I've never ordered in prepared food. I mean, back in the 1900s, I would order pizza sometimes, but not since then. I know about these services — Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. — but I simply don't want them. We don't go to restaurants either, but I wonder if delivery is preferable to restaurants. Restaurants involve going out, which could be either a positive or a negative. Do you have time to burn? Even if you do, do you want to spend it sitting at a table waiting and under social pressure make conversation (and not to look at your phone)? Maybe that's just not what people do anymore.
January 30, 2026
"There’s pasta in the pantry and jarred sauce in the refrigerator. So what compels Kiely Reedy to keep having spaghetti with marinara delivered..."
"... from the restaurant down the street, for several times the cost of cooking the dish herself? It’s not that the restaurant dish is particularly good, she said. 'It’s the instant gratification.' From her roughly $50,000 annual salary as a data processor in San Diego, Ms. Reedy, 34, spends at least $200 to $300 a week on food delivery.... Between raising two young boys and putting in long hours at a marketing job in Atlanta, Kevin Caldwell can almost never find the time to make dinner. So he and his husband spend about $700 a week to order in. 'I am so burned out and tired, I would rather just throw my credit card at the problem and delay that unhappiness until the bill comes,' he said. His 4-year-old son doesn’t read yet, 'but he can put together an order' on the Chick-fil-A app, said Mr. Caldwell, 39. 'I am impressed, but I am also terrified.'"
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89 comments:
We don't do delivery or even eat at restaurants unless traveling but do takeout fairly frequently. We have been using meal kits for quite a while, and I try to push our meals in that direction.
I tend to do takeout instead (thereby avoiding the tip and/or the delivery fee)
Approximately 31% to 40% of American adults use third-party food delivery services (like DoorDash or Uber Eats) at least once or twice per week. Weekly usage is highest among urban residents (~39%) and younger generations, with about 20-22% of Gen Z and Millennials using them weekly.
Key details on food delivery usage:
Weekly Frequency: While 31% use services at least twice a week, other data indicates about 37% to 40% of adults use them at least once a week.
Usage Trends: Around 6 in 10 users consider delivery a weekly habit.
Demographic Drivers: Usage is highly concentrated in cities (39.2%) compared to rural areas (15.3%).
Top Platforms: DoorDash is the market leader with over 45% market share.
We're about to go on another of our 2+ month foreign trips and it used to be that it was nonstop hotels and restaurants. But now, we do a significant amount of Airbnbs instead. A big plus is that we can prepare our own food and eat in.
I'm always fascinated by the restaurant reviews in which something went wrong during delivery, and the "reviewer" is mad, gives minimum rating possible, and rants and raves about how late the delivery was or what its condition was in. We still have a lot of entitled nitwits in this society.... America, America!
A few of my favorite restaurants have stopped or never began using online reservations. I don't know if they were as unreliable as so much online behavior is, or what, but they require a phone call and they will return a phone call. It's a huge positive sign about a place, to me.
At least now I understand the market that Tovala is trying to tap with the ceaseless commercials featuring that stringy hair wannabe hipster chick with affected vocal fry who’s always amazed by how great her chef-crafted meals taste.
“We don't go to restaurants either, but I wonder if delivery is preferable to restaurants.”
The fresher the better for the vast majority of foods; I prefer to eat out. But my wife hates crowds, even in a restaurant. So we eat delivery in most of the time that we don’t cook.
These days we eat out about once daily pretty much. The limit is Friday and Saturday night dinner, the night life is hectic around here. But this is Bilbao. Neither of us can cook like these people can cook, full stop. And by our standards (San Francisco), its cheap.
I like the services sometimes when I am working out of town. I get back to the hotel after a long day, relax for an hour or two and just don't feel like going out.
Call up and order something is great. Like room service but with more variety and cheaper. Can sit around in my skivvies watching a movie or TikToks or reading a book.
I still stay in Residence inns or the like where I can cook for myself. But why bother?
I do not understand people who do this routinely at home. I wonder how much they owe in student loans? Does it say?
