Every now and then, numbers give you a reality check. This can be found in stepping on the scale, searching for an affordable place to live, and in my case, looking at our monthly food bill. Taking into account that prices are rising, I knew we'd been spending more. What I didn't take into account was how much my enjoyment of cooking things from scratch was also sending money right out of our pockets. I started cooking in grad school as a substitution for eating out. I figured I could, and can, make tasty food for less than we would spend at a restaurant. The added entertainment of cooking and sharing was just that - my entertainment expenditure. However, just because a home cooked meal is less than it would be at a restaurant, that doesn't mean its cheap. It seems I've gone overboard, and although we hardly having caviar at every meal, I'm cooking too much.
So I'm on a cooking/grocery shopping diet. We're going to try to eat cheap ($5-10 a meal) Monday through Thursday and I'm going to save the gourmet for the weekends. I am also realizing that I've been going overboard when I cook for people (read: scientists) because I want to impress them with my mad cooking skills (read: b/c as a historian I'm not sure I can impress them with much else. As I was reminded recently when overhearing a conversation: "you're an engineer, there's not much you can do with a degree in philosophy, it's like a degree in histo... (realized I was there) ).
The numbers reminded me I'm a grad student, as much as I like to pretend I'm not.
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