Spending time with your friends and family can come in many different forms, like going out for a movie, doing physical activities, and other softer activities,but the easiest way to spend time with your loved ones is to eat with them. Cooking at home can be grueling and tedious, especially when you’re cooking for a big party, and so we usually resort to going out to restaurants and eating there. Getting food together and paying your share can be a pain in the neck however, especially for groups that order a lot of plates for sharing. The service industry is one of the biggest drivers for the economy, but sometimes the workers aren’t able to have a livable wage and have to depend on the gratuity of a person. As a matter of fact, in the United States alone, there are almost 4.4 million people who rely on tips to survive. Because of this, it wouldn’t hurt for a person to learn how to calculate the amount that they need to pay for their share of the bill, and the proper amount of gratuity. Getting practice through online exercises is a definite plus for when you encounter such situations, and we will definitely encounter this a lot in our lives. Especially being a mother of five, my family prefers to eat out a lot more often than staying home and cooking a meal. Despite being the mother though, my children are already all adults and choose to be responsible for themselves, even despite my protests to pay. Because of this, we always have a dilemma about how much each person should be paying, and as a mother I definitely don’t want to burden them even more than they need to be, as such I strive to have them pay an equal share of the bill. This isn’t really as easy as it may seem all the time, especially when calculating an appropriate amount to be given as a tip as well. So an ample amount of practice is important, there are many online sites that offer this practice, sites like culinaryschools.org, calculatorsoup.com, and many more. I have been trying out these calculators to ease my time when the bill comes back to the table, and as far as I can tell, using these to calculate tips, and bill splits, are most definitely the steps someone needs to take. 

Sometimes though, eating out isn’t always the best thing to do, especially during this pandemic, so learning new recipes is always a god-send. I personally learnt a couple new recipes to prepare for this holiday, but after all is said and done, we should always strive to lead a healthy lifestyle. Learning how to calculate the calories in your food is one good way of keeping a lifestyle that is both healthy and fulfilling, and I discovered from one of the tips and bill calculators that I used a timely conversion tool that can be used for your food and counting calories. This conversion tool helped me in following  the recipes directions down to a tee when I cook any dish which is very important for when I also have to calculate the amount of calories I can intake, and the best tool I found to use for this was the calorie counter tool. Knowing yourself, and what you eat is the first step to leading a healthier lifestyle so I advise you to start doing it yourself, only by taking care of yourself can you truly enjoy life.

Enjoying life doesn’t just end there, spending time with your family is one of the greatest gifts that you can have. Though eating with your family is one great way of spending time with them, research shows that playing games together as a family improves communication, cooperation, and the understanding of one another. At my age, I like to play simple games that is easy to understand and very intuitive and games that would be reminiscent of my children’s past, games like diner dash, would be substituted with Open Restaurant which really offers a challenge to your strategy decision making, and I also tried my hand with Penguin Cafe a similar game to Diner Dash as well. These games can really help you take a glimpse into the life of how hard managing a restaurant can be, I highly recommend these types of games for people interested in opening up shop for the service industry. It can also help in creating interest for kids and kid-hearted alike.

Food is one of the biggest things that allows people to bond with each other. The universal language of food transcends time and space, it even goes beyond race and age. And all I can say is that by sparking our love for food through games, and also by understanding the hardships people go through in the service industry, we can have a deeper appreciation for each other as well as on life.