make the whole fried chicken dinner at home.

ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME???

They’re not even comparing apples to apples here.  Of course, you are going to spend more than $10 if you buy a package of chicken and a bag of flour and the spices that go into the flour and the ingredients for the biscuits.  But you’re not going to get just one meal out of that money that you’ve spent.  You’re going to get at least two meals out of it, depending on how much chicken you’ve bought.  Once you buy the flour and the spices, you just need to buy the chicken whenever you want to have a full fried-chicken meal.  So let’s say you want fried chicken for dinner.  You have flour and spices at home already, so all you’re going to pick up at the grocery store is a pack of chicken.  You can even buy canned biscuits instead of making them from scratch, and you’re talking about less than $5 for a full meal.

That commercial gets underneath my skin and makes me want to throw something at the television.  Go ahead and tell people that it’s cheaper to eat crappy fast food with who-knows-what-all in the way of chemicals and preservatives than to eat at home.  It’s a great way for people to end up even more unhealthy than they already are because they’re just going to assume it’s cheaper to eat fast food than to make healthy versions at home.  We have enough of a crisis of obese people in this nation.  And now KFC is doing its part to make it worse.

*sigh*

OK, I’ll climb down off my soapbox, but really!!

Speaking of saving money, I am so proud of myself.  We were sitting around today, trying to think of what we wanted to eat for dinner.  Ultimately we decided on the salmon Kurt made for our anniversary, which was so delicious.  We went to the commissary to pick up the majority of the ingredients and restock some things that I needed (and I proceeded to piss myself off for going to the commissary on a Sunday when I know they’re going to be out of stock on everything I need — and today was no different), and then it was off to BJ’s to get the salmon.

But the thing is, the salmon was more expensive than we wanted to spend.  It was still a good price at $6.59 a pound, but I didn’t feel like spending $16 on two and a half pounds, not when I needed to buy other expensive items, like a bag of frozen chicken breasts.

Typically I would give up and say, “Let’s just eat out.”  But no!  Not tonight!  Tonight I was good, and I made dinner instead, and this is why I am so proud of myself.  I didn’t give in to the temptation to go out to dinner!  On the menu tonight — turkey kielbasa simmered in jarred red cabbage, served with a side salad and a glass of milk.  Yum!

That was a staple from my childhood, the kielbasa.  My mom always served it with the red cabbage and rice, but tonight I just didn’t feel like investing the time to make the rice.  Plus we’re trying to watch our calorie intake, and figured rice was just a way to eat more when we didn’t need to.  Instead we had a salad.

Kurt kept saying how it was reminding him of the time we lived in Virginia.  We ate kielbasa and cabbage at least once a week because it’s so cheap and so easy to make, plus it’s delicious — especially if you have Colman’s mustard to give the kielbasa a kick.  And it’s been almost that long since I’ve made it for dinner!  We had it a few times in Washington, but not nearly as often as we ate it in Virginia, back between 2001 and 2003.

We kept the game on during dinner too, which just added to the sense of being back in Virginia because the Raiders game was on.  And the Raiders won, too!

Good food, good game — what more can you ask for on a quiet evening at home?