John Henry
“Do you have time to burn? Even if you do, do you want to spend it sitting at a table waiting and under social pressure make conversation (and not to look at your phone)? Maybe that's just not what people do anymore.”
It’s not what I do. I don’t want to burn my time driving back and forth and waiting for waiters. Grubhub is the greatest invention since Amazon.
Are we supposed to have sympathy for these morons?
Takeout is only slightly less annoying than eating in. Sometimes I even go to a place with the intention of gettng takeout and say screw it, I'm here, might as well eat here.
I still have to get dressed, get the car, drive somewhere, park, wait and so on for take out.
Just find something interesting on my phone, mash a couple buttons and wait for it to arrive. What's easier?
John Henry
I witnessed an explosion in food delivery during COVID, and some people stuck with it. During the lockdowns, some were so...ill or paranoid about leaving the house...that they'd have food dropped outside and pile their trash outside too...
People used to say "Stop spending $5 for coffee at Starbucks and put it toward your retirement savings." Never mind full meal delivery.
Only with true economic pain (versus Biden's 4-year gifts) will they learn to love home cooking.
Restaurants about 1/week; we look at it as a break from routine. Never had food delivery other than an occasional pizza -- and that was 20+ years ago.
We're in the "never done DoorDash/UberEats" camp. If we do takeout, we'll just go get it ... easy peasy! We'll eat out 4-5 times a week, maybe takeout once a week. Where I might feel a little guilty, buying pantry items and essentials from Amazon, LOL. The Amazon search engine works great vs. me navigating a giant store like Target or the local grocery store.
We order out for dinner two or three times a week under the following conditions:
1. I go and pick it up as a take out. 20%+ saving on a tip. 100% saving on Door Dash or it's ilk.
2. We order one meal as it's enough to feed to two people in their 70's. 100% saving on a second meal.
3. I don't have shave. She doesn't have to put on make up.
4. Basically I can feed the both of us for $10 each or about the same cost to cook well minus the time and shopping.
5. A $9 bottle of Argentinian Malbec isn't inflated to $42.
Added Bonus - I cook better than most restaurants and ordering out is a constant reminder that our dining is a win/win.
Here we dress to go out for the evening (at about 9), walk 2-5 blocks, and are promptly served something wonderful. Sometimes its wet and cold, but that is what umbrellas were made for. Yes conversation is on the menu.
Teach yourself to cook using Youtube.
It's amazing. Free lessons all over the place.
Right now I'm watching the All Recipes gal.
If you can read - or watch - you can cook.
Quality of restaurant food and service has gone down in recent years. I'm better at cooking most things in part because the cuts or ingredients are better, and I know what I like. Except for the best restaurants (or the ethnic foods I do not prepare) I do a better job, it is far cheaper, and I control the outcome. Even the high end steak places are hit or miss, and you spend $70 before tip to find out if you'll get a good steak.
I think this Spoiled Rich Kid Restaurant Rant has been discussed here before, and while he's annoying, I understand his point.
We eat out 4-5 times a week. It gets us out, and we can have anything we want, and decide what we want at the last minute with no dishes left. We could never keep all the ingredients fresh to have that variety at home. We have a hundred places to eat within 5 minutes drive. Every genre, quality level, price, or atmosphere we could want. I live on 1.2 tree covered acres, zoned for up to 4 horses, but only 4 miles from the Vegas strip where we only go for hockey games and shows maybe 5 times a year. A really quiet neighborhood you would never know was in a bustling city. I don't trust delivery drivers. I have a prominent American flag, and that makes us a target in these days of tolerance. IT'S FRIDAY!!!!!
Stayed with friends the first time I was in NYC. They ordered restaurant food in every freakin night. We had dinner with their friends one night - yeah, they ordered food in from a restaurant. Blew my mind. But I'm just a simple country boy from Iowa, so there's that.
A few weeks ago my friends told me that their teenage daughter had ordered a hamburger from McDonald's - on DoorDash! And, charged the whole (what? - $18) burger on the parents' credit card. I asked them how she got their credit card number and they were like, "Duh...we gave it to her long ago." I was aghast and thinking how stupid daughter and parents were. They perceived my thought and were, I think, a bit miffed by it.
