When is it worth getting take-out dinner?

When is it worth getting take out food?  

When it's faster than cooking a Chicken.  
Or when you have to do 3 things at once.

Sometimes it's just quicker, easier, cheaper and a whole lot more efficient to order take out.   Not in every instance but today it just seemed a lot more worth it to hit "click click wait for my dinner".   I decided to order the SWISS CHALET Festive Special for dinner today because I was trying to figure out how to get some stuff done while still figuring out what I wanted to eat for dinner.

I wanted to go get Swiss Chalet for dinner yesterday but got distracted by the previous post of the case of the Exploding Pop Bottle.   So I have been craving the Festive Special for the past couple of days.  I love to get their Festive Special at least once every season.  I don't have big holiday meals so I don't get the works of stuffing, etc. and to make it all for just me is totally not worth the effort.

Reasons when it's worth getting take out:

1.  When you can get it a whole lot faster than if you made it yourself.  Saving time grocery shopping, prepping, cooking and cleaning up... which includes taking out the garbage and there's always garbage.

2.  When you are in the middle of doing something else and you are starving and can't wait to make something for yourself.

3.  When you are only one person and it would cost you triple the amount to go and get the ingredients to make what you ordered.

Today's example:

I was doing some serious Multi-tasking today.  I had a couple of loads of laundry going in the laundry room in my building while I was trying to do an online test to figure out what courses I should look into for a better career fit and then replying to emails from a friend overseas and talking to another friend while he was on his way out of town.  After I did all that I did a quick vacuum around the apartment and checked the rest of my social media.   It took me a whole 5 minutes online to click and order my Swiss Chalet dinner and it arrived in less than 40 minutes.   It would have taken me a whole lot longer just to cook the equivalent size piece of chicken.   Forget about even adding the stuffing.   I also ordered perogies instead of fries or potatoes.   It would have taken me 10 minutes just to boil the water to cook frozen perogies, although I wouldn't recommend getting the perogies as they are better made at home the way you like it.   But I also added a side salad as my side and I will have that for lunch tomorrow saving me having to figure out what to have for lunch tomorrow.   Win Win.

Order once eat twice.  Little effort and I didn't have to spend an hour at the grocery store and an hour cooking and an hour cleaning up and wasting a whole lot of extra food.

I would say the best time to order take out is when you want a lot of chinese food with different ingredients that would cost you too much to go out and buy individually and when the cooking process would take you longer to make yourself.

Not to say that you shouldn't cook at home because sometimes it is worth it.  My homemade roasted chicken blows Swiss Chalet chicken away in taste and moistness.   But during the week when you have limited time you have to decide what's more worth your time.... cooking or getting things done in a limited timeline.

The limited timeline won out today.   Dinner is done and no dishes in the sink.