YSK: About The Sad bastard Cookbook, when time, energy, money, or skill is preventing someone from cooking their own meals!
YSK: About The Sad bastard Cookbook, when time, energy, money, or skill is preventing someone from cooking their own meals!
by Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov || Food you can make so you don't die.
Eating the proper amount is hard. Eating when you have low time, money, mental energy, or education on cooking is even harder.
This book assumes nothing. Do you know how to turn on your stove? You are properly prepared to use this cookbook.
Just want to share it with more folks!
Some heavy hitters here
Some days, you need a reminder that eating anything is better than eating nothing.
Seeing this post prompted me to cook for myself, thank you for sharing this valuable resource 😊
Pros: high protein food
Cons: makes a spoon dirty
Suggested improvements to recipe: note to thoroughly lick spoon clean, or use a finger to swipe up the peanut butter.
For me, I'm more concerned about getting bacteria into the highly nutritious PB. If you're only eating one spoonful then fine. I wouldn't stick a spoon that's been in my mouth back into the container though. I have done this "meal" though, but I scoop how much I want into a bowl first. Maybe drizzle some honey or something onto it.
Use napkin for remaining peanut butter before you put it in the sink. Then it will make the spoon less intimidating to wash.
I substituted a knife for the spoon and I feel like it still came out ok.
★☆☆☆☆
Substituted a knife for the spoon and caulk for peanut butter. Awful taste, horrible recipe. Do not recommend. Would put zero stars but it won't let me.
Karen, MO
I had no idea I was qualified to be a cookbook author.
Ah, I've been making these recipes for decades. It tracks with my cooking skills.
Have you been reading my diary?
I'm so guilty of both
Warning: do NOT overdo peanut butter on a spoon if you have a dry mouth
I really love Mexican food so sometimes my dinner is pulling a tortilla out of the bag and eating it.
If you pass this recipe on please give me credit.
I would give credit, but your username being CarbonatedPastaSauce gives different expectations to any recipe with your name attached
Microwave it for two seconds first. 😙🤌🏻
Listen buddy, let’s be realistic, I’m no professional chef.
But I haaate waiting those 2 extra seconds 🤪
Lul this reminds me, we used to just chuck a few in a plastic bag and warm them up in the micro for like 15 seconds. No idea why, we had a stove and a comal to warm them up.
Then sprinkle in some sugar like you're 'salt bae' o make it a gourmet dessert.
That’s a 2 am staple. Especially when you roll in uo and pretend there’s actually stuff inside.
I'll share my recipe since it isn't in the book.
Block of Smoked Tofu
Preparation: cut open the packaging with a knife, put on a plate, and eat with your hands.
Smoked tofu tastes good enough to eat it by itself, and it's a great source of protein and fat.
I would steal this if I wasn't allergic to soy XD
I tried tofu once. I didn't super love it, but I'll give it another shot
I find it’s key to squeeze out the water with tofu so it can absorb the flavors you’ve adding. I place it between two plates with some weight on top (a pound or so is plenty) for like 10 minutes, then squish the plates together a bit over the sink to drain and that’s usually plenty. Fish sauce makes a nice flavoring if you’re into that.
Yeah, tofu by itself can be very boring, but it really shines with the right spices or marinade. The simplest way to make tofu that still tastes great is to cut it up, put the pieces in a container with a tablespoon of soy sauce and some Sriracha (amount depending on your chili tolerance), and shake the container. Then you can use it in many ways, for example by placing it on something that is releasing a lot of steam, like rice that is almost done cooking.
I also eat raw smoked tofu blocks sometimes, but try cutting it into strips and sautéing them if you really want to give it a shot. You can eat that with whatever you like your fries with. I tend to go for a sriracha mayo.
Before you cut it up, drain any water from it, and wrap it in a clean dish towel, then press it under a cutting board or something flat for like 20 seconds on each side. If you get extra firm smoked tofu, that should be all you really need to do, but you can also toss it in seasoned flour (or a seasoned 1:1 mixture of flour and corn starch) first
In the Great Depression, it's not like anyone was starving to death. Rather it was like they were eating flour paste and dying of malnutrition.
