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Comment by andrenotgiant | Hacker News Reader

not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious: What benefit does that have over ordering delivery from a restaurant?

Preparing food at home allows for making things "as I like them". I'm VERY picky about certain textures and tastes. I also have a very restricted diet and suffer (biologically) from some ingredients that like to sneak into foods.

Ordering a known meal from a known restaurant is definitely easier than home prep. Ordering a "probably fine" meal from a "probably fine" restaurant requires extra cognitive load over cooking at home. (Some days I struggle with simply selecting a new meal from a restaurant. On those same days, I can happily spend an hour cooking a new-to-me recipe without any problems.)

> What benefit does that have over ordering delivery from a restaurant?

For me, there were two keys:

1. I love cooking and find it to be a nice meditative experience, but back then I was working 16-18 hour days and I simply didn't have the energy to deal with all of the other stuff you gotta do before and after you cook. This was a good middle ground.

2. I could adjust the ingredients to my liking - don't put in the cilantro, for example, or add some extra chili to make the sauce spicier.

If somebody manages to get the scale right, it should be a bit less expensive, you get to eat freshly cooked food and you know most of what you put in it. Also if people don't already know their way around a kitchen this is a pretty effective way to learn I would think.

IKEA effect. A meal that would otherwise be fairly good seems very good when you've done it yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect

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