Against cooking and restaurants and leftovers

I know that cooking has become America’s fifth major sport (unless competitive eating has already taken that place) and that once again I’m alienating myself from the culture by saying this but: I hate cooking and you’re all crazy.

(Not that I’m on some macho bullshit, I’ll meet you halfway, I’ll wash every dish in your crib, I’m a retired professional dish technician (summer of 1998) but I’ll Favre and get back into the game and strap on my dishtowel (I wish I had a better comparison to make than Favre, dropping his name probably doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in my sanitary habits, and somehow makes “strap on the dishtowel” sound filthy.) But rather than subjecting ourselves to all that wouldn’t it be easier to go out and get giant burritos and then, drunk on grease and joy, roll ourselves unevenly home down the sidewalk like human-sized avocados? Is that too much to ask? Wouldn’t that be more fun?)

I realized when I was leaving Boston that in the previous six months I had gone to the grocery store one time (I had purchased ten dollars worth of stuff, ten cans for ten dollars (pinto beans, black beans, Chef Boyarglee.)) For breakfast I’d usually have a bagel or bagel sandwich ($3), for lunch I’d usually have a salad the size of a bathtub ($10), and for dinner I’d usually have something like the small bag of pretzels and small bag of almonds ($3) from the convenience store. If I did that every day, it’d be about $450 a month, which seems like a lot of money but doesn’t make me sick to my stomach with regret. But it also doesn’t take into account my ten dollar a day (minimum) caffeine habit (thank Yzerman that the spot by my old office had free iced coffee refills) or going out to dinner with friends (when arranging a restaurant-based large group event, the instigator should just ask you: hey, do you want to spend $60 to sit next to the least interesting person in our social group for two hours while trying to text outsiders covertly without looking like a jackass? Yeah man, I can’t think of a good excuse right now, so that sounds wonderful, good looks on the invite, sign me up.)

My cousin is a consultant for a lot of restaurant chains and he once told me that America spends something like 700 billion dollars every year eating outside of their homes. That’s a lot of bread (in the Big Sean sense and in the Panera sense.)(Also, that figure could be absolutely wrong, I tried to confirm if my memory was accurate but I’m tired.) And then there's these related numbers from 2006:

In 1901, according to a 1997 Bureau of Labor Statistics study, the average family spent almost half of their budget on food. Just 3% of that went to meals away from home. Today, we only spend an average 13.3% of our budgets on food--but 42% of that money is spent in restaurants.

So we've got this dual process of innovation where we've gotten a lot better at cranking out very cheap food in America but we're also eating stuff made by people who don’t share our DNA a lot more than ever before.

Problems with the latter: eating out is usually more expensive than cooking at home and often a lot more expensive than cooking at home. Eating out can be a lot less healthy than eating at home (I used to work with a lady who would alwaysalwaysalways describe the giant portions at a nearby takeout spot as generous: “ooh, they’re so generous, what a generous amount of chicken, they’re very generous with the roast beef, I love how generous they are.” Generous because we’re paying them. Generous because they’re not cardiologists. Generous because they’re not the one who is going to get blinded when the button on my khakis rockets heavenward after I just spent an Ottomon Empire-sized chunk of my afternoon choking down a Greek salad the size of the Aegean Sea (someone please cut the cord to my keyboard.)

And I know what you’re thinking (and this is where the macho bullshit comes in) and, no, I won't do it. I’m not eating half of the salad and saving the other half. I’m not getting it put in a box and taking it home. Not that I’m opposed to leftovers, I love leftovers, I can eat the same thing over and over for days. And maybe this will change now that I’m back in Michigan and everyone drives everywhere, but before that I couldn’t handle the process of getting the leftovers put in a box and leaving the leftovers on the table and realizing and turning around and going back in to get the leftovers and walking the leftovers eight blocks to the subway and holding the leftovers for 20 minutes on the train and everyone staring at you going, “you couldn’t finish your salad?” Like the takeout place guy, the guy who gives his leftovers to the beggar on the street is not generous. He’s just tired of carrying the box.

And I know what you’re thinking: “You’re right about everything, I’ve never agreed with someone so often, my head hasn’t bobbed this much in a four minute span since the first time I listened to Jay's “Hard Knock Life.”” And I appreciate you thinking that. And for the first time in my life I have an actual solution to what I’m complaining about and a way to make life better. But I need to go out to lunch. More tomorrow.