Most of you will agree with me that cooking isn't easy, even for people like me who enjoy doing it and that's mostly because it's time-consuming. Back in the university, there was a day I was cooking a meal for over 3 hours and after I was done cooking, my friend and I finished the whole thing within 20 minutes. That was when I turned to my friend and said; "what is even the point? I cooked for hours only for the whole food to get finished in minutes." When you think about it, you will see the point I'm trying to make.
You will go through the stress of cooking for hours just for a few minutes reward. This perfectly satisfies the African proverb; "Work like an elephant and eat like an ant". I know it isn't entirely a fruitless endeavour, considering the energy and nutrients gotten from the food are properly utilized by our body, even though you ate for just 5 minutes. But that's the same thing with eating out, except in that situation you don't go through the stress of cooking the food and spending hours in the kitchen.
Does this mean I prefer fast food? Not really, but I do go for that option once in a while. Eating out has the advantage in terms of convenience, especially for people who go to work in the morning and come back late at night, all tired. The thought of going into the kitchen and cooking a meal from scratch might be very daunting, so eating out might be a viable option. Another reason why I sometimes go for fast food is just to try something different which I can't prepare on my own. Things like pizza, basmati rice, spaghetti bolognese, and so on.
Generally, I prefer cooking my own food and that's the best option in my opinion because it's safer and cheaper although it's looking like it costs just as much to cook as it is to eat out these days but in the long run, cooking your own meals is cheaper. And it's safer because you can never tell the quality of the ingredients used to prepare foods in restaurants and not to mention that the kitchens of some of those restaurants are in a questionable state. I love cooking but only when I have the time to do so.
These days, I'm mostly at home and so I tend to cook a lot. Sometimes my mom does the cooking before leaving for work in the morning, but sometimes she leaves it for me to do. Yesterday, I was the one that cooked (rice and beans), today I also did the same (spaghetti) and I'm pretty sure my mom is going to leave tomorrow's cooking for me as well 😅. It's just lunch, she's the one who always cooks dinner and I prefer it that way. My younger sister would have been the one that cooks lunch but she's usually at school during the day and I don't mind doing it, even though it eats up valuable time.
The story is a bit different when I was still in the university as I tended to eat out quite a lot, especially during my final year when I was working on my final project. I barely had time to do anything else except my project, so fast food was the best option during that time. There were days when I came back from lectures in the evening and I was too tired to cook, so I opted for fast food. Back then, noodles was my favourite thing to cook because it doesn't take much time to prepare.
In the end, the choice between cooking and fast food depends on certain factors but I would say the number one factor is money, then closely followed by time. If my work schedule is jam-packed and I have little money to spare, then I go for fast food but if I don't have much money and there are foodstuffs available at home, then I will just go through the stress of cooking. On the other hand, if I have a lot of free time on my hands and there's a lot of money with me, then I will go crazy with the cooking and prepare an elaborate meal. Then there are days when I just feel like eating out, maybe getting a pizza or an exotic food.
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