What's for Dinner Episode

Hope and Harold discuss the daily challenge many older adults face: deciding what to eat for dinner. Although cooking for one or two people may seem simpler after children leave home or retirement begins, choices are complicated by appetite changes, dietary needs, food waste concerns, cost, convenience, and the effort of shopping and cooking.

They suggest several ways to make meals easier and more affordable:

• Plan a weekly menu, including leftovers, and shop around grocery-store specials.
• Share cooking duties with a nearby friend, relative, or neighbor.
• Split bulk purchases, such as Costco items, with someone else.
• Consider meal-kit or prepared-meal services such as HelloFresh, Blue Apron, or Factor—especially introductory offers—while recognizing that convenience costs more and portions may vary.
• Look into senior discounts and early-bird specials at local restaurants, potentially saving leftovers for another meal.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello and welcome to You Still Have Time. We're your host, I'm Hope. And I'm Harold. And as always, this podcast is dedicated to people of a certain age. People past middle age, I guess. Yes, past middle age, into going into old age or in old age or elderly. Nobody likes the word elderly, but hey. You know what we mean. The choice, not the choice, what's what's the word I always say? The alternative is not acceptable to me yet. Anyway, welcome. This episode's topic is something that Harold and I talk about almost every day.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

And that is not almost every single day. This is something that comes up every single day. And the topic is what's for dinner?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yes. You would think that it would be easier to make these kinds of decisions in your senior years. I mean, uh after all, if you had children, the kids are gone, and you don't have the responsibility of of making sure they get a good healthy nutritious meal, you're probably not working at a a regular job. I mean, and even if you are working, it's probably on a part-time basis, so you have more time to to cook and to make wonderful meals. But our non-scientific research says that's not so.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

So we we find ourselves asking this question every day. After we ask what's for dinner, there's a bunch of other questions that go along with it. Do we have anything that's not frozen?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Right. What do we have in the house?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Is it still good?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Is it still good? Has it gone bad? I really it's a sin to throw out food, and it's one of the things I hate the most. But unfortunately, sometimes you might have a leftover, for example, and it's at the back of the fridge and you don't realize it's in there. Salad is is one of those things where normally we buy bagged salads, and sometimes we forget that the salad is at the bottom of the refrigerator in the drawer and we open it up, and the expiration date was two weeks before, and it's all brown and soggy looking, so we have to throw it out. Hate doing that.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Right. Some so the other questions, do you feel like going shopping?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Do you feel like cooking?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Oh, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

So anyway, it's not as easy as some would think. Especially those who who might say, well, you know, now the it's just you alone, or it just you and and your partner, and and it should be easy to come up with something to eat. Not, not. Of course, there are some things that may affect that. What may affect what you eat. You know, if you require a special diet, if you have if you have high blood pressure or high blood sugar, if you're diabetic.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

And even if you're not uh if if you don't have any medical issues that limit it what you can eat, we know that there's certain foods that we probably should stay away from. We know that we probably should not go out fast food seven days a week.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah, plus some of that food is icky.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Right, but I mean you it's it it's icky. But it's convenient. But it's convenient, it's cheap and for for a reason, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Well, it's not as cheap as it used to be. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Definitely not as cheap. You mean the the White Castle hamburgers went up from 12 cents?

SPEAKER_01 4:00

I have no idea what the I only like the cheeseburgers. I never liked just a plain hamburger.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

What's the price of a White Castle hamburger?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

So for those of you who are familiar with White Castle, because we know that White Castles aren't aren't available everywhere in the country but or in the world, but yeah, White Castle. I'm sure you have some local fast food place that was similar to it. Some say, at least Harold and I have read it, that as we age, sometimes we we have a decrease in appetite that might lead us to not be particularly interested. Oh, I don't care what I eat, oh, I'll just eat this or whatever. But it's still important to eat, and even more important to eat well at our advanced ages. So that's another thing that you have to consider when you're thinking about what you're going to eat every day.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

And the the other item that comes along with making this decision about what to eat obviously is cost. Now we know that costs have been going up over the years, and most of us are on a fixed income. So we want to maximize the value of our purchases. So now most of the time, buying groceries directly and fixing them yourself is the cheapest option. However, there are exceptions. Hope and I have found an exception to that rule.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Well, and I'm sure there are others. So if once we tell you this, you may agree. I mean, I I can't imagine that you could disagree, but if you have other examples of things like this, please share them with us because we want to know. And our cheapest option is Costco chicken. Costco rotisserie chicken, four dollars and ninety-nine cents for a whole cooked chicken.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

And and rem and these chickens are not hens, these are they look like they've been at the gym.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Well, I hope I hope they haven't been at the gym. I hope they haven't been giving them any additional steroids. But they're healthy inside.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

