How much time do you spend in preparing or getting your meals each day?

[Disappointed]

I guess some cook their own food while others prefer to eat out, how much time do you spend preparing or getting your daily meals? We do a combination of eating out and home cooking approximately 50/50. I feel that getting food either preparing them ourselves or eating out to be time consuming. I have received many coupons from meal preparation services such as Blue Apron but have never tried them.

MP

 

[Fedup]

I make food ahead and put in freezer for my husband. So when I'm lazy, and we don't want to cook, there's food that is much healthier and tastier. I only do vegetables and salad every day. So I say we cook fresh about 50%, food from freezer about 20-30%, eat out 20-30%.

 

[mpeirce]

We almost always eat in. Except when traveling - obviously.

I always cook breakfast. Nothing fancy: eggs - usually omelets. Add sausage or bacon on the weekends.

For lunch DW and I fix ourselves something. Often yogurt, cheese, meat, maybe an Apple or berries.

DW does dinner. Basically a meat and a veg. Often the veg is a salad. In the summer, meat is usually grilled.

We go out to eat maybe once a month.

 

[Sojourner]

One of the nicest parts of my day is when I saunter into the kitchen each evening and start cooking a nice dinner for myself, while enjoying maybe a glass or two of wine along the way. I do this about 5 times a week, on average, and it's something I look forward to as a relaxing and creative and deliciously rewarding daily project.

As for breakfast and lunch, I pretty much always make something quick and easy at home and very rarely go out. I honestly cannot remember the last time I had lunch at a fast-food restaurant. I do have a nice breakfast or brunch out with friends from time to time, but typically that's only 4 or 5 times a year. I guess making meals and eating in the comfort of my home is just my kind of thing!

 

[Choices]

I spend about 30 mins 3 days a week on breakfast, the other 4 days it is catch as catch can. Probably spend up to a hour making lunch 4 days a week, the rest of the time we eat leftovers. We eat dinner out one day a week and the rest of the time just rummage in the freezer and refrig. DH eats weird combo of powdered peanut butter, yogurt and oats? for his dinner if we are home.
I like to cook, but he doesn't eat....

 

[exnavynuke]

Highly dependent upon the day. Sometimes I'll spend 30+ minutes making a nice breakfast, others I'll throw something together in under 5 minutes. Some meals take hours to cook (though rarely more than 30-45 minutes of "work" involved in making them), others I throw together in a few minutes. Most meals I spend less than 10 minutes actively doing something, not including the time spent checking on them (to include stirring infrequently).

 

[Marita40]

I typically make a big dinner--chili, soup, meat for stir fry, casserole, etc--on Sunday to eat for weekly dinners. Breakfast is eggs or a protein smoothie, lunch a handful of salad greens topped by a protein (eggs, meat, cheese). So except for Sunday I don't spend much time at all cooking during the week. I'm still working, so the simpler the better. I also eat out about once a week and typically bring home leftovers for the next day's lunch. And then there are those days when I just have a bag of popcorn for dinner!

 

[ponyboy]

Very little. We make most of our food we eat throughout the week on the weekend. Between freezing/fridge...we just pull out what we want for lunch/dinner and its ready to go. Thats what you call varsity.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

we spend a ton of time. we go to the store about 5 days a week. we buy our dinner fresh every day. If its going to be for example veal cutlets we walk to the butcher, if its fish we go to the fish market etc, so our prep is a lot of time. this gets me and the bride out of the house for a while. i do stock up on canned and frozen , and paper products when they have sales. this is post retirement activity. the bride cooks i "supervise" (she hates that hahah). i live to eat, i enjoy talking about food , i enjoy eating food ,i used to love to watch Julia Child and the galloping gourmet. when i was working like a maniac the bride would ask me what you want to eat for dinner? she took care of everything. i didnt even know where the frying pan was. we get take out about twice a week, pizza is one of them, thats just a phone call, they deliver, no prep and little clean up

 

[FIREd]

I spend a lot of time on meal planning/preparation. Between planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning, we probably spend an average of several hours a day on meal-related tasks. We rarely eat out and I mostly cook from scratch.

Breakfast: usually toast with butter and jam + tea for me, oats with nuts and raisins + coffee for DW
Lunch: sandwich or salad. Even Preparing a salad can be pretty time consuming (wash produce, boil eggs, make dressing, etc...)
Dinner: big meal of the day for us. It takes 30-60 minutes to prepare usually, and maybe 30 minutes to clean.

I should make better use of my freezer, but I prefer freshly prepared food.

 

[LOL!]

I like to eat fresh food, so prep time is minimal for raw vegetables and fruits. Shopping is quick because one rarely needs to go beyond the fresh vegetable section of the grocery store.

I also like to eat out or take out, but go to nearby restaurants and almost always bring home to-go boxes.

Also I do food prep while working out at home. The time between "sets" can be used to make salads for the week. I'm about to eat a salad for lunch that was made on Sunday. I just have to add some protein (peel a boiled egg), some dressing, and I'm done.

 

[braumeister]

At least 90% of my food intake is what I prepared myself from scratch. Virtually zero prepared food from boxes or cans.