We occassionaly have food delivered, maybe twice a month, and go out to a restaruant maybe once a week. Delivery is usually when neither of us feels like cooking or its pouring down rain or whatever. But it doesn't make sense to spend $60 on a delivered meal, when you can cook the same thing for 1/2 the price.
Both of us know what we like, and know how to cook, so restuarant going is more for the pleasure of getting out of the house, etc.
What Barry said. I don't mind going out and paying for food, but a lot of it is mediocre and not particularly healthy. Most restaurants salt the hell out of everything. That being said, I have about 3 favorite restaurants I go to on the weekend, but otherwise I cook my own food. The thing is cooking your own food is very simple if you stick to whole foods and salt and pepper. If something requires more than 2 spices, I usually pass.
But I'm an outlier. Everyone I know uses Doordash. Not only is the price a factor, but isn't the food cold when it gets there, plus all the foam / plastic waste that's generated?
I've been using the same family organization app for a good twenty years; my favorite feature is that you can easily add online recipes to its proprietary database, then add those recipes to a day's meal and to l their ingredients your shopping list with a couple of clicks. (I'm hosed if they ever go out of business - most of my go-to recipes are there.)
I've tagged many of the recipes with "family favorite" and "fast" and "really easy" for my now-grown kids' benefit (they all still have access to this organizer and we all use it for gift lists and, to an extent, calendars), but they all use Doordash a whole lot more than I would like to see.
@bagoh20 I tell everyone who will listen that Vegas has had a great food scene for a decade. Prices though!
“back in the 1900s, I would order pizza sometimes”
Pizza is one food that it is hard to make better at home than you can get at a restaurant.
Once, back in the 1900s, when I was sharing a six bedroom house with in Ann Arbor, three Dominos Pizza delivery guys arrived at our house at the same time.
Last week, I was out and about, and couldn't make it home for dinner, and made the mistake of eating at a fast-food resturant, a local chain. Total tab was $18 for hamburger, fries, and coke. And it was horrible! Lots of bun and sauce, not much meat. I kept thinking about my home-made hamburgers and how much better they were.
The best part of food delivery is you can now break up your $18 hamburger into 4 easy payments via Klarna and others. I imagine the number of food delivery bankruptcies to increase in the future.
Pizza is the one of the things better delivered or eaten at the restaurant. Chinese is the same for some dishes. You cant replicate the restuarant equipment they have at home. They use Wok's that are insanely hot. And have sauces on hand, that take a long time to prepare at home.
Cooking a dinner that 3 young kids will eat takes as little as 30 minutes. Toss broccoli in a little oil with salt and pepper, then place on a sheet in the oven for 15ish. While that cooks, pan fry some chicken breasts and diced onions together, maybe with minced garlic, salted and peppered to taste. If you want a starch, 1:1 jasmine rice and water in a pressure cooker on high for 5 minutes, 5 minutes to naturally cool(non-vent), then vent off the pressure.
If you want to go fancy, cut the chicken up in to smaller pieces and soak in soy sauce for 15 minutes before cooking. Once cooked, add in 1/2 cup of broth, a good amount of Dijon, some heavy cream or sour cream if desired to get a little creamer sauce, simmer until the sauce thickens and mix in the broccoli. Chicken Dijon. It adds very slightly to the prep time...and requires very little cooking skill.
As an exercise, I used claude AI to create a 28 day dinner plan using similar quick recipes during the week. It created the menu, generated the recipes, created a weekly shopping list, and created a file to import everything in to my Google calendar. So each weekend I have my shopping checklist and each day I have my recipe. Only question now is how the recipes turn out. They look pretty reasonable when I glanced over them.
And spaghetti with store bought sauce and store bought meatballs is one of the meals. It is the favorite of our 6 year old. Ironically, it takes longer for me to cook than most things since I heat up the frozen meatballs in the sauce on low heat.
