“We used to eat out at Bob Evans or Denny’s once a month,” said Ms. Rutherford, who works in an auto-parts factory. “Now we don’t go out at all. We eat in all the time.” Elsewhere, "Holly Levitsky, a 56-year-old supermarket cashier in Cleveland, buys a brand of steak sauce called Briargate for 85 cents and surreptitiously pours it into an A1 steak sauce bottle she keeps at home. 'My husband can’t even tell the difference,' she said." This is what the New York Times has termed the recession diet; the sharp change in household spending patterns that's emerged as part of this downturn. We talk a lot about balance sheets and securities and growth numbers on this blog, and it's all pretty interesting and abstract, but when you tunnel down to the individual level and find people hiding generic hot sauce in A1 containers and forgoing their monthly dinner at Denny's and no longer buying fresh meat or cheese for lasagna dinners, it's a whole lot less abstract, and a whole lot sadder.
