Comparison Cooking

I remember when I was in Home Economics and my teacher was trying to teach us about value cooking and our assignment was to figure out if meals from scratch cost more or less than buying packaged meals.  So we had to take our favorite recipes and break them down to figure this out, so today, I thought I would show you what I mean by this, so you can do your own comparison cooking…I know that convenience is a big part of buying packaged meals, but we are going to discuss cost for now…I’ll get into convenience and nutritional value  during other posts coming soon.

Take a favorite recipe and break it down by ingredients and see what it costs vs buying the same amount of packaged meal and/or all ready made by the store.

For the homemade macaroni and cheese…a 16 ounce b0x of macaroni might cost you $1.38, but you are only going to use half of the box right now, so you half of $1.38 is .69 cents…Milk…1 gallon of milk might cost you $3.41 a gallon, but you are only needing 1/2 cup.  So, first, you have to figure out how many 1/2 cups are in a gallon (there are 8 cups in a gallon, so that would be 16 half cups…so you would take the cost of a gallon of milk and divide that by 16 ($.21 cents) The other item prices I’ve put beside the items below

Example: Macaroni & Cheese

Your homemade recipe calls for:

• 1 (8 ounce) package elbow macaroni – .69 cents
• 1/2 cup milk – .21 cents
• 1/2 pound American Cheese, Velveeta – $1.95

Total: $2.85

Store bought -

• 1 (7 ounce) box of mac and cheese – $1.89
• 1/4 cup butter – .44 cents
• 1/2 cup milk – .21 cents

Total:  $2.54

So it cost $.31 cents more to make it by scratch in this example.  You don’t have that much extra preparation, but you are getting a better, cheesier meal.  (per my taste buds…you might feel differently)…

Because prices differ in all areas and you can purchase items on sale, I know this might not be what it will cost you, so my challenge to you is to find a favorite homemade recipe, break down the cost of ingredients and then find a store bought packaged and/or what it would cost for the store to make it for you and see if it really is worth the cost of packaged dinners.