That we are in an era that we need the SBC speaks to how bad things are. Here in the states, we don't have food deserts, we have food swamps, where the only thing one can get is junk food.
Your doom and gloom is catalyzed by the existence of a novelty cookbook?
My doom and gloom is catalyzed by a lot of things including, yes, a novelty cookbook that appears to be made in recognition of desperate times. It isn't the only thing that informs my doom and gloom, and this isn't to say I don't have hope. But it is a Goblins at the gates of Gondor kind of situation, in which a lot of things have to go simultaneously right before we're out of the fine mess we're in.
Frozen pierogi boiled then fried with a little butter & eaten with sour cream is a classic
Accepting that’s is ok to sometimes eat a frozen meal has been absolutely instrumental in helping me reduce eating out.
I got caught in the trap of perfect, trying to make tasty, healthy, low-cost meals, and then giving up when I couldn’t just do that every day with no experience.
Bertolli chicken parm and some garlic Texas toast is almost downright fancy, but it's 100% dump, heat, eat.
Yeah I like mixing it personally!
Like I have fresh sour dough bread I made this morning. I then like to use said bread to spoon in store bought curries, pasta sauces, peanut butter, and jelly. Or sometimes I'll use it as bread for a frozen fish patty to make a sandwich. I also have a big things of rice and beans I made that I will sometimes just plop into a tortilla and call a meal.
When I went back to college with a toddler and a baby on the way. I started feeling really bad about how I was feeding my kid. I'd do stuff like chicken nuggets with some frozen veggies on the side for example. I told someone about this and they were like "no you're feeding your kid really well. They're getting most of their food groups in every meal and getting consistent meals"
If you're looking for a fun Youtube channel to folliw, check out Sorted Food. They do a lot of silly food challenge videos, but a lot of them have some really good lessons for the average know-nothing cook.
just pointing out that the russian supermarkets have these for like $2-$3 per pound, basically ravioli. you can dump a serving into a pot of boiling water and then you're done in a couple of minutes. can top with pasta sauce or even ranch dressing. feeds a while family for the cost of a single fast food meal.
For any sweet pierogi, sprinkle some sugar on top of the sour cream or mix it up properly if you want to be fancy. So damn good.
That's the depression cure doctors don't want you to know about.
I don't even boil it. Just put it in a frying pan with some butter, put a lid on it, and cook it at a low temp for 20 minutes.
I don’t get this one, surely you can just buy pasta sauce instead and it’s exactly the same steps but better 🤔
Ahh this is not a "go buy" something recipe.
This is a "If you are thinking of not eating because you feel like you have nothing to eat, eat this instead"
I don't like ketchup like that. Fries, sure. Burger? A little. This? This is fucking gross. I also knew someone that put it on their pizza. On the inverse, I can eat yellow mustard straight
I actually prefer to eat spaghetti this way instead of the sauce
Grandma's wartime recipe is this, but instead of ketchup you add canned concentrated tomato and equal amounts of water (just full the can once with water again, helps to get the last bit out) and that's it. We call it red spaghetti, I make it for my kids from time to time, but this variation:
Grandma also added meatballs. Bake the small meatballs in a saucepan and when they're done, do the tomato thing in that pan, stir well, then add to spaghetti. Can't lose the grease, amirite...
Instant Noodles Carbonara
Cook instant noodles in a pan. Chuck an egg in and mash it about a bit.
When the water is nearly all gone, chuck in a load of cheese (I use strong cheddar and grated mozzarella) and a couple of chopped up Peperamis. Mix it all about until the cheese starts burning.
Eat that shit.
First glance of the thumbnail had me thinking this was a D&D sourcebook.
For a D&D cooking show, check out Delicious in Dungeon!
Replace the vase of flowers with a tub of Vaseline or moisturizer.
When I discovered this cookbook, I printed it out on regular printer paper and spent an hour or two hardcover binding it with a bookcloth spine and fancy foreign cover papers with gold foil and flocking. It looks so nice!