" Most restaurants salt the hell out of everything."
Yeah, I started to notice that after I went on a low-salt diet for health reasons. We use soy sauce (almost a requirement for some dishes), but have ditched regular salt.
Door Dash is for lazy motherfuckers who ought to carry recent photos of themselves taken from behind to consult whenever they feel peckish. Better still, install that photo of your acres-wide badonkadonk as your iPhone's background. That way when you're temped to call in a four course meal you'll see exactly why you should say something aloud, like Get thee behind me, Satan! May the view make you puke.
Yea, the ugly truth is that most restaurant food is inferior, in every way, to food made by a competent home cook.
other than pizza (which needs to sit a while (under heat)),
what food could Possibly be good after a 10 minute (20 minute? (30 minute?!?!) sit in a car.
Think about it: would YOU pay for food at a resturant that had sat under a heat lamp for 10 min (20? (30!?!?!))) yuck!
and (under pizza pit delivery back in the day), i doubt that door dashers have heat lamps (probably just an insulated bag?
WHAT are you paying for?
Asian hot pot/BBQ where you cook everything at your table (except for the roasted lamb shank, etc.) is pricey up front but worthwhile for freshness and taste.
Take out every so often. Some of the gig delivery drivers that you encounter while in the restaurant are so sketchy. What gets me especially is when the order includes a fountain drink, with just the flimsy cup lid for coverage, meanwhile the driver uses the rest room, and remembers to grab a paper-wrapped straw before heading out.
>when you can cook the same thing for 1/2 the price.
I agree, but you need to cook fairly often to have (+use before expiring) all of the miscellaneous pantry items, otherwise the cost explodes.
The first woman, Reedy, is spending somewhere between 21% and 31% of her pre-tax money on delivered food. She will also be the first one on social media saying "my generation can't afford a house, but don't tell me it is due to too much Starbucks and Doordash," which is a pretty constant drone from them. Bet she has a newer car than me and a more recent high-end smartphone and every single streaming service possible, but can't seem to get by because of "the man!"
The quality of restaurants around here has diminished. Even places I used to love are not good anymore.
Covid and Dem-rule ruined a lot...
I hear in Denver - it's so expensive to run a restaurant - with all the rules and regulations - that many have closed. Esp downtown. It's always good to close a restaurant in a blue city - because the mentally unstable and the drug transients need more space to expand.
When we go out, we order stuff that's tough to make at home! That's our strategy ...
Yeah, pizza holds pretty well when delivered. We haven't done that in ages ... back in the day when the restaurant used their own drivers.
i DO go out for lunch, once a week; to the Thoma Dairy Bar in Garnavillo IA
the food's good, and i get to gossip with the waitress (who tolerates me). I usually get the Special (which is usually Pretty Good), and a slice of pie (NO ICE CREAM!); which is my weekly carb treat.
Including a 30% tip for the gossip, it usually comes to $20.
ps. coffee there is SUPER EXPESSIVE (50¢ with free refills)
I Door Dash all the time. Yes, I feel guilty and ashamed. I was an excellent cook. However, I am not now that that strength which in old days allowed me to labor over a cutting board. Hell, some days an air fryer or even a crock pot (I always disdained crock pot meals.) is beyond me. Door Dash allows me to eat healthier food than I otherwise would.
But can I still be distressed over young people who always Door Dash? Do they keep the service viable and, therefore, available to me?
These people, as my grandmother would say, "Have more dollars than sense."
Even when we lived near pizza and/or Chinese places that delivered- we ordered and picked it up. With the nearest McDonalds 15 minutes away- in good weather, and the nearest Chinese restaurant 15 minutes away in another direction- we can't get delivery. Real sit down restaurants? Minimum half hour drive. And the ones we frequent are further.
I can cook a decent main course of almost anything. For less then eating out. I can eat tenderloin at hoe for less then sirloin in a restaurant. There's a small hole in the wall restaurant about 40 minutes away where they have normally two entrees that aren't steak, and you pick the steak out if you want steak from the meat counter. It's local steak, not from a midwest feedlot. Pay for the steak by the ounce, and a fixed price for the fixings. I cannot duplicate the fixings at home. Been there a half dozen times now and had something each time I've never had before. Never heard of broccolini until served it there.
