ChiTownScion
Call Me a Cab
- Messages
- 2,247
- Location
- The Great Pacific Northwest
When most people "camp" they are doing it at a luxury place with things like potable water, pit toilets, and they aren't doing it for months on end. It gets a little old lighting a fire in a downpour, scrounging for wood the second time that day, washing your dishes in a creek, and storing your perishables in either the cooler hanging from a tree or the cooler weighed down in a creek. I've been doing it for 5 months 3 days a week, and let me tell you, after three months I was tired of it.
I figure that my family eats out once a month. I know some people who eat out once a week. I need that break once a month.
When my husband and I did a road trip out west we ate out 3 times during a three week trip. Totally justified. I've never had good luck getting home cooked meals through an airport or always getting a hotel with a kitchen, etc.
We've been married almost 30 years, but we both still like to have date nights every weekend where we'll do dinner and a show. And occasionally, if my wife has a full schedule of patients all day and has an hour or two of charting that gets her home late, we'll break down and hit a local family run restaurant for dinner.
We had our kitchen redone in 2012: totally gutted the old one and essentially removed walls to create an open area. My wife had planned her dream kitchen for years, and we even ripped the floor down to the studs. One man did the work, and he's a classic old world perfectionist craftsman. Our dining room became a pantry, our one bathroom became the dish washing area, the living room with microwave and refrigerator became a kitchen--- it was an unholy mess. And it went on from January 2 to the end of April.
Just about every meal during that time, we ate out. Very little fast food, but the local Asian, Italian, and Mexican restaurants got a lot of business from us. Both of us working full time, we had no desire to subsist on canned food, and even cleaning plates was a nightmare. So, no apologies for dining out all of that time at all, but we did appreciate the new kitchen once it was finally done.