Most people eat out several times a week, and many get take-out a few additional times. This differs from a hundred years ago when a much higher proportion of meals were eaten at home. Back then, most cooking was done by women, many of whom were homemakers. I’ve often heard it said that women in the early 1900s cooked 3 time a day, 365 days a year. This is an exaggeration, but probably not too far from the truth.
A hundred years ago, people sometimes ate out – at a lunch counter, a nice restaurant, or something in between. From time to time, people also ate at church or community picnics or pot lucks, family reunions, or holiday gatherings – though each of the women attending probably often made one or more dishes at those events. Home-packed lunches (often packed by the women in the family) were the norm for the mid-day meal for many workers and students.
The huge number of meals that many women prepared each year back then affected which dishes were made, and how they were prepared. Tasty dishes, which were also simple to make and used readily available, inexpensive ingredients, were generally preferred. Cooks also often needed to prepare meals on a very tight budget, so they planned carefully to avoid waste. Left-overs were reheated or repurposed as an ingredient in a new dish. For example, left-over potatoes might be used to make soup.
Many people today want to eat home-cooked meals, but find it challenging. They believe that they make healthier choices when they cook at home, and that it’s less expensive. They also believe that eating together improves the well-being of family member. But there are many reasons why a lot of people don’t often make home-cooked meals. They are busy, and it takes time to cook. Family members may not have time to eat breakfast or other meals together, and they may be exhausted at dinner time after working all day. Some may find it less stressful to eat out or buy take-out. Older individuals, who once regularly cooked, sometimes “retire” from cooking and now go out or purchase prepared foods.
I don’t advocate that we go back to cooking 3 times a day, 365 days a year (frankly, that sounds boring and exhausting), but there are many health and economic benefits from cooking more meals from scratch. A friend believes that individuals today see beautifully presented dishes on blogs, Instagram, TikTok and other social media, and that they are disappointed when the dishes they make using the same recipes don’t turn out to be the “the best ever, most amazing [insert food name].” After being disappointed a few times, they decide that it’s too hard (or stressful) to cook and shift to purchasing mostly prepared foods.
Perhaps social media needs to give cooks permission to make foods that are less than perfect. Each food cooked from scratch is a learning experience. Often, they are still quite tasty, even if they don’t look perfect.
Like so many things, balance is key. It’s important to figure out the right balance between eating out, take-out foods, and home-cooked meals. A hundred years ago, cooks generally made tasty, simple, economical dishes. We can learn something from those cooks of yore.
I had to chuckle at this post. I’m the cook in our household. I cook almost entirely from scratch seven days a week. We’ll order take out once every couple of weeks which is usually pizza on a Friday.
When I was first married 28 years ago, I would get home from work about 3:30pm and my bride not until almost 6. I wanted to eat, so I began cooking and here I am years later still doing all the shopping and cooking. We’ve always packed a lunch for the kids when they were unschool and pack leftovers for ourselves (though occasionally we’ll all order out lunch at my workplace).
I really enjoy cooking and the older, simpler recipes. My favorite cook book is “The American Woman’s Cookbook, Wartime Edition (Victory Binding) c. 1942. I received it passed down from my grandmother.
A fascinating read on the evolution of American eating is “Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal” by Abigail Carroll, c. 2013.
Robert Carignan
Portland, Maine
Always good to hear from a man who knows his way in the kitchen! I enjoyed your note, and I need to find that cookbook!
You’re so lucky to have wartime edition of the American Woman’s Cookbook. I have a copy of the cookbook, but it’s a more recent edition. I’ll have to look for Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. It sounds like something I’d enjoy.
Three meals a day is NOT an exaggeration. Everyone in my area cooked exactly that way and as recent as 50 years ago. Breakfast was shortly after 4:00 am, dinner at noon and supper around 5:00 pm. Gas or electric heat were not options so a wood stove was a necessity. Mom had a nice big range with a water tank on the end to keep hot water for cleaning up, always at hand. Sometimes on the hottest days of summer, the mid-day meal provided leftovers for supper so that the house cooled down more for sleeping. (No electricity meant no fans, and only the night breezes for comfort!)
A tough life indeed!!!
Times sure have changed over the past 50 years or so. Your comment reminded me of how we often had cold dishes for supper on hot summer days when I was a child so that the kitchen won’t become even hotter than it already was.
Yes it’s amazing how different things are today!!!
Good post! Yep, I know some who did do that all their lives. Especially in areas in the country where there were no places to eat out and no money for it anyway.
