You don’t have to be an economist to see that the average American family will spend over $2100.00 a year frequenting restaurants and Financialnut.com suggests that the entire country will spend over $110 billion this year on fast food alone, but doesn’t it? Obviously why do we eat out: to have time for our family to spend together, to avoid the drudgery of cooking, and to try great food that you couldn’t otherwise prepare on your own?

Many times, when we arrive at a restaurant, we find ourselves with the typical time of corralling the family, traveling to the restaurant, sitting in long lines or waiting rooms for long periods of time, and on top of all that, we run the risk of that the food is not prepared correctly. You also don’t really control what’s in your food. Add this to the obvious expenses for gas, food, and tip.

Is it the same to go out of fast food? Consider the following scenario: Let’s say, for example, that your family stays home while you head down the street to the local Kentucky Fried Chicken a couple of miles away. You grab a $10-$20 bucket of chicken and come home to find what you think is a human hair gently nestled in your store-bought food that’s probably from an employee who wasn’t being very attentive. Then you take the dinner bucket so they can prepare another one for you. In this brief period of time, a thought crosses your mind: you were only dedicating yourself to the task of “preparing dinner for your family”. His goal was not to waste his precious time, gas, and, more than likely, his family’s patience trying to make this dinner party work.

Now you are bombarded with thoughts about rising gas prices and the economic forecast. You think you’ve inevitably wasted your resources, and in the back of your mind you see hair among the cooked food that was meant for your family, reminding you how powerless they were to prevent this event. You know that food preparation is completely out of your control. Sure, your family had a craving for chicken, but how could you really not be sure how well the food was prepared or really trust its ingredients?

The truth is that the above situation is one of a host of problems facing restaurant and fast food patrons. We Americans eat a lot. A Gallup poll indicates that, as in this example, 60% of Americans frequent restaurants at least once a week, while that number increases from two to three for 42% of the country’s population. Add to this the messy orders, the ignorance of who prepared the food, the ingredients they used, and the occasional occurrence of food poisoning, and you begin to have ample reason to try the universal, traditional, and elemental alternative: preparing the food yourself.

Several studies suggest that cooking at home is not only much healthier and more cost-effective, but also promotes a healthier family lifestyle. We often think about the time it takes to cook, which is often a strong motivator to hit the road and search for our favorite restaurant, along with the need to satisfy our family’s taste buds. These are usually our biggest unearthed from the kitchen.

The answer is at your fingertips. It comes in the form of several time and cost saving options. If you’re internet savvy, you probably know that you can find a plethora of resources online. Not only are there cookbooks, recipes, blogs, and websites dedicated to cooking the type of food you’d like to enjoy, but you can also find recipes with different ingredients depending on your family’s lifestyle and degree of culinary expertise. You’ll also find it’s easy to find restaurant-style recipes, grilling options, and “no-cook” options that can be made in minutes.

Open your favorite search engine, type in “quick and tasty recipes” and try to limit your restaurant visits to once a month. When you find and cook some of these recipes, you’ll see what a world of difference it makes for you.