[Psyladine]

I wish. Minimum $$ and limited inventory available for delivery through my local grocers. Anyone who cooks beyond some veggies and out-of-the-box meal components knows quality of ingredients is the utmost. Like, going to multiple butchers for the best cut of meat kind of quality.

It's like anything else, you must invest the time and energy to get the quality. Restaurants simply abstract this away by increasing the cost.

[jlangemeier]

I think you're over playing "quality." A great stew can be made from ribeye or from chuck; if I'm grilling I want the ribeye from my local butcher, if I'm making a stew I don't really care.

If I'm making a quick soup for the evening; I'll use store-bought stock, if I'm making it for a huge group of friends, I'll put in the time to make my own.

Home made spaetzle is a great, quick noodle (and since I've got Celiac, it's an easy noodle to make GF) that takes about 5 minutes to actually make, 3 minutes to boil, and 5 minutes to brown on the stove top. Using it for Mac-and-Cheese is almost faster than the Kraft stuff.

And with anything that is a learned skill, cooking is slow at first; but as you get better at the basics it speeds up the process. As an example, it used to take me almost 2 hours to change my oil on my car; now I can do it as fast as a shop (~20-30 minutes).

The biggest thing that it all comes down to is time/money tradeoff, if I can convince myself that something is more worth the time it takes to do than the cost of someone else doing it, I can usually make it happen.