"takeout" news and stories

Tipping may be contentious, but it's generally not too complicated. Most diners today are in the habit of adding at least 15 percent to their bills for the luxury of not having to pour their own drinks, fetch their food from the kitchen or clear their table at the end of their meal.

But even practiced tippers continue to struggle with what may very well be the most complex tipping quandary for restaurant-goers: Should one tip on takeout?

Here's why the problem's so advanced: It forces the customer to evaluate what's happening behind the scenes, a tricky proposition even for seasoned industry insiders. Since no server is going to bore you with the details of how your order was taken, placed, boxed and bagged, it's up to you to figure out whether anything tip-worthy transpired.

Tip-haters will be delighted to know I don't think there's generally anything wrong with skipping the tip on a to-go order. My fellow servers and I expect to be tipped on things like knowing the menu, anticipating diners' needs and keeping the dining room spotless – all of which are irrelevant in a take-out situation. While I'm quite sure there isn't a server anywhere who'd turn down a tip, few servers plan to get rich handing bags to customers.

McDonald's bag. Photo: brutal, Flickr.

Would you like some drugs with that?

A Charleston, S.C., teen says he was given a loaded handgun and bags of marijuana in his McDonald's drive-thru order, WCSC-TV reports. The 18-year-old and his cousin received the .45-caliber handgun and the pot on Aug. 29 at a McDonald's on Savannah Highway.

"The gun and the marijuana was inside of a brown bag sitting inside of a McDonald's bag," said Kathy Rivera, the mother of the teen. "And they noticed they had three bags, and there were only two people in the car, so when he opened it, he noticed it."

The gun and drugs were meant for the car behind theirs in the drive-thru line, police said. The car followed the young men to a gas station, where one man approached the teen and demanded he give them the McDonald's bags, which the teen did. He told his mother about the incident the next day, and she contacted the restaurant.

A police report was filed. Charleston police tell Slashfood they're still investigating, though no arrests have been made.

Have you ever received something you didn't order at the drive-thru? Tell us about it in the comments below!

[Via WCSC-TV]

You had to work late. The traffic on the commute home was horrible. You're tired. You're hungry. But you've got to get dinner for the family on the table now. What do you do?

You could resort to picking up a bucket from the Colonel on your way home, or call for pizza delivery, but you're better than that, right? Apparently, you are, according to a study by UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families that did the first academic study to track American families moment by moment as they make dinner. They had expected to see a lot more takeout in working families but what they really saw was that 70% of the households in the study cooked at home. However, these "home-cooked" meals heavy reliance on "convenience foods."

However, these convenience foods, things that augment home cooking, didn't necessarily make dinner preparation any faster or easier. In fact, the difference in time to prepare dinner between a household that relied on convenience foods like boxed mixes, packaged vegetables, and pre-made stirfries and a household that made everything from scratch, was not statistically significant.

Really? You mean all this time I've been using Hamburger Helper, and I could have made lasagna from scratch in the same amount of time?!?!

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The average family seems to get carry-out food far more often than any time in the past, and the number one reason cited is convenience. It seems easier than cooking at home, since there is no planning and no shopping required. One Chicago family realized that they got take out meals just about every single day and Mary Ann Schultz suggested to her husband and son that they try going for 30 days without carry-out. They didn't have a problem affording all their meals, as both Schultz and her husband are well-employed, but she wanted her son to actually experience "family meals" as she did growing up.

The family took on the challenge and, after a rocky start, they learned to plan meals and write out shopping lists. They learned to stock the freezer and pantry so that they would have options at home. Quick-fix cookbooks were helpful for providing inspiration and do-able recipes for an inexperienced cook. You can take a look at her ongoing journal to see how the challenge went from day to day.

Overall, the family learned that cooking at home was just as tasty as restaurant food and they enjoyed it more. They saved over $200 and Mary Ann lost 7 pounds during the switch. They're probably not going to cut it out completely, but perhaps their challenge could lend a bit of inspiration to anyone else who uses the "carryout menu folder...as a crutch for meals."

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For anyone new to Thai cooking, pad Thai seems like a good dish to start with. There are many variations of the dish and even an inexperienced cook can throw together a simple peanut sauce to toss with some noodles, which provides a great starting point to expand on later. After all, doing some seriously "authentic" cooking is all well and good, but it's nice to know how to make a relatively quick dinner, too. This pad Thai, from What do I know? was described as an "on the fly" recipe, so it seems to fall into that latter category. The recipe is actually quite easy and it sounds delicious. It has sauteed tofu, garlic, broccoli, onions and carrots mixed in with noodles, bean sprouts, cilantro and peanuts. The whole thing is tossed with a very easy peanut sauce before serving and, from start to finish, it probably takes a lot less time than ordering takeout.

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