Marilyn Haggerty's amazing Olive Garden review and the subsequent viral shitstorm

Getting an avacado, 3 bell peppers, and two tomatoes alone is like $10.

whaaaaaaat

are the bell peppers made of gold or something

yeah i don't habitually cook so i don't have the ingredients, and buying ingredients is a waste of money because i don't cook so they won't get used up and will rot or go off

"using everything you have" is really the key point here. that's hard to do if there's any level of complexity to what you're cooking. like if I'm making chicken and rice w/ a salad, that's pretty easy and fairly cheap. but still it runs around $15-20. you're not saving that much money!

Not only is that in itself ridiculous, but if you actually make a quantity of that food requiring three peppers and two tomatoes, you should have leftovers for two for at least two more meals.

people who think my inability to cook is a schtick have obviously never seen me in the kitchen. and why would i allow computers to repeatedly ruin my life if i really knew how to control them.

I don't believe this, there is a lower limit to how 'bad a cook' you can be, and that lower limit does not go below 'making pasta'. if you have two hands and can follow simple instructions you can make pasta. if you cannot that does not mean you are 'bad at cooking', it means you can't follow simple instructions.

fwiw I mostly eat cheap takeout too and avoid cooking when I can because I am a lazy mofo and enjoy taking advantage of a place with lots of cheap and delicious food that other people can make for me.

my grocery costs for 2 ppl are $90-$110 a week and i shop at whole foods!

you can't make a meal for two at home for under 30 bucks!!?? honey, we need to talk...

Asda online:

1 large Avocado = £1
3 red peppers = 80p each (I looked for Bell Peppers, I got bicycle locks!)
Pack of 6 toms = £1

Not a lot like $10, really.

good avacados run about $2.50. otherwise, you can get the small ones, but you'd need two. tomatoes - 79 cents apiece. bell peppers are cheap if they're green but good mexican food requires the red and yellow ones, which are $1.79 (or more)

Seriously we spend about $600/mo on groceries for two including a lot of nice organic stuff, in NYC mind you, and eat almost all our meals at home. Just because you are unable to manage adult life does not make the Olive Garden a good deal.

this happened to me when i would go to the local Friendly's chain here that closed recently. seeing the unhealthiness. it was pretty glaring. whole families. i felt bad for them!

― scott seward, Wednesday, March 14, 2012 9:14 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah. my girlfriend and i have an occasional craving for crappy late-night food of the denny's/waffle house variety. one night for some reason we went to shoney's (i guess because it has a salad bar) and there were a handful of families there, and nearly all were morbidly obese -- like 350+ pounds for normal-height, not-been-to-golds-gym people.

i'm not judging those people (i'm really not, i know all too well the way brain chemistry shifts and you just can't be satisfied with anything but super-greasy giant meals), but it was a striking scene.

also the food was crazy gross.

Okay, I take exception to this. Your average meal for 2 at OG is what, 30 bucks? 35? Maybe you're just a better shopper than I am, but it's hard to make a good homecooked meal for less than that. My wife often gets frustrated about how hard it is to make real Mexican food on a budget, because there are so many vegetables involved and all that's expensive. Getting an avacado, 3 bell peppers, and two tomatoes alone is like $10. I like the "save money by eating in" line too but once you add up grocery bills - just doesn't happen

it's all about cooking enough for a few days and making it last. then you don't throw out half of that expensive bell pepper, etc.

bell peppers to be fair are crazy expensive in the midwest. tomatoes not so much.

are your avocados imported from the moon or something? xp

Not only is that in itself ridiculous, but if you actually make a quantity of that food requiring three peppers and two tomatoes, you should have leftovers for two for at least two more meals.

no, that's not true. you can easily use them all in one meal. the stuff we cook is very heavy on that.

well i can make pasta, though often it's either burned or overcooked. that's when i want to make an effort!

i can make anything that involves no more steps than "removing from packet, putting in oven/in boiling water". like a boiled egg, or fishcakes. very often they still go wrong. anything that involves mixing ingredients =>> calamities and disasters and nervous breakdowns. so i don't do it.

