Image Credit: © jaeming
6:00pm
It’s Friday night, the kids are cranky as, and you’ve had the longest day on record. Now, you’re a very thoughtful and caring person and you figure that you’ll do something nice for your family and offer to go and grab some take-out for dinner. The kids immediately cheer their approval and begin the ritual of begging Dad to let them come for the drive. To prevent the tears and tantrums you agree. Of course, they’re not dressed for outside so the hunt for something appropriate to wear begins. Side note: your idea of “appropriate” and their idea is vastly different, but some how you manage to get them suitably attired.
6:12pm
Hold on, you two! You did go to the toilet, didn’t you?
You tend to learn pretty quick as a parent that you never ever take any child on any journey in a vehicle without a toilet run before you leave. You’re just asking for trouble if you don’t.
6:17pm
Finally! You are in the car and on your way. You feel good. You’re saving time. You’re making your life easier, nobody will have to slave over a hot stove tonight. Then you get out onto the main road and find out that every person in the city who has a car has decided that now would be the best time to be on the road. This road.
6:47pm
At last, you get to the take-out joint. Normally you can do this trip in 5 minutes. It took you 20 minutes this time, but that’s OK, you have no control over the traffic conditions. Not your fault. The whole point of this is the convenience, yeah? You’re saving so much time and effort tonight.
Oh hell! The drive-thru is backed up for 3 blocks! Lets just find a park and order inside.
7:03pm
You and the kids are inside now and gazing up at the succulent delights on offer on the menu board. It’s going to take a few minutes for the 50 people in front of you to be served so you know you have a little time to make up your minds. What do you mean you’ve changed your mind on what you want to order? Well you thought you knew, but that was at home. At home there isn’t a huge menu board with giant pictures of mouth-watering yummy stuff everywhere.
7:22pm
This is the point where you are at the counter and the teenager with pimples and braces is apologising for your wait. You see, she’s brand new. It’s her first ever shift. And they are also short-staffed… so-and-so is off sick, and somebody else couldn’t work because of school exams… yada yada yada, blah blah blah… Alright, lady, I don’t care. Just take my order, already.
Guess what they’ve just run out of? Yup, everything you want to eat. For about half a second you toy with the idea of asking the kids to choose something else. Luckily, you come to your senses and just take the bull by the horns and order for you, your wife, and your kids. You don’t flinch when the pimply faced trainee informs you that there’ll be a 2 minute wait on some part of your order. You’re not phased at all, even though you know full well that “2 minute wait” is code for “it’s gonna be at least 10 minutes before we even start on your order, buddy”.
7:38pm
You are back in the car and on your way home. The traffic has died down considerably by this time, so you make it back home in a much more respectable 7 minutes.
7:47pm
You’re eating! They messed up your order, and the food tastes like cardboard, but you are eating. Pat yourself on your back for being such a thoughtful, time and energy saving, cost effective soul. Your family will praise you for all eternity because you have bestowed this wonderfully convenient feast upon them.
And to think, it only took one hour, forty-seven minutes, and about $50.00.
Was that story exaggerated? Yeah, quite possibly. But not by as much as you think. In fact, I have had many a Friday night exactly like this. And I bet you have had some that were close.
Lets take a look at how things actually went down here, tonight, regarding dinner…
6:27pm
We have a little ritual here where Blake & Kaitlyn will have a look around the kitchen to see what food is available, and then give me suggestions as to what we could have for dinner. I often have to steer them toward more healthier choices, but that’s beside the point. It is rare that I’m not given 3 or 4 really good ideas for dinner. And tonight was no exception.
It should be noted that, at this point, the meat we were going to eat for dinner was still frozen solid in the freezer.
6:35pm
The meat is thawing nicely in the microwave. The fresh potatoes, snow peas, sweet corn, and broccoli are all pretty much washed and prepped. A few more minutes and all the vegetables are in the steamer. Time to prepare the garlic, pepper, herbs, and extra virgin olive oil that we will grill the meat with.
