When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to play guitar. My parents bought me an acoustic guitar, I got some lessons from a friend’s older brother, and I learned to play a few inscrutable contemporary rock ballads called something like “The Place I’m Going” and “Needing You (I Need You)”. But I never learned how to play the guitar. I didn’t know how to write a song or play anything that wasn’t relayed to me, note-by-note. I just knew how to perform a few things that I learned by rote memorization. If I was asked to improvise in any way, I would short circuit. I applied this same technique to cooking, for many years.
A thought experiment:
Imagine that you’re having some friends over for a dinner party. After a few minutes of googling for recipes, you find Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Asparagus on a website called Cocoa & Cucumbers or some other bird-brained thing. You scan through 36 paragraphs that are, somehow, all about the author’s gifted child, Caden, who’s an absolute dynamo with the stand mixer. At some point, you finally reach the ingredient list and buy everything you need to make the dish. It turns out pretty good and your dinner guests all post suspiciously wet-looking photos of the meal on Instagram.
Fast forward one month and you need to feed a few people again. But you don’t get paid until next Friday and you don’t have the bone-in chicken thighs, paprika, fresh asparagus, or Yukon gold potatoes that the first recipe called for. What you have instead is boneless chicken breasts, frozen peas, a solitary sweet potato, and a spice drawer that’s mostly Taco Bell Fire sauce packets. Can you still make a quality meal? Did you learn to cook or did you learn how to make Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Asparagus?
Theoretically, you could go on like this forever. You buy a stash of perishable ingredients every time you want to cook something new and watch your money wither away like the other half of a head of cabbage that you’re never going to cook. But if you’re a working-class person (and if you aren’t you shouldn’t be reading this, you should be paying a servant to read this for you) then your first concern will almost always be saving money. Workers are short on two things: extra money and spare time. You can’t afford to blow your grocery budget trying to make something you saw in a Tasty GIF that’s 90% cream cheese.
…your first concern will almost always be saving money.
So, what are your options? Well, culinary school costs 30 grand, and DoorDash is just a great way to drop $40 on a $12 pizza. So, if you want to save enough money to survive the next time your landlord raises the rent and live long enough to see the curtain fall on our melting planet, you’re going to need to learn how to cook. And cooking has less to do with recipes, and everything to do with ingredients.
I spent too many years seeing most of my food budget go towards fast food and takeout and staring blankly at a cupboard full of ingredients I had no idea what to do with. I’ve also spent years cooking in small apartment kitchens with cheap tools and using any free time I had researching techniques, ingredients, and how to stretch a dollar. My sincere hope is that I can help you save money and prepare food that is, in the words of a great man, good and good for you.
Should you subscribe to this newsletter?
Yes, obviously.
And not simply because you’ll save enough money to finally buy that Twin Peaks box set you’ve always wanted. There are plenty of reasons you should subscribe to my newsletter. For one thing, your friends and family will be amazed you were able to make brussels sprouts taste so delicious. You don’t even have to tell them about this newsletter (but it would be nice if you did). If you’re not convinced, here are some of the topics that I’ll write about in upcoming issues.
The last soup recipe you’ll ever need
Cooking in a terrible (or small) kitchen
When to buy in bulk
The history of soup
Eating healthy at the dollar store
How to make better coffee than Starbucks
Sell your plates and use the money to buy bowls ‘cause we’re eating soup
If you subscribe, you can look forward to shopping guides, meal prep tutorials, essays that are mostly about food but sometimes also obscure facts about food, advice, and more than you ever wanted to know about soup.
My first month of the newsletter will be a deep dive into leafy cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, etc… Here’s what you can look forward to seeing!
What to look for when shopping for leafy green vegetables.
How to cook vegetables for picky eaters.
Where vegetables should fit into your meal.
Why you need dark green vegetables.
If you read this far and you want to learn more about food, cooking, and feeding the people you love on a budget, please consider sharing this with your friends!