They're robust. They're just smaller than a little turkey.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

And usually, I mean, it's it's sort of up and down. Sometimes they're seasoned very well and are very flavorful, and at other times, it's like, oh, you gotta have fix it up a little. But for the price.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

And what's that price again?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

$4.99. You can't even buy a raw whole chicken and and and make a chicken yourself for that.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

How much does a Big Mac cost? I'm sure a Big Mac is more than way over that. Right. Way over that.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

So so yes, so sometimes your cheaper option or your cheapest option might be something that's already cooked. Now, the problem with that is we got this whole big chicken and it's just the two of us, and you don't want to eat chicken for the next seven days. So sometimes it's cut it in half and put half away in the freezer and use it for another day. Other times it's it's eating off of it for a couple of nights and then making chicken salad out of the rest of it. So come up with chicken.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Chicken sandwiches also will do the cheese.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, so sometimes it's for breakfast, of not for breakfast, but for for lunch and for dinner.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Right, right. So so but this I think this is uh the one of the few exceptions that we have found to actually buying the the raw ingredients and preparing the food yourself. Yeah, because usually that's the most economical. Usually that's the more econom economical. But also it's it's the most time consuming because now you've got to make a decision as to what you're going to go get, then you have to get it, then you gotta bring it home, then you gotta prepare it.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

So that takes us to our next area. So what can we do about this? One of the things, and we did do research on this because all of this is not coming from just us, because many of these things we don't do. Most of them we don't do. Okay. So number one is meal planning, and that's sitting down and planning out a weekly menu, which yes, is some work, but could pay off in a a few ways. One, if you know what you're going to eat, you don't have to ask yourself that question every day. Okay, today's Monday, what are we gonna eat tonight? You already know what you have planned for Monday. Now, what you have planned for Monday might be leftovers from Sunday. Maybe you're just still in the habit of making the Sunday dinner and having the leftovers for the next day. So that's one way. It also, if you plan a weekly menu, if you if you know what you're gonna make for that week, you can go shop and get all of those ingredients so that you know that they're there for you when you want to make them, when you plan to make them.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

My daughter does this because she has been attempting to stay on a particular type of a diet, and it becomes a lot easier when the meals are already planned out ahead of time and forces her, it doesn't force her, but it makes it easier to stay on the plan as opposed to at the spur of the moment time but thinking saying, Oh, well, let me just order a pizza.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Right. Right. And you can also save money doing it this way if all supermarkets have weekly specials. Maybe you can plan some of your menu around what's on sale that week. So you can take advantage of sale items and plan your menu and and maybe make it easier to, you know, figure out what you're gonna eat every day.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

The next option is something that Hope just brought to recently brought to my attention because I had never even considered it. I I didn't even know it was an option. I mean, obviously, it's not a novelty, but it's a little different.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yeah. Actually, I didn't come up with it. I was talking to my sister, and she has we have a family friend who she and her sister share a house. Okay, so they don't live in the same space together, but they're in the same building. And so they do meal sharing. So sometimes she cooks and sometimes her sister cooks. So it what it does is that means that every night you don't have to think about what you're gonna cook for yourself because somebody else is preparing something for you. And I feel like that's that's a pretty decent idea. So if you have like a sibling or relative or close friend that lives nearby, maybe this is something, an idea that the two of you, maybe your friend or or cousin knows how to make something that you don't make, and vice versa. But it's it's just another way to take some of the pressure off of you having to make something to eat every night.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Along those same lines as sharing the actual preparation of a meal, sharing the purchasing of a meal. How often we we have a membership at our local Costco's? I don't know if you have Costco's all over. It's like a bee's Sam's Club. Sam's Club. But the amounts that you have to buy really deter us from buying them because we just don't we would never eat that much. But you could pull your resource, go with someone else. Maybe you you have a ch a family member that lives nearby, or again, a friend, relative, and you can split the cost.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

You can split the cost, you can take advantage of the the savings that you get when you sort of buy certain things in bulk. And I mean that o not only goes for food, but for other like paper goods and laundry detergent and all of those things. But it's just something to think about because this is this isn't as we said at the beginning, trying to figure out what to eat is not all that easy.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Now, some of you, I'm sure some people listening are probably saying you love to cook and you love to go get your fresh food items and you don't mind this. Uh uh more power to you. I wish we were there. I wish we were there.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Well, it's not that we don't like to cook because Harold cooks and and I cook, but it's it becomes a chore when it has to it when it has to be done. You wanna we you want to cook when you want to cook, not when you have to cook.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Right, right. So I think that that was so we talked about food sharing, we talked about meal planning, another option are the food delivery services. And I'm sure you've all heard of whether it be Grubhub or Hello Fresh, Blue Apron. I mean, literally, we started looking at them, and I didn't know that there were so many.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Right. Well, Grubhub is a little different because that's ordering from like a local store, restaurant or something. Grubhub and DoorDash and those. And certainly those, you know, getting your meals that way is an alternative to. Right. But if you don't want to go necessarily the fast food route, things like, you know, HelloFresh and Factor and Blue Apron, you know, these services will send you all of the ingredients and they're portion control, so you know that you're not gonna have a whole lot left over. So that with instructions, just put this together and make it, and there's your meal. And some of them you can order ready to m ready to eat meals. All you have to do is no cooking involved, just have to heat them up.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

