I start my mid-afternoon Odyssey every day as the clock bumps towards 5pm and there are no dinner plans on the horizon. As I leave my laptop, I take a handful of steps into the fridge and behind before I open my camera roll and scroll for inspiration. The next stop is the freezer, which usually serves remaining soup and Costco chicken baking, and provides quick pit stops (filtered by deal) to the Uber Eats screen. Finally, while standing in front of the fridge, I took a tour of Resy and Opentable before going back to the tried true Google search for “food near me”.
As someone who writes restaurant Trying to understand what dinner is all day can be overwhelming. And with the growing costs of cooking, it’s more difficult than ever to balance cooking and eating out at home, both at restaurants and grocery stores. However, recently, instead of vowing to abandon the takeaway habit entirely, I found myself somewhere in the middle with the table split between takeaway and home cooking.
This was the first dinner that this “half” dinner had been focused. The last month was the New Year. The day ran away from me and I didn’t put their preparations into my calendar quickly enough while I had dumplings in my heart. Suddenly, it was late in the afternoon and they were still nothing more than cravings. After a quick trip to the store, after washing away the last rapper and bokchoy, I returned to the assembly station in the dining room. I didn’t have a return trip to the store on my card, nor was I in the state that offered anything else to the fridge, so I turned to my old standby, Northern Café. Orders for orange chicken and Lao Gamma noodles made the dinner look brighter and disappeared completely as soon as the table was steamed and covered Fried dumpling Sitting with a take-out container. Not cooking the whole meal was not taken away from experience. Instead, it gave me more time to enjoy the holidays (and a fridge full of leftovers for the next day).
Since the events of the New Year on the Moon, I have been thinking about other ways to integrate this new practice into my life. Sometimes it’s a police officer to not prepare the whole meal, but it’s a difficult battle to let go of the feeling that it reduces with every successful dinner. Recently I’ve been taking out Tangsuyuk (sweet and sour crispy pork) and Jjajangmyeon Pike noodles Homemade bokuchoy and chili oil noodles Perilla Bangchan. I dream of a Sauluntan dinner with homemade kimchi pancakes and a plate of salad and pasta that I’ve just thrown in balsamic and oil. Sweet potatoes roasted with butter patties can make the perfect pairing with restaurant burgers where fries aren’t present very often, but homemade eggs may complement takeout waffles on days when homemade batters don’t fit on the card. And while the pizza on delivery is better than what my own oven can produce most of the time, roasted vegetables and homemade caprese dishes are an easy way to make the slice feel a little more special.
It’s not just a casual lunch at home where this works. The next time I’m overwhelmed with hosting people and cooking a full spread, I’ll order a few dishes and try something in the middle by focusing my efforts on meaningful new recipes for trying, or time-consuming old favorites like short short ribs. And I can still serve homemade food to my guests, but I can also support local restaurants that need it now. I’m already imagining a takeout tray Chui’s Crispy tacos surrounded by a shallow bowl of chili peppers bulging from my cast iron and brownie baking sheet. Cooking may be a way to show care for others, but sometimes takeout is a way to show care for yourself. And in this way, maybe you can balance both.
