Flip side of always eating at home

[jdp]

Last night, I'm still not 100% feeling better, its my son's first night of street hockey at the Y. The times were messed up. We were there for hours. I was not looking forward to getting home at 7:30 and making something. I knew what I had for "quick" meals at home and just didn't want any of it. So I picked this to be our 'once in a while' dinner out.

We grabbed drive thru. Get home. Sit down to eat.

And the food just looks blech. But my son was hungry and started to eat so I did too and blech.

I just couldn't eat it. It was a tad greasy, pretty salty and otherwise tasteless.

So, if you've been on a regimen of always eating at home (and homecooked mostly) do you develop an aversion to eating out?

Mind you, this wasn't a nice, sit down restaurant dinner but still....<shudder> blech.

I was wishing I had that drive through money back for something else while I went ahead and pulled out some fruit to make a smoothie. lol

[Kathryn]

The worst of it is that not only is fast food not appealing, but half the time when I'm in a run-of-the-mill sit-down restaurant I'm thinking, I could do a lot better than this at home! The only fast food that I can really enjoy is Taco Bell or Subway, and for sit-down dinners I try to do ethnic restaurants.

[lilac]

I don't develop an aversion to eating out, but I definitely get very persnickety about eating some foods now that aren't cooked by me because I've found recipes that I really like and have tailored them to my tastes.

Recently it's been pizza. I can make a delicious, completely homemade pizza (I make the wholewheat dough myself based off of a Tyler Florence recipe from foodnetwork.com) with all sorts of yummy and sometimes odd ingredients. I even season the pizza dough after I roll it out and before I bake it to pack in more flavour.

And recently, I've come up with a concoction for chili that I really love too. It's very flavourful and very spicy with lots of diced jalapeños including the seeds. I either put in bite-sized chunks of chorizo or ground beef if we have it.

[amandajane]

I've got very fussy since I've been cooking more for myself. I just can't go near greasy chips, beefburgers etc <bleuch is the right word!>

Also I had to laugh, the banner ad at the bottom of this thread says "I cured my acid reflux", lol!

[rstlne]

I don't mind food from fast food places. Then again, the food I cook at home isn't entirely free of grease either.

[Milehimama]

I can't eat a lot of takeout now becuase it tastes too salty, even the MSG free ones.

Also, I can't ever order spaghetti/marinara sauce or meatloaf because it is never even CLOSE to homemade. It's not all bad though - I stopped buying treats wrapped in cellophane (Grandma's cookies, Danish rolls) because now that I bake at home\, they taste like cardboard! Chips Ahoy are really gross to me now.

Did I just date myself by using the word "gross"?

[CheapCanuck]

We eat out perhaps once every two weeks, and I've noticed that I can't eat fast food anymore without upsetting my stomach. Any sitdown restaurant where you can order a nice balanced meal is fine, but Mickie Ds is a no go for me these days

[Miss Rosie]

I have this "problem" too, and I like it. Unless it's very well made, or an ethnic cuisine I don't make or don't make well, I'm not interested in restaurant food.

Our big eating out occasion is pizza from Whole Foods Market. It's $8.00 on Wednesdays and at least as good as anything I can do myself. We share it with one of my son's friends, and it's enough to feed all three of us.

Otherwise, I cook. I enjoy it. It's a creative exercise, really, if you can take some time and pay attention to what you're doing. Made stuffed squash yesterday using quinoa that I'll definitely make again and that you won't find in any restaurant.

Tonight is potato-leek soup. It's in the crock pot now.

[jkuo13]

We've had the same experience in our house. Granted, we're vegetarians, so we can't eat most fast food by default. We really only eat out at ethnic restaurants or at places where the food quality is pretty good and decently healthy. I think the only bad food I still get occasional cravings for is a big eggplant parm sub from one of the pizza parlors near us.

[lucille]

We initially swore off drive through food after just way too many awful meals. Some of them were just so gross even for fast food that people got sick or wouldn't finish it.
I blame part of it on total lack of quality combined with too much artificial junk in most fast food.