Confession time. I cheated with the herbs. I used dried. But it was fresh garlic, and whole pepper corns. 
6:40pm
The meat is now cooking, and the next 5 to 10 minutes are spent cleaning up the mess we have made so far. I have found that it is always a lot easier to clean as I go. It makes the final cleanup at the end so much easier because there is hardly anything to do.
6:48pm
The meat is done. Time to let it stand. The general rule of thumb about how long to stand your meat is that it should stand for about half the total cooking time. Our meat took roughly 8 minutes (medium rare if you are wondering), so it should stand for 4. There is plenty of gorgeous yummy juices from the meat, so add a little booze (a shiraz in this case) and onto the heat with it. That’s going to be some killer gravy. (I never ever use gravy powder).
6:50pm
The vegetables are done and the gravy will be ready in about a minute. That gives me 2 minutes to mash the spuds.
6:52pm
Tonight's Dinner
6:53pm
We’re eating! We’re eating exactly what we wanted, nobody messed up the order. Trust me, it tasted absolutely gorgeous. There wasn’t a single scrap of left-overs.
We went from an idea and frozen meat to a full blown healthy meal for four people in about 26 minutes. For a total cost of less than $10 to $15 (yes that’s an estimate, but pretty close I’d say). And did I tell you? I didn’t cook this meal. My kids did. Oh, sure, I helped them, but my role was more supervisory than anything else. I jumped in when little hands couldn’t do the job, or when things got a bit too hot to handle. But this meal was predominately their doing. Blake is 8, and Kaitlyn is nearly 10.
So, the next time you are strapped for time, prepare yourself a home-cooked meal. It is much quicker, easier, and cheaper than “fast food”.
Till next time…
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Bugger me Steve. You’re making me so hungry now.
Really like this post. You do really well with these food writings.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Make a change: Working out what you want =-.
Twitter: 6aliens
LOL! Probably a good thing you couldn’t smell it or taste it. Man, oh man! It was sooooooo good!
Thanks for stopping by, mate. I’m really happy you liked the article (the food was even better)
Kind regards,
Steve
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Ben’s right Steve, great foodie post. And you’re right about the take out too. It never ends up being anything like as delicious as it promised to be in my head!
Funnily enough, I had the offer of a Chinese on Sunday night. He’d been out watching footie all afternoon and so suggested he get something for us. However, when I looked at the options, I decided that I really would prefer the tuna, salad and couscous I had in the fridge. Yummy and healthy. Result
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..How to write a community post =-.
Tuna, salad, and couscous… that does sound yummy. Even though I’ve not ever tried couscous. Not sure why, I think the name just sounds funny to me, so I’ve always just looked the other way whenever it was on offer.
I really should try it one of these days.
Thanks for stopping by, Eleanor!
Kind regards,
Steve
Twitter: SteveYoungs
I am so glad I was in the middle of dinner while reading this! Great post. Unless you are already out and about, fast food is never as fast as home cooked. And it is rarely as good as what you have at home! Excellent post!
Oh..we had crock pot vegetable soup
Shocked my mom when I suggested it LOL
.-= Gurl´s last blog ..Movie Night! =-.
Hi Jennifer!
Wonderful to see another new face in my comments, it is always a great pleasure. Welcome to one of my little bits of the internet.
If you were to ask anyone which would they prefer: fast food/take-out or home-cooked, most (all?) will say “home-cooked” every time. And yet, we all still opt for the take-out. Why? It’s not cost effective. It’s not the quality (unless you like cardboard lol). It isn’t even convenient most of the time. I nearly always end up regret having fast food. And you know what? I’ll probably regret it next time too.
To keep the ball rolling on the “what we had for dinner” thing, the kids and I made a chicken and vegetable stew last night. Probably should have been a casserole, but when you don’t have a casserole dish you gotta improvise.
It was the kids first attempt at making a stew and it was to die for yummy. Even have plenty left over for tonight’s dinner. Those types of things always taste even better the next day.