And good point on when you find good recipes and yours doesn’t look like the ones pictured. We rarely eat out, I make some from scratch, but am not opposed to buying it ready made when it is more economical and less time consuming! It is why I use the stock photos – things always turn out different so when they do, I don’t want folks disappointed that theirs didn’t look the same as mine. I find I can follow my own recipe and it looks different each time depending on humidity, higher or lower temps, cook time, a little more or less of this and that, and so on. I like to experiment as I go! ~ Rosie
How true, each time I make a recipe that I’ve previously made, I refine it a little based on my previous experience.
Amen! And learning to love cooking as well as sharing the duties among family members can help to make a daily drudgery a lot easier and more fun.
It’s definitely more fun to work when you cook with family members.
My mother, born in 1910, was the 3rd eldest of 12. They lived on a farm out in the country, and my grandmother and her 6 daughters cooked 3 meals per day, EVERY DAY. There were no restaurants or take-out in our area. They grew everything they needed on the farm except sugar. I was told that Grandma would bake 3 dozen homemade biscuits every morning. 6 boys and 6 girls, all with chores as children, then became farm workers there as they grew older. That meant lots of hungry mouths. And amazingly….. never asked for, nor received a hand-out of any kind. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Some folks today could learn from that old motto.
There’s a lot of wisdom in the motto “use it up, wear it our, make it do, or do without.” It’s hard to even picture how much food needed to be prepared to feed everyone.
I know my mother cooked 3 meals a day and so did I when all my kids were at home although I used my slow cooker for porridge which meant no burnt pans plus whatever time anyone sufaced the porridge was still hot…I used my slow cooker a lot and batch cooked…
I also agree that many of the food images can be disheartning when ours isn’t quite the same however the food in those images has been posed …the light is perfect and the food is most probably cold as its taken so long to get the perfect image 🙂
You’re absolutely right that a lot goes into food styling – and my sense is that people sometimes don’t even eat the food after they finish styling it. I know that I often feel frustrated with my food photos. I try to make the presentation look attractive, but still be realistic – but often I can’t get the lighting quite right, or something isn’t spaced quite right etc.
I’m sure people like to see a real meal/dish and not one that’s been posed and or crimped xx
I keep hearing about how ‘busy’ everyone is these days as an excuse not to prepare one’s own food. My mother had a full time job in a hot and dusty factory, she came home and cooked from scratch every night for the family of seven, and packed lunches for the next day. She did not have a microwave, clothes dryer, or any other conveniences. Never would she have said she was too tired to cook – your family needed to be fed, so you prepared food. Restaurants were for very special occasions, and take-out never happened. What she didn’t have was facebook and instagram accounts, the internet, cell phone texting, and a world of so-called ‘friends’ she’d never really met sending emojis and notifications of all the wonderful things that could be bought around the next block.
We’ve let these things become more important than our families and that is a shame.
Rant over.
I like your rant. I think that I could do a similar one.
I especially liked the statement that, “Your family needed to be fed, so you prepared food. Restaurants were for very special occasions, and take-out never happened.” It nicely summarizes how it once was.
It can’t be true that people these days eat out several times a week? That’s just plain unaffordable – here at any rate. Most people I know only eat out on high days and holidays – it’s a treat. Take out and takeaways from the supermarket is a different story, and many people rely on that to quite a big extent. We’ve never cooked three times a day – unless you count making porridge for breakfast as cooking, and even that’s not every day. Lunch is often a soup, and although made from scratch hardly counts as cooking in my book, ‘cos you can do it on autopilot. And I’m lucky, I really find cooking relaxing (something my husband can’t understand – it’s Top Level Stress for him!) so it’s always a good way to work towards the end of the day. Hooray for home cooking!
I probably exaggerated, but I know numerous people who eat out a lot. As you noted, takeout (both from restaurants and from the supermarket) is probably more popular than eating out. I also know people who regularly use DoorDash and other similar services to get food delivered. I agree that it’s expensive.
Well, poor them in may ways. We’re lucky enough to find time in the kitchen is time – on the whole – well spent.
When I married in 1964, we couldn’t afford to go out to eat. All our meals were prepared at home. After the last child was in middle school, I began working full time. When I got home, I walked straight from the car to the kitchen to begin cooking. It was relentless, but I didn’t know that then. I did it because it had to be done.
My experiences are very similar to yours. I remember actually enjoying cooking when I got home. It felt relaxing after sometimes stressful days at work.
I enjoy cooking as well as my husband. Between the two of us, we cook from scratch almost every night. We go out once a week and for special events and occasions. However, I have to say that most of my friends eat out most of the time even though they are good cooks.
Unless we are traveling, my husband and I also generally cook from scratch every day. Similarly to your experience, many of our friends eat out most of the time. One friend says that she “retired from cooking,”
Because I have to eat gluten-free, I cook the evening meal every day and make enough to have leftovers. I feel that since I am in control of ingredients, I can eat healthier. My go-to, fairly easy meals are on my blog.
Planned left-overs can save so much time.