There are a lot of side dishes and appetizers in good restaurants that I cannot duplicate at home. And while I cook up some pretty tasty scallops and salmon at home, they don't compare to some I've had out.
I have 5 children and AFAIK only one uses food delivery on a regular basis. His company pays for it- he's management and it keeps him on the worksite. Saves the company money.
We had spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and steamed cauliflower with butter the other night. From starting the water to boil to finishing the meal a little over 30 minutes. Nothing was from scratch of course. We have a lasagna recipe from a childhood friend's mother. Takes 2 days to make properly. Nothing in any restaurant compares to it.
Even if food delivery was available here- we wouldn't use it.
I never order delivery, but I do pick up takeout, because I like to check that they got the order right. We go to restaurants, too.
$200/week over 20 years is $208,000. I was able to retire early and debt free because I delayed gratification on stuff like this. I brown bagged lunch and took coffee from home in a Thermos. Boomers take a lot of heat but we made do with what we had.
I try not to feel superior, but they make it harder every day.
I cook, she cleans up, and we add in a regular rotation of places with folks who cook better than I do. Most are ethnic - I'm not making pho, or pizza, or schnitzel w/ spaetzel, or thai, or indian. We have a place for each within 10 minutes or so. Life is good.
Maybe these comments hold a clue as to why the Restaurants industry has been in a bear market since Feb 2025. Seems like another bankruptcy filing every month or two. The meals are expensive and only medium in quality, I agree with those comments. Hard to order out and then eat stuff that you know you could have done better.
I think the Doordash compulsion among the younger set has a certain status element and the desire to be part of the crowd, if that's not contradictory. The hip urbane crowd, even if in the suburbs. They don't have a yacht, a second home, or even a first home, but the hell with working in your own kitchen, yanno? Can u imagine?
Thai food - I don't even try.
"back in the 1900s"
LOL!!!!
Homemade pizza is better than 90% of pizza available at restaurants. It's super easy to make. Start off with a premade dough ball need it into a tight balloon cover it with olive oil place in a cup where container throw it in the fridge for several days and it'll turn into sourdough. Get those high quality Italian canned tomatoes to make an uncooked tomato sauce with just a little bit of salt pepper olive oil and basil. Get the full fat low moisture mozzarella if you can't find it usually you can find it in cheese stick form. I like pepperoni and kalamata olives. Get one of those air bake pizza pans off of Amazon. Heat the oven up to 550. Make the dough in the normal way stretch it out over the pizza pan apply a thin coating of the tomato sauce apply a relatively sparse layer of cheese and then put all the toppings you want on it I prefer pepperoni and the kalamata olives. Put it in the oven for 8 minutes. After 8 minutes open the oven turn the pan 180° put it back in for another four or five minutes depending on how much you want it cooked and then voila the closest thing to a high quality Pizza no flop perfect undercarriage.
Of course I only make this about once a year because Pizza is the crack cocaine of junk food.
My mother would live on fast food if I let her. I have never once had food delivered to where I live- not even a pizza. I have, on occasion, ordered out and picked up but only pizzas and the rare Chinese food selection.
BTW I enjoy watching YouTube videos about eating on $10 a week while chowing down on my $60 delivery. I still do love cooking shows.
I’m with you Ann! We’re retired but unless we’re on vacation we cook at home 90%of the time. I find the whole go out to eat routine tedious. And I get tired of restaurant food unless it’s something I don’t make well.
Everyone complains they have no money and yet restaurants are full seven nights a week. Makes no sense
We go out to eat very rarely and the only time I've ever used door dash is when visiting my grandchildren. Both Mrs. VonB and I are accomplished cooks and we have rarely eaten at a restaurant that prepares food better than we do. We maintain a well-stocked pantry with plenty of the ingredients necessary for preparing authentic meals from cuisines all over the globe. I invested in an oven that offers me many cooking options (Steam, convection, air sous vide, proofing, and more) so we are able to achieve professional quality results. I make bread (usually sourdough) 2-3 times a week.
