Cat Scratch Fever!

[elfs]

Yep, that's what Yamaarashi-chan has. Cat scratch fever. Apparently she has a free-floating prominence of lymph nodes on her neck there, and bacteria from a cat's claws have crawled up there and infected her, and they've swelled up. She's going to be on antibiotics for the next ten days. We have a return trip next Wednesday afternoon. The scratches are actually quite visible, on her inner arm.

At least it's nothing too serious.

And we have eaten far, far too well this weekend. Breakfast was pancakes from scratch (real scratch-- flour and sugar and all that), lunch was full-faced bacon, lettuce, and tomato or egg salad with celery, mustard, and honey, and dinner was roasted salmon (thanks to fallenpegasus) and couscous. The salmon was actually less colorful than the stuff you get from the store-- which means that it wasn't farm raised and so didn't get its glossy fleshtones from dye pellets. And breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs, cereal, and fresh orange slices.

Oh, and fresh-baked challah! Not that great, sadly; I tried a low-fat recipie and it tastes more like English muffin. But, hey, isn't that what you want for breakfast?

Y'know, I did the math on this... why do people even bother eating out? I mean, we all ate really well, and feeding myself and two kids and a spare adult four meals cost less than thirty bucks. Can you even feed two children and two adults four McDonalds meals (or anything comparably cheap) for that much these days? And what I made was probably a lot better for them than fast food or Costco ramen.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you why we (used to) eat out so much.

Time.

Now that I'm doing the work-at-home thing, we'll no doubt eat a lot better, a lot cheaper.... but when you have two people that both work 40+ a week, you're lucky if the dishes stay done, much less getting dinner.

Where are you getting your bacon? I'm sorta sniffing around for high-quality bacon for cheap.... Fletchers is great, but pricey as hell. I figured if anyone would know where to get budget gourmet bacon, it'd be you....

[jenk]

One of the great things about working at home is you can do roasts and crock-pot and other stuff that takes hours.

And Elf - another reason people eat out is failure to plan for food consumption. Arranging to have ingredients available & wanting to eat things before they morph into something fuzzy takes a wee bit of planning. I gave up eating out for lent year-before-last and it was an interesting experience.

Why do we eat out?

[kyriani.livejournal.com]

Time, energy, and inability to cook properly for me... I have an hour and a half commute one way and usually work around 10 hours a day, so by the time I get home the last thing I want to do is have to spend another 30 minutes cooking dinner. Also, not only have I not ever grokked cooking, I HATE cooking (well the two probably are related). I hate wasting the time and energy on something that I care very little about. I'm one of those people that if they had a pill that had all the nutrients you needed for a full day in it, would just take that instead of eating real food.
Keep in mind I grew up on very bland food (my mom had a very very stringent budget and NO time and NO energy when she got home from working full time). My father refused to cook since it was "the woman's job". I grew up on food from cans (I never knew you could actually make bread until The Haunted made it when I was living there).
Fortunately for me, Matt cooks very well and likes to cook (if it isn't all the time and as long as he isn't trying to write a 7-page paper in one night). ;) Its also hard for us because we have a tiny kitchen and very little cooking implements (haven't had the money to buy them yet) so we generally don't do anything fancier than grilled cheese or pasta. Matt is spoiled as far as cooking goes, his parents used to run their own catering business, so he is used to having a huge kitchen with all the means necessary to make a full meal. When I cook for myself I usually make ramen or nuke something. ^_^;; Its just what I grew up with and what I am used to (and its fast and easy).
Granted we don't have kids (and never plan to), so all we have to worry about and take responsibility for is ourselves. Its a whole 'nother matter when you have someone else dependent upon you for food etc, its a good thing you chose to be a parent and not me. ^_^ Sounds like you and Omaha make great parents. ^_^

Costco. Really.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Bacon is mostly bacon. Most grocery-store bacon is from pigs bred (or engineered) and fed to produce "lean" stuff. Kirkland, on the other hand, isn't trying to produce low-fat bacon, but to just bacon. I've also bought the thick-cut stuff from the butcher at Pike Place market. That's rather good, but pricy in a we-suck-tourists kind of way.

Re: Costco. Really.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Hey, even better. We just re-upped our membership. Iiiiiit's BACON!!! :)