I have never seen a $2.50 avocado in my entire life

i actually don't believe that you people have tried. unless you have some kind of severe lack of coordinating that makes you a daily risk to yourselves and those around you, YOU CAN COOK. you just don't want to put the time/energy into it. which is fine. but this whole schtick of saying you are somehow INCAPABLE of cooking is ridiculous.

coordination

see also: I JUST CAN'T SWIM

are your avocados imported from the moon or something? xp

no, but you really have two options, one is to get them from a grocery store where they're cheaper, but often not ripe, or overripe, or too small, and the second is to go to a good mexican store which has really, really good ones, but yes they tend to be expensive. tbf I may be mis-remembering the price but I know they're at least $2

bell peppers to be fair are crazy expensive in the midwest.

bingo

I buy avocados at Whole Foods and I don't even pay $2 each for them. Organic, no less!

srsly, cooking pasta is about the level of difficulty of, idk, taking a shower

I'm just not good at taking showers, what can I say

yall should move to the city

we have literally just done this conversation in the gay thread

i am incapable of cooking, i also loathe the entire process, and i resent people telling me i "should" cook or "it's so easy, anyone can do it". fuck off!

100% of the time i try to go above pasta or boiling an egg, THINGS GO WRONG

well if you don't resent paying way more to have other people do it for you, fine, but don't make excuses that it all shakes out to the same cost in the end

One of the few advantages of living in Miami: avocados on street corners go for pennies.

the last time i did a big shop i got food for all of our breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for a week and it cost me 200 dollars. that's two adults and two children.

i don't eat out all the time, this is not a defence of shitty chain restaurants

i'm not telling you that you MUST or SHOULD cook, i'm just saying there is no fucking way you are not physically or mentally capable of cooking unless you have a fairly severe disability of some kind.

i mean, can you turn stuff on and off? can you count to numbers like 10 or 20? can you stir?

and LEX just so you know before i had kids i hardly ever cooked. mostly ate out and got take-out. plus, in philly for years i lived in apartments with kitchens that were less than ideal or fun to cook in. kinda made you not want to cook.

frogbs, what recipes are you making that require three green peppers that will be consumed by two people in one meal? Any time I make pasta sauce or chili I use one green pepper, and it makes a vat; I always have leftovers.

i'm just saying that every time i've tried to cook, things have gone badly wrong, and i have NEVER emerged from the horrible process with anything resembling a nice meal. i mostly scavenge apples and crackers and bread and nuts and seeds and yoghurt and stuff. it suits me fine.

well if you don't resent paying way more to have other people do it for you, fine, but don't make excuses that it all shakes out to the same cost in the end

maybe not at Olive Garden but I'd say a lot of local delis/Chinese places/Mexican places will sell you prepared food for roughly the same cost as it would be to make it yourself.

I just imagined lex sweeping the floor for breads, nuts, seeds, and yoghurt :(

That's true in some cases, although you can probably make a fresher, healthier version for about the same price as the carryout.

yeah i would say it's prob possible to eat a selection of takeout that approximates the cost of buying groceries. but you are prob also signing up to die young.

healthy takeout exists

in california

I make basic pasta sauce for 4 with 2 peppers 2 onions 2 tins of tomatoes.

it's perfectly possible to eat healthily and well without a) cooking b) eating out c) ordering take-out.

a) i never do EVER
b) at most once a week, sometimes not even that
c) once in a blue moon when i'm particularly hungover

Grocery bill dickery. Congrats, thread.

Marilyn's review of this thread so far:

"I read the thread. I found some interesting screen names. I also learned that bell peppers, if too expensive, are probably made of gold."

?

frogbs, what recipes are you making that require three green peppers that will be consumed by two people in one meal? Any time I make pasta sauce or chili I use one green pepper, and it makes a vat; I always have leftovers.

stuff like fajitas or stir fry; you use one in the salad, two in the actual meal. I realize that's pretty heavy and probably not what anyone else eats. also there are soups that we make (that are really whole meals) that have like 12 ingredients, that all gets expensive

i swear some of you people are nuts

I can cook. Cooking is the easy part. Navigating the labyrinth of keeping on top of what perishable food items you have, when they expire, what combination you should use them in to avoid spoilage, making sure not to let your leftovers go bad... That's the hard part and that's where the savings of cooking at home truly start to kick in.

frogbs, saying you can't cook a good homecooked meal for under $30 is probably the most offensive thing you've ever said on ilx

Lex cooking pasta:

Fig. 1

http://www.agefotostock.com/previewimage/bajaage/ae675d96406e91458f0d00168cc5f172/OJO-pe0058498.jpg

Fig. 2

http://udleditions.cast.org/indira/docs/all_about_coyotes/glossary-images/panicked1.jpg

it's perfectly possible to eat healthily and well without a) cooking b) eating out c) ordering take-out.

Seriously though, it's not.