Make eating at home great again: how dining at home can save you money and make you healthier- Written by Primal Pappachan

Eating at home used to be a glorious tradition among our earlier generations. But now with fast food chains and a variety of dining options outside, eating at home doesn’t look like a great option anymore. I was forced to learn how to cook when I came into the U.S. upon realizing that eating out daily adds up to a huge amount of money. Irrespective of all the different kind of restaurants, the options available to eat out are going to get boring after a few months.

The first obvious concern about cooking is that it takes time. While that is correct, when I add in the savings from cooking at home and the tremendous satisfaction of cooking/eating what I really want to eat, the time spent on cooking pays immediate dividends. My goal is to give you suggestions on how to discover new recipes, tips on making cooking easier and some tips which can help you save time while cooking.

Note: I have given suggestions about many services/websites/channels in this blog post. They are not endorsements. I personally found them useful in my journey to making at-home-cooking great. 🙂

1. Monitor before you start: Get a free account on a service like mint.com and monitor how much you spend weekly/monthly on eating out. I was surprised to find out how $7 on lunch/$5 on a snack adds up to a big amount monthly.
2. Youtube your way to master chef: If you haven’t stumbled upon the wonderful cooking channels on youtube, there are many mentioned here. Special shoutout to Tasty from Buzzfeed as they cover recipes, cooking hacks and explore new ways of combining things to make interesting recipes.
3. If you do not want to think about what to cook: Services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh deliver groceries to home with recipes every week. They are much more expensive than doing the grocery shopping yourself, but it saves you time and the painful process of deciding on what to cook (some of these services have student discounts).
4. Wash as you go: During cooking, if I find myself idle (because the onions have to turn translucent or the chicken has to brown), I wash the utensils in the meanwhile. Therefore I don’t have to deal with a pile of utensils at the end. It is easy to lose motivation to cook if after cooking you have to clean utensils for a long time.
5. Shortcuts are okay: On days when I don’t feel like cooking or I am short on time, I usually go for Seasoning Mixes such as Broccoli Beef Stir-Fry Seasoning Mix or Kung Pao Chicken Seasoning Mix. I usually add more vegetables than what the instructions on the back of the pack calls for to make it more interesting.
6. Cook with/for someone: Cooking and eating by yourself can be tiring. Therefore, I find ways to cook and/or share my dishes with more people. Potlucks with friends over weekends is a great way for everyone to try different cuisines and learn new recipes. Find a friend who wants to cook and take turns with them between cooking at your place and their place. This can be wonderful to socialize and eat some good food.
7. Experiment: Where is fun if you make the same dishes over and over? Other than blog posts, social groups such as meetups can be a great way to meet fellow culinary enthusiasts. ARC has some great cooking classes (I personally haven’t signed up for any but have heard good things about it).
8. Cook dinner and pack leftovers for lunch: I guess this doesn’t need an explanation. 🙂

Thanks for sticking with my rant about cooking until now, I apologize for the lack of coherency in this post as this is the first time I have tried to put down my thoughts about cooking at home (after experimenting for around 4 years). Finally, if I haven’t convinced you to cook at home with this long rant, read this, this and look at this cool infographic.

Bon Appétit!