And they cater to any type of a diet. So if you're on some type of a restrictive diet, I'm certain that one of these options would suit your needs perfectly. But of course, it comes at a cost.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yeah, because certainly I think of the things that we've discussed here, this is probably the most expensive option because it's for convenience, and you always pay for convenience. But certainly it's something to think about, and here's something, and I don't know. A lot of these these different companies offer introductory packages where for $25 you can get eight meals. Take advantage of it. If you don't, if if you like it, now you know that it's an option, and if you don't like it, you've got eight free meals. So I that's also something to think about.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

And our last option, or at least the ones for for today's episode senior discounts at local restaurants. And I think you all know of restaurants, you've seen them. I can remember seeing these discounts when I was younger, before I was a senior, and you like laugh. Yeah. Not knowing, not any longer.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Right. Well, first of all, people laugh because they were early birds. You got there 4 30 and you had the early bird special or senior Wednesdays or senior Tuesdays. But don't laugh because you can enjoy a good meal at the restaurant of your choice. You might like it, might be Applebee's, or it might be iHop, whatever you want, and you go in and you can get a whole meal. A lot of times it comes like a full meal with with you know a drink and and all of that for a discount price. And if you don't eat it all, you can take it home, the rest home in a doggy bag for lunch the next day.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yeah, it's certainly worth investigating. Now, I know some of you might say, Oh, that sounds great, but when you get there, all you can get is boiled broccoli and unseasoned. That's not true. Some of the places have a limited menu. You don't have the full menu. Come on now, though. Don't they you don't have a full menu.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Well, you can check it out before you go. That's right. And we've we've we in the past episodes, we've encouraged you to use technology. So use technology. Go on your computer and and Google or do a Yahoo search or do what's the other one? The one that I don't use. MSN, whatever it is. Whatever, whatever, whatever search engine you use. You could do a search use your search engine to find out about things.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

It's just it's just another option. So I hopefully we've given you some ideas. If you find yourselves in our dilemma asking what's for dinner, these are just some options. Now, as Hope said earlier, we don't do any of these.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Well, we did HelloFresh for a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

We did HelloFresh for a short time for a short time. Yeah, for the our eight free meals.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

No, we went past that a little bit. Um and it was fine, but then you know, just kind of fell out of that. Right. I mean, you get tired of certain things and and all of these different food delivery things, they offer different kinds of menus and and all of that. I think that when we started using HelloFresh, it was early on, and they they had like maybe 15 things that you could choose from. And if only like five of them.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

And the other issue is you know the portion, well, co yeah, cost, but portion size also. I mean, we're not the biggest eaters, but you see some of these plans have portion sizes in your just like we said, the Costco chickens look like they've been to the gym, the other ones look like they've been on a starvation diet. So I think that you just have to experiment and you could take advantage of the free offers, and you could, I'm certain that you can find a plan that will work for you. If this is, if you have this, find yourself asking this question. I'm sure you can find some options that work for you so that you don't wind up eating at Taco Bell or McDonald's or whatever every night.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Yeah, so if you have other ideas about addressing this issue, please share them with us. Every episode we encourage our listeners to comment and and to leave messages for us because we really truly want to hear from you.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Yes, yes, yes, because we know that we our audience is expanding, and we know you probably have questions, so send them in. You can find a link in the show notes. Uh you can reach us at you still have time podcast at gmail.com. You can leave leave us a short voicemail message at speakpike.com. We'd like you to rate us also because that helps that helps get our message out to more listeners in the future. So you can hear us wherever you listen to podcasts on Facebook, on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Podbeam. There, there's wherever you listen, you'll say just plug in, you still have time podcast.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah, just do a search for you, you still have time podcasts, and it's and we're gonna come up somewhere. But please, please, we really truly want to hear from you. And because your comments make us better. If you have criticisms, I always say to people, be critical. We want to hear the criticisms. How can we make this podcast better? What kinds of things do you want us to talk about? It's all in your hands because it's just the two of us trying to figure out every couple of weeks what's the next episode going to be. And so it would really be helpful to us. And as always, until the next time, you still have time. You really do. Let's use it well. See you soon. Take care, bye bye.