Treat Yourself to Restaurant Favorites for Less

I find it amazing that sometimes eating one meal at a restaurant with my family can cost about the same as one week's worth of groceries! It's no secret that cutting down on eating out can save your family a lot of money. I've found that part of the reason my family goes out to eat or gets take out meals on a regular basis is because things just taste so much better when you leave the cooking to the experts. It's also hard to recreate authentic dishes at home—unless you have the recipe. My friend recently introduced me to a whole new style of cooking and it has definitely brought the excitement back to our kitchen table (I have a tendency to fall in a rut and make the same dishes every couple weeks).

Instead of going out to eat, my friend searches for copycat recipes of her favorite restaurant dishes and recreates them at home! So instead of going out for pasta at the Olive Garden, she uses the recipes feature on the Olive Garden website to make tasty creations that are just as good as the real thing. They obviously don't share all their recipes online, so she does a search for "olive garden copycat recipes" online to find a larger selection of recipes. It's incredible to see how many recipe results you will get from a simple search like that. You can use a similar approach to find recipes for your other restaurant favorite dishes. Check the restaurant's website first to see if they offer any of their recipes on their site. If not, do a quick search online.

Some of the best sites I have found that feature a large selection of copycat recipes are cdkitchen.com and copykat.com. Also, remember that you can find a large selection of tasty recipes on CoolSavings in our recipe section!

Another big reason for taking the family out to eat is to give mom a break! If you still plan on going out to eat on a regular basis, I highly recommend getting The Entertainment Book. The 2009 Entertainment Book is actually available now. The book offers a large selection of "buy one, get one free" coupons as well as various discount coupons for a large variety of restaurants. (The Entertainment Book also has coupons for discounts on movie tickets, sporting events, travel etc.) I found a special offer where you can get free shipping on the Entertainment Book if you are interested.

Have you been able to recreate a recipe that tastes just as good or better than the restaurant version? Please share your recipe with the rest of the community!