Kinda Sorta Cooking...but mostly deals and winging it

 So over the years I have slowly realized I don't make food the way other people do.

Apparently most people learn how to make several recipes and then that's it. They know the stuff to buy and they are comfortable with it. They use a cookbook for other things and make it once - maybe twice. At least this is what I've gleaned by shopping with people and watching them cook with a book open.

But my cooking style has been informed greatly by two pervasive parts of my personality: the love of winging it and the love of things on sale.

Now the sale part my grandmother has the audacity to be angry about. She's always like "Alexandra! You are so cheap! You've got money! Spend it!" But I learned my love of sales from that woman. Like damn. Does she not remember my childhood? She shopped at the super rich people thrift stores so I could look like an expensive toddler (a strange oxymoron that people for some reason aspire to) for the price of 'we think we're rich'. I mean some of my earliest memories are of my mom and aunts chorusing "SALE!!" as they run into stores - which she molded them to do! So yeah. How dare she get pissy with me about my frugality. 

....But ok. I do have a minor variant on the sale gene. Theirs is more like Oooo a TEN THOUSAND dollar coat is marked down to thirty five hundred dollars. It'd be absurd not to get it. That's $6500 in savings (yes shopping math is not just a joke in my family). Mine is more like anything that costs over $2.50 is a rip off and it wounds me. Yes, NYC Subway - I'm looking at you. It's only worth $2.75 if i'm on the train for more than 45 minutes. When you get me to my destination in just a few minutes exactly how I want, it isn't worth full price! (yeah, I see the cognitive dissonance but I've been trying to get rid of it for a while. It has roots right in the middle of my life. I ground the stump down as best I could but I still trip over it a lot.)

My mother once tried to make me see the light. You see she sells kitchens - a notoriously spendy thing already - and high end ones at that. So she thinks she can amortize her way out of a paper bag (yes a miele dishwasher is 8 million dollars but if you run it nightly for the next 5 years it'll only cost you a cent a day to never have to do dishes again). Well not this paper bag, lady! I was talking about shoes - something I always think I'm willing to pay more for because I love them - but turns out that's a lie the stump has propagated so I'll trip over it more. Dick stump. Anyway back to the story. She realizes I only buy $40 shoes and this outrages my mother who drops $100 on shoes she will literally never wear every week. So she tries the amortization trick when I'm viscerally horrified by the prospect of spending $300 on ONE PAIR of shoes. Allow me to paraphrase:

You know, your aunt has a pair of magnificent Givenchy* knee high boots she bought like 8 years ago. She wears them at least 3x a week in the winter and they are still in good condition because they're such high quality. You should invest in a pair like that.

* I really don't remember the brand - maybe it was Gucci or Prada or whatever. I don't even know if Givenchy makes boots but I know they make perfume. But Ji-vaghn-schay is super fun to say so you're welcome.

Now in my mother's head she's like an Olympic gymnast having just stuck the landing with both feet. Little does she know much as I would like to engage with her nicely (you know listen enthusiastically, affirmingly and then conveniently forget she said anything) that tree I cut down and ground into a stump - well the trunk got made into a baseball bat and the voice in my head only has it and a desire to never let my mother get on the uneven bars again.

So it comes out that these shoes are the unacceptable price of like 5k. First of all - fuck's sake. Second, I'm like a shark in the water now. Oh yeah. So mom. Okay. Let's say the shoes last 15 years and that they somehow never need maintenance. Okay. Now the cost of the boots is like $333 a year. (5k/15 for those of you amateur mathematicians following along). Now let's say boot weather in Chicago is just under 2/3 of the year or roughly 33 weeks. So that's $10 a week. So about $3 a wear. (At this point she's like SEEE NOT BAD ALEXANDRA!! INVESTMENTS AMORTIZE).

Now you can imagine that voice in my head - let's call him frigal because he's both frigid and frugal - is making that grinchy smile where his whole face sinks into the grin in the ugliest way. This is too easy.

So I say uh-huh. uh-huh. $3 a wear. impressive. yeah. Well my favorite pair of beige heels - I bought them 5 years ago and I wear them probably 2x a week every week over 50 degrees in NYC. Let's say that's May to October for argument's sake - or like 30 weeks a year. They're not too much longer for this world and I did have them resoled a couple years back. So $40 to buy and $40 for a resole. So $80 for 300 wears if I tossed them tomorrow. That's 27 cents a wear. Kinda feels like the shoes pay me at this point, huh?

Mmm. Victory is so sweet that frigal doesn't even mind when she furiously tells me I'm the worst and invents a reason to get off the phone. I ignore the voice that says what about the other $40 pair you bought that fell apart the first time you wore them so much that you just threw them away.

Okay you get the picture on my strange form of frugality (we don't have time to go into its intersection with my conservationism/sustainability. Quite complicated really).

Now onto my perverse love of winging it. I do a fair amount of public speaking and I gotta tell you preparing a speech feels great but actually giving a speech is the pits - why? because in your head (okay maybe just my head) it's like this defining moment where the world realizes your glory and they cheer and body surf you to supreme ruler of the universe. This is never what happens. Even if people are nice after you severely fuck up or tell you this is exactly what they needed and you changed their life - you still feel like IF I COULD JUST HAVE GOTTEN EVERY WORD IN ORDER. Thus - I prefer panels. On a panel I can shine - be funny and charismatic and have no expectations of what I'll say - and there are 4 other people who will be talking and giving me the space between jokes to think of more stuff. YES. Oh winging it how I love you so. It doesn't just apply to extempore speaking. - everything feels like you nailed it (or did at least better than could have been expected given you made that shit up on the spot). And people awe over it. Great feeling. Highly suggest. Winging it is my form of spontaneity - and what other people might call 'creativity'. We'll come back to this.