We love living like this, here on our ranch in the Sierra Nevadas.
And yes. pizza was a tough one. But I figured out how to turn a gas grill into a pizza oven and how to age the pizza dough to get perfect results, so now we have homemade pizza once every 1-2 months that tastes like it came from a pizzeria. We grow our veggies and herbs... and the woods around us are full of wild porcini and Blewitt mushrooms that we pick and eat fresh or dehydrate and use for umami boosts in gravies.
Of course, we are retired.
We have never done Door Dash or the like. Neither do we order pizza delivery. We only eat out when we travel (about 8-9 weeks per year) and for special occasions, like our anniversary
What started out as a smart financial decision (we can afford to travel a lot because of this) became a taste decision as well. My cooking is often better than the restaurants we have been to. Possible exceptions are Japanese and Mexican food.
My stepson and his girlfriend do a lot of eating out and take out, ostensibly because they are so busy. BS! They are lazy as most millennials seem to be. No wonder they are broke and depend on our largesse.
If I ordered food from a delivery service, I would worry the whole time about whether the food would be hot when it arrived and then if I started eating it, I would have to think about whether it’s sufficiently hot and how much hotter it would’ve been right after it was cooked. I don’t need those kinds of thoughts when I’m trying to eat.
I have very little sense of smell so temperature along with texture is extremely important to me. If there’s some special way restaurant makes things that cause them to taste especially good, it will probably be lost on me, but the temperature is something that’s crucial.
If all this stuff had been available with I was in my 20s, I'd have used it 5 times a week. Instead, I was stopping off at fast-food dives and pizza places on the way home from work. Or eating bar food. Very few young guys want to go home a cook a meal!
I learned to cook at 10yo when my mom was confined to bed during an illness and I had to make meals for my family of seven. She was laid up for months.
The knowledge and skillset I acquired was a great asset during my dating days. I would invite her to breakfast at my place before heading out to whatever activities we had planned. I found that making a young lady a perfect omelette aux fines herbes would usually delay our departure by a good hour.
A really good hour.
GvB
As far as take out vs eating in the restaurant, we order from a rather small list of places and I have the timing down so I can grab the food off the counter as soon as I walk in or wait only a few minutes for it either on the counter or at the pick-up window. I have the same feeling Ms Althouse does about a delivery service in terms of the time it takes them to get the meal to us. I don't mind going out, gotta get dressed every day to walk the dog so that isn't an issue. (I also refuse to use grocery pick up services, too)
But, but, but AFFORDABILITY
"Very few young guys want to go home a cook a meal"
Yeah but for me it was a necessity. I was broke as hell in my 20's.
A lot of this is generational.
I have a neighbor who has 3 grown boys still living with her. we never see them because they rarely leave the house. But almost every night they have 3 different delivery drivers dropping off food at the house.
So, not just a bunch of young people ordering food instead of cooking, but also they don't order together and probably don't eat together. Heck they probably never come out of their rooms
Split the difference:
We've picked up restaurant BBQ meat and added homemade sides. It's not possible for many home cooks to execute slow smoking like a BBQ place. Proper cooking requires the space for a smoker, extreme patience, and regular attention.
Quality, inexpensive BBQ tastes better than boring steaks any day of the week.
If you don't want to cook, prepared meals from Trader Joe's or Aldi go straight from the refrigerator or freezer to the toaster oven, for one-sixth the cost of delivery. And they taste just as good as freshly made restaurant dishes that have sat in a bag for an hour.
Never used doordash or an app like that. I will order a pizza every 3-4 weeks. Recently, every 2 weeks or so I stop by a chicken place on the way home and get a 10 piece deal for under $20. I then make the sides at home and have enough for 5 meals for the $20. Once a week to every two weeks I will get together with friends and have a meal at a restaurant - I cannot make a good chicken friend rice to save my life.
