I don't slave. It takes me 30 minutes or so to have a complete meal most nights. But only, perhaps, 10 minutes of my time. I start the rice as soon as I get in from the gym. Meats and vegetables get prepared after my shower. If it involves the stove, they're done in approximately ten minutes for most of my recipes. If it involves the oven, I may spend up to ten minutes in total on prep before tossing them in to bake.

I guess I don't make the most involved meals, but they certainly taste good.

EDIT: Besides, why can't the time I spend cooking be with my family or friends? Not like my home is big, if my girlfriend doesn't want to be in the open floor plan kitchen/living room/dining room and would rather hide in the bedroom, I guess she can. Would be awkward. Similarly for when friends are over. It's not like I need intense concentration while I cook, just enough to not burn/cut myself or burn the meal.

So you'd rather spend all your time in the evenings transiting to a restaurant, waiting around for a table, waiting around for your order to arrive, getting hurried by the server so they can get a new customer in, then transiting back home?

Eating out at a nice sit-down restaurant takes a huge amount of time. I can cook myself a meal at home and eat it in much less time than going out.

The only way it's faster to eat out is if you get fast food takeout, which is absolutely shut nutritionally and will put you into an early grave.

You sound like all the dummies who think I'm wasting time by changing the oil in my car myself. It takes me less time than making an appointment, driving all the way to the dealership, then sitting there and waiting for them to do the work (which probably takes longer than me because they have a bunch of cars to work on and their scheduling isn't perfect, just like a doctor's office), then driving back home. I can do it myself in my garage in 15 minutes. I can't even drive to my nearest dealership in that time. On top of all that, you have to figure how much work time I'm missing in the process, since auto shops aren't open weekends or evenings usually (and especially not dealerships).

preparing food is one of the more social activities and one which people have been doing together since before they called themselves people. maybe you should try changing how you go about it?

In my calculation, it was $600 per week savings for my family of 4. That's $2400 / month.