Eating is expensive and time consuming

Expensive – Have you ever thought how much money you spend on food? I want the IPAQ 6915 PDA, all money spent on food could be spent on the PDA/phone fund.

Time consuming – I'd rather be editing photos, playing world of Warcraft, watching the office or hanging out rather than cooking and eating. The cleaning afterwards is the worst part of the deal.

The ideal solution to this problem would be getting free food without wasting time. Let's look at potential ways of achieving this, taking the ideal scenario in each case:-

Expensive
Get somebody else to pay for the food. This used to be the default back home when my parents used to pay for the food but now alternative approaches need to be investigated.

1. Be a guest – valid option except that you've got to get yourself invited which probably involves some different kind of investment on the other side. Probably works better if you're a good looking female.
2. Get the boss to pay for lunch – Best possible option (also solves the time problem since lunch would be on company time) however it's rare.
3. Gather the food yourself – not really a practical option considering there are no farms around from where to "borrow" the raw ingredients.

Time consuming
Eat when it's better to be eating rather then doing something else.

1. Eat at work – Eating the main meal during the lunch break will free time in the evening. Breakfast is also ideal for work. Not only you're given those glorious extra 10 minutes of sleep but you're effectively not losing productive time from work since you can have breakfast while you're still settling in for the day.
2. Eat while you're doing something else – Watch TV, read the paper, browse the web. These are not always practical options depending on the food in question.
3. Eat for pleasure – Going out for dinner.

In absence of the optimal solution you have to strike a balance between the two variables in question. You could save most of the time if you're willing to eat out (or get take away) everyday but then the bank account is taking the bigger hit.

This week I'm going to journal all my cooking and eating aiming to economise on cost and time. At the end of the week I'll calculate the cost of each dish (timewise and moneywise) and determine the most effective eating method. This will also serve as a reference list to answer the famous "what am I going to cook today?" question.

P.S. Mind you I enjoy good food and even enjoy cooking proper multi course meals BUT not I enjoy it only in company. When it comes to eating alone then the process must be fast and efficient without necessarily being nice.

P.P.S. There might be exceptions to the "I enjoy it only in company rule". For instance two weekends ago I went out for a solo dinner on Saturday night in a Japanese restaurant and it was great.