When my wife (a wonderful cook!) is out of town or tied up with her many activities, and I am cooking for myself but am pressed for time,* what I do is cook up a big pot of chile or beef stew or chicken cacciatore or something similar (I am not completely without cooking skills) on Sunday and freeze half of it. Then I eat it for dinner every day, breaking out the frozen half on Wednesday.
This means I eat the same thing every day--which is not a problem if I like it. And I generally cook what I like. (Which is not always what my wife likes--so I get my dinner and eat it too).
*I'm retired now and no longer is time much of an issue, but when I was working it always was.
When I was young and broke the roommates and I ate a lot of pasta with bottled red sauce. We weren't too sharp but knew that we couldn't order out very often. Cheap calories were the primary focus.
Also the rotisserie chicken from the grocery store is a good way to go. You can dress it up with whatever you want. Cheap and easy.
The significant drop in alcohol consumption is probably due to people not sitting in restaurants killing time while their table and their order are prepared. Still, it's a shame people don't learn how prepare something tasty at home.
It sounds like a symptom of depression to me if you can't make pasta and sauce for less than a tenth of what the order will cost you. I'd put it on the list with not taking baths.
I got a gift card once for one of the delivery services. Uber Eats maybe. What a PITA. It ended up costing over twice as much as if I'd just gone to get it, and probably the same amount of time.
The article is typical of the NY Times in that it looks on everyday American life, whether it's tech habits, consumption, parenting, work-life balance, etc. and hops right to the default mode of ambivalence as the sophisticated emotional posture: acknowledging the undeniable appeal or utility of the thing in question (convenience, efficiency, pleasure, progress) while layering on just enough guilt, misgivings, or ethical unease (e.g, progressive touchstones like environmental impact, gig-worker precarity, inequality) to signal introspection and moral seriousness.
It's a posture that flatters the reader: "See? I'm not a mindless consumer/participant in late capitalism/tech dystopia/whatever—I'm aware of the trade-offs, the hidden costs, the environmental/social toll."
--- I cannot make a good chicken friend rice to save my life.
1 chicken
1 friend
4 cups rice
water to cover
Bring rapidly to boil, then lower heat to simmer. Put in ear plugs. Remove from heat when all water is absorbed.
“I would have to think about whether it’s sufficiently hot and how much hotter it would’ve been right after it was cooked. I don’t need those kinds of thoughts when I’m trying to eat.”
Then don’t think them. Distract yourself with other thoughts, like how if the first bite is sufficiently hot then the last bite might not be, so you need to eat really, really fast.
And for those talking about how it’s cheaper to cook your own meals, I guess that’s true if your time is worthless.
The very definition of 'life is too easy in the US'. You can't be bothered to get up and cook food that you already have in the pantry? No wonder we live in a nation of fat slobs. I bet a goodly portion of them are pulling down SNAP or something similar, as well.
What a waste of money. Cooking your own food is so easy, cheap, tasty, and nutritious. I have a gas grill steps outside the kitchen door, and a wireless meat thermometer that allows me to make perfectly cooked steak or chops or chicken breasts every single time. In 15 minutes I can deliver a sizzling, delicious meat dish at about the same time my wife finishes with some greens and a handful of pasta.
I agree, but you need to cook fairly often to have (+use before expiring) all of the miscellaneous pantry items, otherwise the cost explodes.
I have had a hard time convincing my wife that those "Best By" dates are merely suggestions made by a company that has an incentive to make you toss it out promptly and buy more. Canned food in particular is still safe and delicious for several years after the date on the can. Dry stuff like rice and cereal and flour stays dry and perfectly edible for years in our arid climate. Even old frozen stuff with freezer burn can be used with the right preparation, although we see a lot less of it since we got a chamber-style vacuum sealer for our Costco meat purchases.
The article doesn't delve into whether, when they were sent out into the world, they had been taught how to put a nice plate of food together without much effort. Possibly not.
Eating out is a relaxing way of avoiding peak hour commutes in the evening. I can even take the b roads and avoid tolls. Plus I can catch up on my reading (home has too many distractions, like Althouse :-)).