Thank you so much for stopping by and commenting, Jennifer. Oh, and thanks for the retweet too.
Kind regards,
Steve
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Thanks Steve.. Now I need to go grab some more soup
The stew does sound good and leftovers are almost always much better than the fresh cooked LOL
I think they choose fast food for the no clean up maybe? Or sometimes we pick fast food when both my mom and I are too tired to deal with cooking. Its often pretty good, but we tend to go for pizza or taco hell…wendy’s from time to time.
Well.. I wrote another mini novella lol. Your quite welcome for the RT… thank YOU for the follow
Hope you have a rest of the week!
Jenn/Gurl
haha! That’s cool, Jenn, we like novels here. In fact, we even encourage it.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
I am glad you pointed that out to me.. I will have to think up something good to submit
*wonders what she can gt her geek on about* lol
Excellent! I’ll look forward to it.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
It’s times like these, when I hear tales of a juicy steak, that I wonder why in the hell some of my friends are vegetarian or vegan.
I’ve long been a proponent of the idea that home-cooked meals are cheaper, better, and tastier than fast food, however I must confess that sometimes I enjoy biting down into murder and corporate greed, along with a chicken breast fillet and two rashers of bacon!
(and yes, I am invariably lovin’ it at the time.)
Jolly good piece! :3
Twitter: HorstBurkhardt
Hey Horst!
Yeah, I’ve never understood vegetarians or vegans either. However, it is fun to watch them salivate as you wave a thick juicy steak under their noses.
As for your chicken breast fillet with 2 rashers of bacon… it’s even worse for me with Michelle being a manager at KFC… I can get it for free. Ah, yeah she did read this article with raised eyebrows.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
I agree that a home cooked meal is so much better for you and depending on the meal it can be prepared quite quickly as well.
The only time we have takeout, about once a week, is when we just want something different, usually pizza Chinese or burgers or something. As long as you phone in the order it doesn’t take all that much time.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..How Would You Like To Win An Apple iPad? =-.
Twitter: AussieSire
Yes, phoning ahead is a good idea and can sometimes save you a bit of time. However, most people don’t remember (or even think) to do that. I know I don’t.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Yep, we even keep a menu from all the places we like to frequent so that we can order exactly what we want. We’ve become regulars at one place and they look after us by giving bigger serves.
Only the other day we discovered a local pizza place right around the corner that makes real pizzas, not the stuff you get from Pizza Hut. Yum! Don’t know how that slipped us by all these years.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..The Need For Speed Computer Style =-.
Twitter: AussieSire
Oh wow, I’m nowhere near that organised.
And yeah, those little corner places are always much better quality than the big chains. We have a pizza/pasta restaurant within walking distance here that do takeout as well. You pay a premium for their stuff and right now I’m not in a position to buy from them any more than about once in a blue moon, but the quality is high. Still quicker and easier to make me own though. 
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Lucky for me I’m of Italian heritage so I get a lot of home cooked Italian meals. Man I just love my pasta.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..How Would You Like To Win An Apple iPad? =-.
Twitter: AussieSire
I’m a first generation Aussie… my heritage (dating back some 1100 years) is 100% pom. However I’m not all bangers & mash, or toad in the hole. I love cuisine from all over the world. I have a soft spot for Mediterranean food, especially Italian or Greek. It is rare that I don’t cook at least one or two pasta dishes per week.
Another big favourite of mine is Portuguese food. If you haven’t tried it, you are truly missing out.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Yep, one of the many things I love about Australia is that we, at least most of us, have embraced the the different nationalities and their cuisine. Somewhat different from when I was growing up.
Got to admit though, I still love my meat pies, pasties, fish and chips and the like.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..Introducing The Hyundai i45 Sedan =-.
Twitter: AussieSire
Home cooked food is usually served in our home. It can be just right in our budget but with that needed nutrients for our body. Everytime we need to take some errands, that’s the only time that we eat in fast food restaurants. Moreover if we’re craving of something, we also order thru phone or online.
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