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Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

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Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#21

Post by bergenty »

techsin101 wrote: post #8
armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Learn to cook. Seriously though. With only a bit of practice you can cook restaurant-quality food at home. And you can buy high-quality ingredients, but they are actually cheap because you’re buying them unprepared and in bulk. There are many high quality recipes and tutorials online. Look up Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Ragusea, and Joshua Weissman. These are videos for basic recipes with grocery-store ingredients, not fa…

Cooking can easily take up 2-4 hours a day. 1 hour for prep, 1 hour for cooking, 1 hour for cleaning up afterwards (stove, utensils, dishes, table, kitchen floor, sink, etc)

Nonsense, my wife whips up a delicious meal in under 30 minutes with everything included. Most days we use disposable sal leaf plates so she just tosses the pans in the dishwasher and we’re done.

Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#22

Post by bergenty »

db48x wrote: post #4

Most of the price of eating out is the cost of wages. After all, someone else is cooking the food, cleaning the dishes, etc. If the cost of labor goes up, so must the cost of eating out. Nothing the government can do about that.

You would hope the economies of scale of cooking large amounts of food at a restaurant would help bring down the costs though.

Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#24

Post by csomar »

I think this is mostly a US problem. While food prices have risen everywhere, restaurant prices haven't risen as dramatically as they did in the US (I haven't been to Europe lately, so maybe it's the same).

Also, Uber Eat is worse than crap. It has menu prices higher than seat-in prices, cost around $10 for delivery and want me to tip on the whole order + it has its own fee. If I were to get a regular meal, it'd cost around $35. (That's $70 for two meals, or $2.100 per month; even a high tech salary can't afford that).

In my opinion, something gotta give in the US pretty soon. Prices are unsustainable for most of the places I've been. Airbnb prices have also gone berserk.

Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#25

Post by silisili »

bergenty wrote: post #21
techsin101 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooking can easily take up 2-4 hours a day. 1 hour for prep, 1 hour for cooking, 1 hour for cleaning up afterwards (stove, utensils, dishes, table, kitchen floor, sink, etc)

Nonsense, my wife whips up a delicious meal in under 30 minutes with everything included. Most days we use disposable sal leaf plates so she just tosses the pans in the dishwasher and we’re done.

Agreed. My wife is some kind of wizard in the kitchen. Most meals about 30 minutes, though some dishes might push an hour depending. Better than any restaurant I've been to - completely spoiled.

Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#26

Post by sowbug »

techsin101 wrote: post #8
armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Learn to cook. Seriously though. With only a bit of practice you can cook restaurant-quality food at home. And you can buy high-quality ingredients, but they are actually cheap because you’re buying them unprepared and in bulk. There are many high quality recipes and tutorials online. Look up Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Ragusea, and Joshua Weissman. These are videos for basic recipes with grocery-store ingredients, not fa…

Cooking can easily take up 2-4 hours a day. 1 hour for prep, 1 hour for cooking, 1 hour for cleaning up afterwards (stove, utensils, dishes, table, kitchen floor, sink, etc)

Ethan (mentioned above) has a series of fun videos where he races a Doordash driver (or a friend doing the same thing) to see if he can prepare a similar meal in his home kitchen before the order arrives. He usually finishes a bit earlier than the restaurant order, and I wouldn't say he rushes his cooking.

Lots of subjective variables, of course. Do you enjoy cooking? Are you productive at home while waiting for your delivery order? Is time spent in a restaurant relaxing? Do you count driving to/from the restaurant as part of the "work" of the meal? Don't you still have to clean up after a delivery order?

Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#28

Post by krapp »

bergenty wrote: post #19
armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Learn to cook. Seriously though. With only a bit of practice you can cook restaurant-quality food at home. And you can buy high-quality ingredients, but they are actually cheap because you’re buying them unprepared and in bulk. There are many high quality recipes and tutorials online. Look up Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Ragusea, and Joshua Weissman. These are videos for basic recipes with grocery-store ingredients, not fa…

This is no longer the solution. I find it costs almost as much to make a meal at home compared to getting food from a restaurant unless you stick to the basics of chicken, beans/lentils, eggs and dairy.

> I find it costs almost as much to make a meal at home compared to getting food from a restaurant unless you stick to the basics of chicken, beans/lentils, eggs and dairy.

Yeah, that's what you do when it's expensive to eat. Stretch a pot of beans, rice and hamhocks over a week. Buy canned vegetables and Hamburger Helper. Shake and Bake chicken and au gratin potatoes out of a box. Stock up on bollilos, ramen and vermicelli. Stop expecting every meal to be an experience, you're not living to eat anymore, you're eating to live.

Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#29

Post by enlyth »

armchairhacker wrote: post #5

Learn to cook. Seriously though. With only a bit of practice you can cook restaurant-quality food at home. And you can buy high-quality ingredients, but they are actually cheap because you’re buying them unprepared and in bulk. There are many high quality recipes and tutorials online. Look up Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Ragusea, and Joshua Weissman. These are videos for basic recipes with grocery-store ingredients, not fa…

I find Joshua Weissman difficult to watch because of the forced unfunny zoomer humour and ADHD editing style

Re: Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

#30

Post by csomar »

eddy_chan wrote: post #15

Too much of what you pay goes to the rentier that owns the premises. Inflation of ingredients, inflation of wages, inflation of utilities. It all adds up. Something gets squeezed, either the experience or your wallet. As other posters have said, climate change, war adds to it too. And the world has just about reached peak-population outside of Africa. The developed world including all the industralial powerhouses of…

Sorry, but that's a tons of horse**. You can rent a villa with a pool today in Ubud, Bali for as little as $30 per night. You can get reasonable food at a restaurant for as little as $3. I also booked a flight from Istanbul to Ankara (one-way/mid-August) for $28.

This is a US problem. Yes, the world is going through serious inflation right now but nothing comes close to the US.

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