This would be like sitting down at dinner and eating only vitamins instead of having a meal.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

But cooking is best approached from wherever you find yourself when you are hungry, and should extend long past the end of the page. There should be serving, and also eating, and storing away what's left; there should be looking at meals' remainders with interest and imagining all the good things they will become.

It's not like I've been just sitting around eating myself stupid.

And you can get a sit-down [meal] usually much cheaper at lunch than you can at dinner. So why not splurge on the midday meal and then try to economize later in the day?