Thanks for this important post. It’s definitely more economical and healthier to eat at home but as you note, with everyone working or otherwise occupied, it’s often difficult to achieve. Taking turns can help a lot.
Taking turns is a good suggestion. I have friends who do that. He generally finds recipes and then carefully follows every step; she tends to go free style and make old favorites from memory. They like the variety they get as a result of having different cooking styles.
yes our mother definitely made 3 meals a day for a family of 6 every day! as did everyone we knew. And I am not 100!:=) And even now, i don’t know any family that eats out several times a week and gets takeaways several times a week!! Is this an American thing? Crikey!
sherry
There probably is huge variation across families in the U.S. in how often they eat out or get take out. That said, my sense is that a lot of people do it a lot.
We are big on leftovers, so other than making breakfast every morning, about 3 times a week lunch and dinner is left overs from several previous days!
I love left-overs. They are such a time saver and a cost effective way to cook.
Myself and my husband have two young children and work full time labour jobs. We have 3 homemade meals from scratch every day (except maybe once a month we eat out). The key to avoiding take out and ready made meals? Live in the absolute middle of nowhere. Our closest take out spot is a 45 minute drive away and the grocery store is 50. I’ve had to learn to be creative with what we have and make a point of not letting anything go to waste because groceries are very expensive in rural Canada.
I feel like at this point I could be thrown into the position of a 1920s house wife and do a great job.
I like how you figure out ways to make homemade meals in spite of having a very hectic schedule, and how you are creative and don’t let things go to waste.
My grandmother cooked three meals a day, every day, for her large family, although in the Swedish tradition, the supper sometimes was lighter, and leftover dependent. By the time I came along, my dad’s work schedule had him leaving home much earlier than I left for school, so he would fix his own breakfast, and mom would make mine, or help me with it. We came home for lunch only occasionally, so the nighttime meal was the one she regularly cooked. The big production was Sunday dinner. But no matter who was or wasn’t preparing a meal, take-out didn’t yet exist, or did so only barely, and restaurant dining was for special occasions like birthdays. The big exception was on Sunday, when we’d stop at the A&W for rootbeer floats and sandwiches after an afternoon drive.
Your comment bring back memories of my family occasionally driving to town to the Tastee Freeze on hot summer nights after all the cows were milked. We’d each get a small cone (not a medium or large one) filled with soft-serve ice cream. The big choice was whether to get a vanilla or chocolate cone.
Lovely post, Sheryl. I’m one who finds it easier and more pleasant to make most of our meals at home. I can control what ingredients I use, can easily digest what works for me, have organic and fresh foods, and eat in peace. Much more affordable, too. Eating out is fun occasionally for meeting friends. I do think clean-up afterwards is a deterrent for folks just as much as fixing the meal. A dishwasher is a big help for that, something our friends 100 years ago didn’t have the luxury of.
I also like to eat out with friends from time to time. I enjoy chatting with them, and it’s a nice way to catch up on what everyone is doing. I agree that clean up can be a challenge. Your comment somehow brought back memories of my mother talking about washing the dishes with her siblings when she was a child. One person would wash the dishes, another dry them, a third would put them away, and the four would read from a book to the others. I think they rotated roles periodically.
I love that story about your mother and her siblings, Sheryl. Thank you.
Great points! My mom’s go-to for lunch was always (canned) soup and a sandwich.
Across the years, I’ve often made canned soup and a sandwich for lunch. In more recent years, I’ve reduced my use of canned soups and make more soups from scratch.
Great post – our dinner table is the heart of our home and it’s used daily!
I’ve also always considered our kitchen table to be the heart of our home.
Yep three meals a day for my crew. Some days I wasin the kitchen all day along. We hardly ever ate out for it was too expensive.
I agree. It costs so much less to make meals from scratch, though it can be pricy to buy spices, as well as basic ingredients, if you don’t already have them on hand.
We cook a two-course meal every evening, always made from scratch, even when we’re on holiday. We also bake our own bread. It’s affordable, we can use organic ingredients and limit the use of food additives. It’s always fun to be in the kitchen, share ideas, smell the aromas and create tasty food.
Your kitchen, and the meals you make, sound absolutely wonderful.
😁
I cook nightly and eat odd protein packed lunches at 11. Just 2 meals a day for me these days he is on his on for breakfast and lunch unless he wants what I am having. 70 is a good thing 🙂
Good point – needing to cook fewer meals can be a benefit as we age.
Just really good ones with just what our bodies need to keep us going though when my mom was dying I was told all her body needed was sugar and salt. I would dump some of each in a Gatorade praying she could get to my brothers daughters wedding. her granddaughters and she did.
Makes sense. It’s so hard when a parent is very ill. I’m glad your mother was able to make the weddings.
Thank you.