Not mentioned in the discussions is the shopping required to cook at home. You don't just open the fridge to make a spontaneous stir-fry and miraculously find everything you need in there.
Cooking for one is different to cooking for a family. I tend to make something that ends up being dinner for most of the week. Understandably I'm tired of my own cooking by then and want someone else's.
One day I might have a wood-fired oven for pizzas, but until then my local is safe.
She will also be the first one on social media saying "my generation can't afford a house, but don't tell me it is due to too much Starbucks and Doordash,"
I added it up once and if you do the following:
- Skip the Starbucks drive-thru in the morning
- Bring a lunch to work
- Make dinner at home
- Forego destination vacations
over the length of a typical home mortgage (30 years), you can save around $1/4 million.
Priorities. Unless you're insanely rich, the ones you choose matter.
We are like you, Ann. I will order takeout food on occasion, maybe once every two or three months, but that is it. And we pickup. I much prefer cooking at home, and if I want something fancier, I'd rather sit down at the restaurant.
I wonder how it is that so many people claim they can't afford living, but yet order out.
okay, i just went back through rereading comments, and;
i realized that since this was the NYTs, they are ASSUMING that we all live on Manhatten Island.
i Imagine there, deliveries are seldom more than 15 min away.
Which is STILL a long time for your food to sit in a bag; but if you're getting Thai or such, probably holding up pretty well.
But for those in the suburbs, you're looking at 30 min delivery i'll bet.
But still. the expense makes me not care or feel for the poor downtrodden.
ps. Jack's Pizzas are now back down to $2.98 at Fareway.
at that price, a person could eat half (53g of carbs, 525 cals),
and toss the other half.
I had one last night ate 2/3rds of it to celebrate breaking 236lbs
(235.8)
Four-yr-old can't read, but he's a voracious app user.
--- And for those talking about how it’s cheaper to cook your own meals, I guess that’s true if your time is worthless.
Jack, Jack.... The indispensable man is an exception, but most people have some down time. Cooking a dinner (for more than one) can be great recreation time -- if you don't have to do it every single night. I have found that cooking for myself is not as much fun, duh; although a simple dinner can still be rewarding. And done on whatever schedule suits me. But sometimes that turns out to be bourbon and popcorn, so may I do need to try DoorDash sometime.
Never used any of the delivery services. And I personally haven't eaten out since before Covid, though my wife does after-work stuff with friends once a week.
We're trying to save money for some major decisions during the next five years so I don't see the need to spend three/four times what it costs to make something at home.
To each his/her own.
Ordering in food via a food delivery service is not the way to set aside money to buy a house.
I have decided that I no longer want to hear "everything is so expensive, I'll never be able to afford a home".
It’s not that the restaurant dish is particularly good, she said. 'It’s the instant gratification.'
Christ on a crutch! By the time the food is made at the restaurant, and then delivered to her, she could hav cooked her own.
It would taste better, and be warmer. What an imbecile.
She can listen to the TV, music, or book on tape while she's cooking
In general I don't like paying for delivery, with the exception of Pizza, because I think Pizza delivery is kind of classic. Chinese take out, in the little boxes is nostalgic, although I don't know if they do the little boxes anymore, and as I've gotten older, my stomach has gotten weaker and won't tolerate "restaurant" cooking, so I have tended to avoid restaurants altogether. I think Farmers Markets have kind of replaced restaurants. If I want to try other people's cooking, simply trying the samples that they give at Farmers Markets seems a healthier, and cheaper way than going to restaurants.
Feminism is when women work full time to be able to feed their children unhealthy food at ten times the cost. A triumph of the will.
So the article in question featured a lazy chick and a couple of gay dudes playing house. Makes me really want to avoid all forms of "door dash" and its clones. That and the fact that there is always the non-negligible chance that someone in the prepartion/delivery chain took a bite out of what you ordered, or worse, decided to make a salivary deposit in it. Just like that old joke about the Japanese houseboy and the GI's in post-war Japan.
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