I know it’s hard to believe (especially if you’re reading this while eating cheese out of a can on generic-brand Triscuits in your freezing-cold box-size apartment, where your toilet is in your kitchen), but I promise you, it’s true. First of all, you are probably broke for a series of good reasons: you’re climbing the rungs of your dream career, and those low rungs don’t pay well; you spent a shitload of money on college or grad school and now you have to pay the government (or your parents) back while climbing said low rungs; you’re living in a fabulous, exciting city where rent costs more than the gross national product of some small countries; you’re still learning how to manage money, and, like most people, you’re finding it’s not easy. I get it. I’ve been there. In some ways, I’m still there.
But being broke or near-broke lights an essential fire under you. You know the fear and anxiety that is not being sure how you’ll manage to pay your rent. It means dreading the potential of having to ask your parents or friends to lend you some cash. And that anxiety, while temporarily paralyzing, pushes you to avoid such outcomes. While making more money may not be an immediately available option, spending less always is. And the first step to take when you want to spend less is to stop going out or ordering in for every meal and learn to cook at home.
Cooking at home doesn’t mean trading dinner at that fabulous new tapas joint for a sad, generic-brand can of soup. Nor does it mean slaving over a hot stove when you come home from work at 8 p.m. In this chapter, we do our best to show you how to make simple, easy, very inexpensive meals that won’t leave you missing the restaurant experience.
Of course, if you’re really missing the true restaurant experience, you can always make yourself wait forty-five minutes before you sit down at your table and set up an awkward coed handwashing station outside your bathroom.—GLM