Food in the Ritter House

My family’s culture is fairly similar, in my opinion, to most other families in America.  However, we also tend to be a little more traditional in some senses.  We always eat together as a family.  All five of us eat together in our kitchen, regardless of what’s going on on TV.  The only time we ever eat in our TV room is when we have company over and were eating snacks or appetizers in there.  Since we usually aren’t in front of the TV when we eat, we usually don’t use electronics at all.  Dinner-time is a time for conversation, although it usually may not be everyone talking about the same subject.  My brother and I usually talk about one thing while my parents wind up talking about something else.  The meal itself is fairly regular each time: a meat, a fruit or vegetable, and a starch.  Pretty much every dinner is a serve-yourself style with pots on the stove and ladle in hand.

The meal is almost exclusively made by my mom on weekdays.  Since my dad and I are both at work and Austin is completely incapable of making anything edible, she takes up most of the responsibility. On weekends, we usually make meals for ourselves.  Whoever makes some sort of pasta or chicken usually makes enough for two so that my brother Travis gets some to eat.

My kitchen is a fairly simple one.  It has all of the basic necessities for cooking and preparing a meal.  We have a refrigerator, stove, oven, microwave, toaster, island, and a 6-seat kitchen table.  That leaves more than enough room to make separate parts for each meal, while keeping everything within reaching distance.  This also makes it easier for everyone to cook individual meals in the same area without getting in everyone else’s way.

During an average week, my family spends around $250 on food.  Of that amount, 20%, or $50 is spent eating outside of the house.  Usually on Friday nights, we will go out to eat as a family if there are no conflicts.  Our go-to restaurant is Piazza Orsillo's, which everyone but Austin enjoys.  When we aren't eating in a restaurant, we're eating at home.  Our breakdown for foods is as follows:

40% Meat
25% Fruit/Veggies
20% Starch
5% Dairy
5% Beverages
5% Sweets/Condiments
$200 total spent

We are a fairly healthy family in that we spend very little on snack food (less than $10).  Since our meals are almost exclusively meat, starch, fruit/vegetable, those three categories make up most of the shopping list (combining for $170).  Our house is one that eats vegetables sparingly.  As a result, the abundance of the money spent on the produce is spent on fruits.  Most of the vegetables we get are cheap, frozen options.  This limits the costs on goods that we may not necessarily enjoy the same way we would other food groups.