Consumers cut costs by dining at home more

Americans have some catching up to do in the kitchen.

Take Eric Bonetti. The public relations worker from Fairfax, Va., spent the past few years working up to a four-night-a-week dining out habit. Now, like many Americans, he’s trying to save money on food. The problem is, he lost touch with his inner chef.

So, he recently bartered his way into private cooking lessons, and now he’s making sumptuous meals of turkey pot pie and chocolate souffle for half the cost.

“With the changing economy, it just seemed smarter to make dinner myself,” says Bonetti, who traded writing and editing services for one series of classes and paid $80 for another.

Across the country, the recession is giving extra sizzle to cooking at home. But this isn’t Mom’s meatloaf or macaroni and cheese. People who grew accustomed to dining out every night still want to eat in style. Besides cooking lessons, they are poring over food magazines, snatching up cookbooks and replacing their dingy pots and pans in hopes of creating gourmet meals on the cheap.

Several major grocery stores say they’ve seen sales increase because people like Bonetti are cooking more and eating out less. And enrollment has spiked at New York’s Institute of Culinary Education, which offers some 1,700 courses a year. Revenue is up 15 percent from a year ago.

The courses can cost hundreds of dollars — seemingly a tough sell at a time when so many people are scrutinizing nonessential expenses. But the school’s president, Rick Smilow, says the investment pays off in the long run.

“Some of the classes are the same price as going to a nice restaurant. Plus, they have take-home value,” he says.

Bonetti’s hardly alone in cutting back on eating out. Restaurant visits by parties including kids fell 3 percent in 2008 from the previous year, according to market researcher NPD Group. Visits by those 18 to 24 — the most lucrative restaurant market — dropped by 8 percent.

Elementary school teacher Anna Eller took free cooking classes at a Williams-Sonoma store in Tulsa, Okla., after cutting back from eating out several times a week to about once a month.

Eller, who’s trying to save money to go back to school and buy a house, also watches the Food Network when she’s on the treadmill. Her father bought her a crockpot after she complained how expensive it was to buy dinner every night.

“I got a cookbook on crockpot recipes,” she says. “It’s great. It cooks my food all day while I’m working. It smells good when I get home, and I’m not grumpy anymore.”

There’s much greater interest in cookbooks, too, particularly those about slow cookers, value meals, canning and preserving, says Mary Davis, a spokeswoman for book retailer Borders Group Inc.

Samir A. Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi whose focus is consumer magazines, estimates that there are between 70 and 90 new titles that appear every year.

“There’s a big hunger out there, no pun intended, for do-it-yourself cooking,” Husni says. “If you can’t go to the restaurant, what better way is there to bring it to your home?”