Eating Out

When all this happened I actually felt an overwhelming sense of guilt.  I like to tell people it was gratitude, and it was - but WAY MORE of survivors guilt and I had to work to turn into gratitude.  Having gone through so much unemployment in our life and hard time financially I felt so guilty that we were JUST FINE.  Jason just worked form home, still making the same amount.  I almost couldn't believe it.  How could bad things be happening to other people and not us?  It didn't feel right.  I felt like we needed to be going through it too.  My mind just couldn't wrap around that this wasn't going to collapse our world.  I wanted to help.  I wanted to give everyone around me money who was hurting.  I wanted to give away our stimulus check becasue we didn't need it.  

After a few weeks I found out Jason was feeling similar feelings.  Not quite the same, but both of our feelings led to the same conclusion.  We wanted to help.  I did some research and found several mom and pop restaurants that needed our help.  So we did something we never ever do.  We started ordering out.  We get take out every Monday and Thursday - but only to small family owned mom and pop's (our ideal), or LOCAL franchises.  This picture I know is from Corner Bakery - doesn't fit into either of our categories - but it is owned by some people in our stake and we were asked to order from them.

Things I have learned from ordering take out.

• It IS NOT easier than cooking.  First to find/decide on a place, have everyone order (find something GF for Megan), call in and order, wait, go pick it up (ALWAYS later then they said, drive home, unpack it, make sure everyone gets what they ordered, clean up - it honestly was not less stressful or quicker than cooking from home.
• It is so unhealthy.  Rarely did anything come with vegetables and if it did they were gross or cooked in a way that didn't make it healthy.  So often times I would still cook a vegetable for us (so add that to the above list of things to do).  And obviously, the kids menus were just ridiculous and my kids ended up eating something that was just a different version of a starch, cheese, and fries.
• It is so expensive.  We didn't let this bother us because that was the point - we weren't trying to save money or do it cheap.  (which was hard because I am so used to being like "they can share that" - but the point was to spend a lot of money.  But several times we would have a meal that cost $80.00 that I could have made for $10.00 or less!
• Honestly, nothing was that good.  We have not found ONE restaurant that we would ever go back to.  I feel sad about this.  But it is true.
• The saddest part for me is that I LOVE eating out and as a cruel irony we start eating out right when I get to the point of my pregnancy where I can't eat anything after 4:00.  So 90% of the time I don't even order anything.  I watch as they all eat onion rings and I get nothing.  Sometimes I order and eat it for lunch the next day.  But day old onion rings just aren't good.