It's not time consuming. It's an enjoyable activity.

 

[jjquantz]

Breakfast - quick bowl of cereal and juice
Lunch - most of the time sandwich and/or salad
Dinner - We eat at home 5 or 6 nights each week - I prepare 90% of these meals since DW is still working.

So let's see, Breakfast 1 minute, Lunch 1-5 minutes, Dinner - 30 minutes to well over an hour, depending. As you can tell, I treat breakfast and lunch as pure energy intake events. Dinner is a bit more special.

Let's call it an hour each day.

 

[Bigdawg]

I have received many coupons from meal preparation services such as Blue Apron but have never tried them.

MP

DW and I are still punching the clock. We tried blue apron for about six months. 3 dinner's per week for $60. So 10 bucks per meal. Not a bad price. We liked basically 5 of 6 over any 2 week period. It got us out of our normal chicken, pasta, etc... routine. The one we usually didn't like was the kale encrusted kale with a side of kale sprinkled with kale flacks. We stopped for a few months now because I have baseball games (umpire) 6 days a week and we are traveling lots until August.

 

[Nemo2]

Never really thought about it timewise....before now, that is. Minimal time, I guess. What we do like to do is whip up (basically) one pot meals, stews, chilies, vegetable burritos, and the like, and then eat them until they're gone, (not all at the same meal).

We're not foodies, and luckily neither of us balks at eating the same as yesterday dinners.

 

[Ronstar]

About 5 minutes for breakfast - with oatmeal or bacon & eggs
Maybe 3 for lunch - usually leftovers or a lettuce salad.
Never for dinner unless I'm grilling - then 15 minutes.

 

[RetireAge50]

I don't usually do this type of thing but we have been getting blue apron for awhile now. It is perfect for the two of us while we finish up our work life. We buy the gift cards from Costco so it works out to $48/wk.

 

[plex]

Still working quite a lot, and will be for at least 4-5 more years, but I still generally make my meals mostly from scratch, I spend on average 1 to 1.5 hours preparing food/day. However on crunch day of the biweek, I'll make leftovers/pre-made stuff so it drops to 30 minutes in a 24 hour day. I can count on one hand the times I go out to eat each year.

Morning: Usually toast with butter+cinnamon, cereal, rarely some discounted bacon, sauteed spinach, or half a melon/pineapple, 5 mins
Lunch: Most common is chicken stir fry with lots of vegetables+fruit, 30 mins, another common one is agedashi tofu, which is about 35 minutes of cook time, with a bit of prep
Dinner: Something like sweet potatoes in butter/spice mix, air fried, 25 mins
Dessert: I will often bake or at least heat up some dessert bread/scones/cookies, making scones takes an hour, but the other options take just 5 minutes to prepare since they are premade. I'd like to eventually make dessert breads from scratch more often. This category was banned when I was losing weight for a year, but otherwise, I won't skip it.

If I wasn't working I'd probably go grocery shopping 2-3 times a week, instead of once every 1.5 weeks.

 

[walkinwood]

We enjoy cooking and probably average, between us, about two hours a day cooking. However, that's not everyday. We tend to cook 4 to 6 portions at a time.

Add another couple of hours a week to do the shopping.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

I don't usually do this type of thing but we have been getting blue apron for awhile now. It is perfect for the two of us while we finish up our work life. We buy the gift cards from Costco so it works out to $48/wk.

im a big guy, im very tempted to try one of these services, the meals look wonderful. you think i will feel full after the meal?

 

[LOL!]

$10 a meal per person from Blue Apron? Can't you eat out for less and bring home leftovers? How about Chinese or Thai take-out for less? Even sushi is less where I live.

 

[Fedup]

I roast a whole chicken for about $3.00. Crispy chicken. Not much time to prep except to wash the chicken with lemon juice, then salt and pepper. Much healthier than Costco chicken even.

 

[MichaelB]

DW cooks, I do not, and we dinner together, breakfast and lunch separately.

My breakfast and lunch is reheated leftovers, which are usually just as good the second time as they were the first. DW prepares fresh meals each time. Breakfast and lunch usually take 15-20 minutes each, and dinner usually between 1 to 2 hours. I clean the dishes and kitchen twice a day, noon and evening. Probably 1.5 to 2 hours total time.

 

[OldShooter]

One of the nicest parts of my day is when I saunter into the kitchen each evening and start cooking a nice dinner for myself, while enjoying maybe a glass or two of wine along the way. I do this about 5 times a week, on average, and it's something I look forward to as a relaxing and creative and deliciously rewarding daily project. ...

My wife has a little clipping on her bulletin board next to the cutting board:

"I like cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put some in the food."

 

[Walt34]

Minimal time, I guess. What we do like to do is whip up (basically) one pot meals, stews, chilies, vegetable burritos, and the like, and then eat them until they're gone, (not all at the same meal).

We're not foodies, and luckily neither of us balks at eating the same as yesterday dinners.

Pretty much the same here. I've taken to buying prepared salads at the grocery store, 2 for $7, I would have balked at the price before but what the heck now, and for breakfast I've taken to a bag of frozen berries and thawing that out. We go out to eat maybe once or twice a month.