Then I immediately had to use it because I can manage professionally binding a shitty printout of the Sad Bastard Cookbook, but I cannot adequately feed myself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This cookbook is great!
Quite possibly the most glowing review/recommendation for the book. Clearly a motivated and talented individual, but they STILL need help cooking!
I love the concept of this book but was pretty disappointed by the actual recipes tbh.
You might not be the target audience. I'm not currently the target audience either.
My wife and I are really into cooking. We have a whole bookshelf of cookbooks, a metrowire rack full of "kitchen stuff" and we use it daily.
There was definitely a time when this book would have been perfect. This book seems to cover a lot of stuff that's obvious to me now but wasn't always.
If you're food plan is a bulk package of Ramen, any help on how to make it not the same as every other day is culinary gold.
The title is quite literal. It's not "some simple tasty recipes", it's depression-level-bare-minimum-effort-food ;)
Same here. Last time this was shared I found a single recipe kind of interesting, but not enough for me to actually memorize what it was.
Thinking back, it was probably the Mac and Cheese one, and I had already wanted to try to make it anyway (it's not a very common dish in my country, or at least my circle)
Thank you for sharing this. Not only am I finding useful depression cooking ideas here but it also seems like a great "intro to cooking" book and just a "fuck I'm out of everything but don't feel like going to the store" kind of cookbook
Thanks for sharing! I feel like I know some folks who need this in case of emergency. Will be passing it along to several friends...
I expected less cooking tbh. I'm usually at the Eat a Dill Pickle Out of the Jar While Standing in Front of the Fridge mood.
Well maybe you can sometimes stretch your wings into "Open can of black beans, drain it, and mix in ranch" territory sometimes!
Okay this made me tear up and is perfect. Peanut Butter On A Spoon is a large percentage of what i have been eating lately. I feel seen.
Some days, or weeks, it's enough!
Maybe shake it up from time to time with something else from the book, but I understand where some months eating enough to keep the stomach pains away is just all that can be done.
Yes! Very luckily my health flares only seem to get real bad for a few days at a time nowadays, so i do have some "real food" mixed in, but as a person who has been struggling with shame about eating less well than i wish i could on those days it is very nice to be reminded that food, literally any food at all, is good enough and in fact an act of love toward myself. Excited to peruse the book for some more ideas
To add my own bachelor chow to this
Meat of some kind these frozen vegetables And KD
my favorite depression meal is an easy rice and beans. buy those flavored rice sides that come in a bag, chicken flavor is a good default option. cook it per instructions, then throw in a drained can of black beans and whatever frozen veggies sound good. don't even bother heating up the beans or veggies, there's enough heat in the rice that everything ends up nice and warm. just give it all a stir and you're done.
the rice sides have enough flavor to make everything taste good as is, but there's definitely room to toss in whatever spices are within arms reach that sound good.
My favorite depression meal is drugs and sleep.
And my absolute fave depression breakfast is waking up on the sofa still drunk, just in time to get ready for work
Sometimes I have this just for fun, as a treat.
Before I had access to the internet; These were basically my, 'Don't die, eat something easy' list of relatively quick foods back in the darkest, deepest depression days (turns out my brain chemistry reacts horribly to antidepressants and antipsychotics). I was just an anxious dude that didn't know it due to being heavily medicated.
This made my night. What a well-written and kind product
I can make a pasta meal under $6 that's generally made to last. The only determining factors is what additives you can add to it. My poor man's meal consist of the pasta (those $1 ones at wal-mart), tomato sauce (my choice has always been Tomato/Basil/Onion kinds) now the fun part is the additives themselves.
I've gotten imitation crab legs ($1 for the snack kind), croutons, chopped turkey franks .etc anything. You can just add damn near anything to the pasta that'll get you through a bit. I've only recently been adding frozen chopped spinach to the dishes, boil them up, dump them in.
All for a reasonable price. I don't usually pay anymore than $8 for a complete meal.
