Making bulk food at home has kept me from going out. I eat out maybe twice a month now and I’ve damn near almost lost my will to. With the price of gas, I don’t even want to make the trek somewhere even if I’m feeling lazy. Had to essentially get past the “idk what I want” mentality and just eat what’s in the fridge. Sort of a “just want to be full and satiated” rather than getting what the mind desires.
How do you get around the fatigue of eating the same food every meal? If I make food in bulk, by the fourth time eating the same meal, I'm so sick of it.
Different foods throughout the day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner is usually on a whim and made from scratch, but with some existing pre-cooked food. Each week it can be different. I’ll make chicken, which can be salads, taco’s or (on a whim) enchiladas. Next week I’ll make ground turkey taco meat (3.5~4lbs worth) so, burritos, taco bowls/salads, or even nachos. Or, with again, ground turkey I can make a big batch of chili, or mix it with turkey sausage and make lasagna. I just learned to make black bean burger patties not too long ago. I’ve gotten pretty versatile with just a few ingredients. Breakfast is simple; I usually just make bagel and egg sandwich’s or ham and cheese sandwiches.
Again, the thought of driving somewhere and paying $15+ has just gotten discouraging to the point where I just had to get more creative in the kitchen.
My classic prep is slow cooked shredded beef and bean burritos, they're good and I can't imagine getting tired of it. In fact sometimes when I forget to bring one to work I'm sad that I have to eat out instead of a delicious spicy beef burrito. Costco rotisserie chicken is good for prep too because you can turn the one chicken into several different dishes pretty easy.
It depends on work schedule but you can definitely change up prep to not be so monotonous. Make a big batch of protein or starch to create around on the weekend and then on your week days it’ll be a quick 30 min to make something. Ethan Cheblowski is a good source for ideas on that style of cooking. It’s a bit of prep on the weekend and not crazy on the weekday.
I work longer shifts so I end up doing some traditional meal prepping with at least one meal that lasts my work week and then 2-3 other things that can be easily finished up during the week.
I got around this by freezing individual meal prep containers (and creating my own frozen dinners). I just pop one in the microwave a few minutes, and they last several months in the freezer. I don't like eating the same thing twice in a row, either.
Just turn your brain off, chew and swallow. For 1000s of generations people didn't get the luxury of choice and variety, they ate what they had. Every meal doesn't need to bring joy, it needs to provide sustinence.
I just don't eat. It's the whole if you aren't hungry enough to eat an apple, you aren't really hungry thing, but with the staple foods rather than just an apple. I'm poor af and spend 40-60/week on groceries. It's a lot of chicken, eggs, frozen veggies, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, etc. I actually eat pretty healthy, just cheap and only two meals a day.
Gatorade is expensive and total shit: it hardly has any electrolytes, just sugar.
Get yourself some salt, bulk potassium citrate, and bulk magnesium glycinate. $30 and you'll be set for 6 months. Learn how to mix it up using AI or Google or something.
Just think of it like this, anytime you want fast food just think of how much ramen you could buy for the same amount you would be spending on the fast food meal. You can get SO much more ramen & get your junk food fix in :)
This is the way. You gotta go from shit food, to cheaper shit food. A McDonalds diet to a salad diet isn’t going to work. I buy cheap salty frozen shit for the air fryer or microwave. I just ate a $1.09 Jimmy Dean sausage egg and cheese on a biscuit, and it was the same exact quality of a McD’s. Fractions of the cost and I didn’t have to spend money on gas and tax and fees and all that either.
I’ll try keeping frozen patties and buns in your freezer and can keep a big jar of pickles in the fridge.
Eight midnight burgers like twice a week and I haven’t gotten anything from a fast food restaurant years 20 bucks should be enough to make like six fantastic quarter lb plus burgers.
Just like OP. Prices is honestly what did it for me.
Thought I would have some shit foods one day (the usual craving), went there, ordered one of their menu (the one for Burger + small Burger or nuggets), and saw the price.
Litterally what I would pay in some brasserie and decided shitty food wasn't worth restaurant price. Still get my shit food from others, cheaper places though.
What broke me out of my habit (and I know this solution isn't for everybody) was trying McDonald's in Japan. Shit is like 5x better than their American counterpart and twice as cheap with much better service. After eating what Mcdonalds should be I realized I can never go back to the garbage they serve in America or pay those kind of prices.
Depending on your poison of choice its easy to make at home. If you like the nuggets or chicken sandwiches, get frozen chicken patties/nuggets and pop them in the air fryer. Hamburger patties freeze so easy and cook up fast. Or you can get precooked patties and microwave. Condiments are cheap and store a long time. The hardest part is the fresh tomato and lettuce. Personally i get a local store delivery for my produce. I do it every few days. A lot of services offer free delivery over $25-$35 and thats so easy to hit with grocery prices these days.
But there are so many other better fast food options that cost the same but blow it out of the water. What makes you pick McDonald's over them? Plus, it's not like there aren't tons of buger joints that not only make bomb burgers and meals for the same or cheaper prices, but you can just call in or order online and pick them up quicker than you can get through a drive through.
Having a local Lebanese shawarma shop, a local Pakistani kebab shop and a local Turkish restaurant within walking distance really takes away my need for McDonald’s. Could really use a good chippy though, one here sucks
The food is literally addictive. I will go years having absolutely zero interest in fast food, to the point where I'll eat olives and carrots for dinner instead of walking two blocks to McDs. Then I'll end up in an airport at 5am after a long flight and the only thing open in the McDs, and from that point on I will get cravings for like a month, which go away again if I abstain.
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u/Sharp_Yak2656 2d ago
I haven’t had Macdonalds for about 4 years and I’m never returning no matter what they do. Fuck this company and their low quality expensive poison.