Mmmm... food. Food is tasty. Italian food, Mexican food, Thai food. There are so many kinds of tasty food but if you're me there is only one kind of food that will win your heart every time: food that you did not have to cook. It's a beautiful thing.
If you know us Sinnetts that will come as no surprise to you. We like to eat out. Friday nights, Sunday after church, birthdays, Girls' Night Out, Thursday afternoons, or a new season of Glee are all excellent reasons for going out. So you can imagine our delight when we moved from Anchorage, Alaska to Gainesville, Georgia to find that restaurant prices were cut in half! Marvelous! We just knew we were going to save a ton of money.
There was just one problem. When Cary and I put our youngest son in kindergarten last year we found a whole new and convenient time slot for eating out. And when you go out to eat twice as much for prices that are 50% cheaper, you save exactly zero. You can go ahead and check that math. I'll wait.
It is with this revelation that I had an idea, or maybe more of a question. Could we, we the Sinnetts, STOP eating eating out? I mean really stop, not just for a week or a couple of weeks but for a whole year? And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
Let me pause here. Some of you are familiar with my domestic skillz. I have TONS of domestic skillz. Most of them consist of making various kinds of lists and charts that I can place throughout my house in notebooks, on posterboard, dry erase boards or any other sort of canvas awaiting my strategies, like maybe a random envelope. Other than that it's pretty much just keeping my counter really clean. So in that list you won't find fancy things like scrapbooking, sewing, or cooking.
Now don't get me wrong. I DO cook, and even occasionally bake (sometimes not out of a box!) however my primary motivations for cooking are always the same: speed and nutrition. I really just don't like to mess with it. Lunches are whole wheat turkey sandwiches, bananas and carrot sticks. My philosophy on dinner? Anything will make an excellent taco. Think about it. Chicken, beef, pork, veggies, fish... all make excellent tacos. And what better to have with dinner than a romaine salad with whatever toppings you can find in your refrigerator last minute? So if you're looking for variety or if you're looking for delicious, you've just flat come to the wrong place. That's what going out to eat is for.
So you can imagine my trepidation about introducing this idea to Cary. Surely a year of turkey sandwiches and many flavored tacos is too much to wish on any man. But his response surprised me. "What about coffee?" Aahh, coffee. Coffee is even better than food. And so it follows that coffee out is even better than food out. A troubled day is instantly healed by a quick drive through for coffee and replaced with a delightful caffeine high that I did not have to prepare for myself. He had me. This was it. This was the real test. "Yes, even coffee."
So pray for my family. Starting September 1st, we are going to begin the Sinnett One Year Challenge. We will not be eating out, even for coffee. The pantry is stocked, the freezer stocking has begun,and we're gonna do this thing.
