It's probably also cheaper if you make bigger batches (so that one cooking session makes enough for 2-3 meals; usually I'll use leftovers for lunch or as part of a secondary disk for the next day's dinner. Also, sometimes I'll have leftovers for breakfast as well. Another thing is once you have a well-stocked pantry, it helps a lot since you're not having to buy new bottles of spices, sauces, etc. just for one dish. So a lot of it is about improving scalability when you do cook.
At least in the Boston area, if Stacey and I go out for dinner, it's usually a minimum of $25-$30 dollars for the two of us, and in contrast, as an extreme example, I can take a package of frozen spinach ($3 bucks), defrosted in the microwave and then sprinkle on shredded cheese (say one quarter of a package of pre-shredded cheese, $3) and fresh ground pepper (and salt to taste) and melt in the microwave, get 3-4 filets of Tilapia ($5) and steam for 11 minutes, and after it comes out of the steamer, sprinkle on chopped green onions, pulverized ginger suspended in wine which you can get in Chinatown, a dash of soy sauce, and about 1/4 cup of oil heated to just under the smoke point ($2 tops, of standard ingredients which are always in my pantry that I use for much of my cooking repreotory) and so this works out to less than half of what it costs when Stacey and I go out to eat a restaurant. (And this doesn't even include the really fancy places where main dishes are $20 each and when we normally get a bottle of wine marked up by a factor of 3, as opposed to using wines from my wine cellar.)
As far as time is concerned, since the spinach and cheese defrosts and later cooks in the microwave in parallel with the fish is steaming in the steamer (and I heat the oil during the last 2 minutes of the cooking time of the fish), the total cooking time is about 15-25 minutes, depending on how busy/distracted I am and how efficient I can be at parallizing tasks. And usually even when things are fully parallized, I still have some dead time where I can be washing dishes or otherwise cleaning the kitchen while I'm waiting for the microwave and steamer to finish. And since I do the cooking, usually Stacey will do the dishes afterwards. When you consider the time to drive to a restaurant and drive back, and then wait for the server to take the order and for the kitchen to actually cook the food, at least for some dishes I can definitely put a meal on the table faster than a local restaurant. (Of course, other dishes it will definitely take longer, and some dishes will cost more, for example if I'm using more expensive ingredients, like filet mignon--- but then again, a meal at a premium steak house would probably cost a lot more.)
But I guess if you're only cooking for yourself (unless you're making mashed potatos and/or french fries for you and Rob :-), it may be harder to make the cost and time numbers work out.
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At least in the Boston area, if Stacey and I go out for dinner, it's usually a minimum of $25-$30 dollars for the two of us, and in contrast, as an extreme example, I can take a package of frozen spinach ($3 bucks), defrosted in the microwave and then sprinkle on shredded cheese (say one quarter of a package of pre-shredded cheese, $3) and fresh ground pepper (and salt to taste) and melt in the microwave, get 3-4 filets of Tilapia ($5) and steam for 11 minutes, and after it comes out of the steamer, sprinkle on chopped green onions, pulverized ginger suspended in wine which you can get in Chinatown, a dash of soy sauce, and about 1/4 cup of oil heated to just under the smoke point ($2 tops, of standard ingredients which are always in my pantry that I use for much of my cooking repreotory) and so this works out to less than half of what it costs when Stacey and I go out to eat a restaurant. (And this doesn't even include the really fancy places where main dishes are $20 each and when we normally get a bottle of wine marked up by a factor of 3, as opposed to using wines from my wine cellar.)
As far as time is concerned, since the spinach and cheese defrosts and later cooks in the microwave in parallel with the fish is steaming in the steamer (and I heat the oil during the last 2 minutes of the cooking time of the fish), the total cooking time is about 15-25 minutes, depending on how busy/distracted I am and how efficient I can be at parallizing tasks. And usually even when things are fully parallized, I still have some dead time where I can be washing dishes or otherwise cleaning the kitchen while I'm waiting for the microwave and steamer to finish. And since I do the cooking, usually Stacey will do the dishes afterwards. When you consider the time to drive to a restaurant and drive back, and then wait for the server to take the order and for the kitchen to actually cook the food, at least for some dishes I can definitely put a meal on the table faster than a local restaurant. (Of course, other dishes it will definitely take longer, and some dishes will cost more, for example if I'm using more expensive ingredients, like filet mignon--- but then again, a meal at a premium steak house would probably cost a lot more.)
But I guess if you're only cooking for yourself (unless you're making mashed potatos and/or french fries for you and Rob :-), it may be harder to make the cost and time numbers work out.