Cooks Nation

To those who have always home-cooked and also those who have recently started home-cooking instead of eating ready-meals or eating out.
Have you found that cooking increases your energy bills? if so, by how much?
Thanks

No. The cost to run the oven for one hour per night, or the stove top for 20-30 minutes per night is very minimal. We also like to eat slow cooker meals, and those use very little electricity (fractions of a cent per hour). My typical energy bill is less than $40 per month, and our gas bill is $12. For $52 you could buy two or three terrible fast food meals for a family of 4. You couldn’t even buy enough to feed a family of four at a sit down restaurant for that.

Cooking at home FROM SCRATCH (ie not from a bunch of mixes and frozen dinners) is far cheaper than going out to eat.

Check out these websites and books for inexpensive dinner ideas (some of them have really funny names):
www.hillbillyhousewife.com
www.frugalvillage.com
www.stretcher.com
www.thesimpledollar.com
The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn

To those who have always home-cooked and also those who have recently started home-cooking instead of eating ready-meals or eating out.
Have you found that cooking increases your energy bills? if so, by how much?
Thanks

No. The cost to run the oven for one hour per night, or the stove top for 20-30 minutes per night is very minimal. We also like to eat slow cooker meals, and those use very little electricity (fractions of a cent per hour). My typical energy bill is less than $40 per month, and our gas bill is $12. For $52 you could buy two or three terrible fast food meals for a family of 4. You couldn’t even buy enough to feed a family of four at a sit down restaurant for that.

Cooking at home FROM SCRATCH (ie not from a bunch of mixes and frozen dinners) is far cheaper than going out to eat.

Check out these websites and books for inexpensive dinner ideas (some of them have really funny names):
www.hillbillyhousewife.com
www.frugalvillage.com
www.stretcher.com
www.thesimpledollar.com
The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn

One of life’s many pleasures is the ability to go out to an establishment and enjoy a prepared meal. But since the economy is in the pits, I was curious if more people are doing at home cooking for themselves?
Psyche lapse – Let me be the first to say you do a cook proud. Happy New Year to ya!

I am not doing MORE home cooking since I am single and never ever eat at a restaurant in the first place. I am cooking differently, however. I am cooking more beans, less red meat.
Additonally, I am cooking now for a Community Dinner place where food is served free to anyone who arrives. Because there is a large population of people who need help near me, I have given to volunteering at the Center. In this way – the economy has changed the way I cook in my life.

I’m throwing a pizza making party Monday and I want to make a few different doughs, does anyone know a great pizza dough recipe to make at home and any extra preparation such as cooking the dough before putting the sauce on, high temp cooking, etc.?

go to- copycat.cdkitchen.com has the pizzahut dough recipe knockoff it tastes great and smells just like pizzahut when its baking

Seriously anyone think of another NFL game with more home cooking, especially in overtime. As a Sttelers fan that was pitiful.

No. The Superbowl that the Steelers supposedly won a couple of years ago was.

I want to do personal, in home cooking demonstrations in Connecticut for a fee. This would be in the customers home, not my own. What kind of licensing do I need? Or, where could I find out what kind of licensing I need?

It seems as if this might fall under a personal chef classification. In the past, you can help lower/avoid some liabilities by using their equipment, refrigeration, product (food), etc. If you were to bring your own food, you would be susceptible to storage, handling, transportation, and possibly even zoning issues, on top of insurance. I’ve known some private caterers in Maine to slip below the radar of the Health Department, but having lived and worked in Boston and Rhode Island, it is much harder to "get away with" and would advise against it anyways.

Once you determine how to classify your business, it would be a matter of hitting up the local courthouse or municipal building to get more specific, state related laws/licenses.

www.chef2chef.com is a great all around resource with a relatively good forum.

Hope some of this is helpful.

Where about in CT are you from?

I cook quite a bit at home but I must admit the food at most restaurants taste much better than my own cooking. So why do you think restaurant food taste so much better?

Fat is the answer.Restaurants always use too much fat and it is this fat that enhances the taste of the food.Then there is the psychological effect restaurant food has on your body.It is different from your own cooking and your body looks forward to tasting something else.Your taste buds are therefor more acute.Another thing that might have an influence is MSG(mono-sodium glutamate).Perhaps restaurants use it as a food enhancer(It is possible but I have not seen this yet.Most foodstuff already has some MSG added)