Eating at home versus dining out.

Learning to cook is a lot of fun, nutritious, and good for your wallet. Eating out is terribly expensive! Plus, when you limit yourself to eating out only a few nights a month, it feels like more of a treat.

When my fiance and I go out to eat, we often go to places featured on Restaraunt.com, because we can use frequent flyer miles I have saved up to get dining certificates. We also like to find quality, inexpensive restaurants in our area. Expensive does not always mean good food OR good service.

When we cook at home, we often have more fun than going out to eat. It is more work, but we get to eat more leisurely, listen to music while we eat, and retire to the couch after a big meal. Thankfully we recently bought a dishwasher too! (Sears was having a sale, with 0% financing for 9 months, plus FatCash from FatWallet with a rebate for delivery...)

For dinner we usually eat:
* Pasta with Classico sauce, the best!
* Stir fry with cashews - yum!
* Chicken marsala, Parmesan, or cordon blue.
* Trader Joe's pizza

For lunch:
* Peanut butter and jelly, my favorite. Teddy Bear peanut butter, nothing else!
* Turkey sandwich with mustard.
* Snack Pak: Cheez-its, Pringles (on sale @ CVS), Goldfish (pretzels or chedder).

For breakfast:
* Granola.
* Coffee.
* Oatmeal.

We also have a lot of bananas, apples, yogurts, oranges, and cookies in between and after meals.

I think we eat exceptionally well for our budget. I clip a ton of coupons and we also use the Chase Rewards Card for an extra 5% cash back in rewards.