Meanwhile back at the grocery store - I'm the absolute worst shopper. I walk along most aisles (okay I don't need to go into the soda, chips, and candy aisle. Those are not my preferred way to waste calories). I inspect every price tag and deeply consider what is a good deal. Not what I need - what is a good deal. Do you see that gene coming back? If I have to spend more than 2.50 for it then it has to be a deal.

tangent: last week I saw bags of onions were on sale 2 for $3. So I grabbed 2 bags and handed them to my lovely assistant to stow properly before something in my brain was like "THIS ISN'T RIGHT" and sure enough it was a trick. The tiny bagged onions were $1.50 per pound and the big old monstrosities I love were $1/lb. I properly snatched the bags back and loaded up so I could live that #bigonionlife. Oh, yeah.

So as I shop I see things and I'm like these two things can go together! I think? probably. I'll find a way. My surefire thing is to buy a bunch of fake meats then think about what starches go with those fake meats then work in a ton of veggies. Honestly though since stores aren't laid out this way it means I get a lot of cardio when I grocery shop. I know all the list makers are horrified. Especially since they're like lists make you stay on budget! and I'm like my frugality is not budget based - it's about feeling like I got a win. Budgeting is the long game. This is about going to the cash register with a bursting cart and having it be under $100. HA take that, suckers!

So I get home with this random mishmash of things. And I'm tired. But I've learned this lesson in the past. shopping day and cooking days don't align. So I usually buy myself something pre-made and heat that up after I put everything away.

Now we have all the foods and the next day the cooking is ON. So my personal philosophy is that if I have to cook for 30 mins to make a meal or 2 I may as well cook for 2 hours and make 18 portions. Other people call this meal prepping. I have been calling this consolidating the pain of cooking for over a decade.

Remember that 'creativity' I mentioned before? It's just taking inspiration and combining it into something kinda new. Basically what I'm saying is I don't follow recipes - I look up a ton of different recipes by googling random ingredients together then looking at the images tab. If it looks delicious then I open the recipe and try to gauge how many of the necessary ingredients I have or could figure a way around. I skim it through to understand the order that things go into pots then find the next interesting picture and do the same thing. I do this until my brain says "I've had enough of looking at food" or "Oh I got this." You'd think the latter bodes better but winging it is winging it. The chance it will be good is pretty much the same.

I should also mention that I'm usually just cooking for myself so the stakes are low. And one pot meals are everything to me

Here are some of the things that have come out of my brain recently...I'd give you the stuff from the past but I honestly can't remember all the things I've randomly cooked. Easy come, easy go. Also most things I make are somewhere between a slop and a mush. But they do taste good. Feel free to add nooch to any of these. Hell yeah.

Vaguely Irish, mostly potatoes - some interesting (read: lazy) mixture of colcannon and coddle:

Take a 5lb bag of potatoes and a 2 lb bag of carrots. wash and cut them into 1.5 inch chunks (leave as much skin as you like). Also rough chop a very big yellow onion. 1 pack of tofurky sausage, half coined. and the leaves of probably 2 bunches of kale - any one will do.

now I've done this two ways:

A) sautee the onions in a deep pot and then pile in the starches and cover with water, boil and keep doing so until most water is gone/absorbed, add in the sausage and keep cooking until it starts to loose its shape a bit

B) dump starches into boiling water and let get fork tender. meanwhile saute the onions and sausage separately and add them in to the starches once they are in that waterlogged but not swimming state. The water should be cooking off

Now either way: the kale. you'll want to make into quite small pieces - like 1/3 of an oreo. and quickly pan fry it so it wilts. then dump it into the big pot and stir for your life.

You can add in some vegan butter while the starches are hot if you like - and of course salt/pepper to taste.

makes like 6 servings

The next one is minorly mexican mush.

I sauteed a chopped onion with the thinly chopped kale stems leftover from another meal. Simultaneously I was boiling up some red/yellow lentils. Then I took my cauliflower and thin sliced the florets (I eat the stems while cooking since they're so sweet - or I store them to make some crunch in salads/ as snacks). saute the cauli and add in some TJ's soyrizo (completely unwrapped so it crumbles). Add it all together and, season with cumin/ paprika/ chili and top it with sour cream, maybe serve it over lettuce or as a taco filling. makes about 5 servings

Bigass Bean stew:

saute a big onion then add (previously soaked) mixed bean soup - 2 packs and cover with water. while it's boiling small chop your veggies - really anything but your starches should go in first (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, rice, quinoa) then fresh non-leafy veggies (squashes, brocc, cauli, brussels) then frozen veggies then (5 mins to the end) leafy veggies (kale, spinach). really just cook until desired result is achieved. and lastly - vinegar! It makes every bean or lentil stew better. Trust me. If you're new to it try seasoned rice vinegar, else balsamic will do. I even tried the balsamic mustard once - really complemented the flavor profile. (I'm not sure people who make slop are allowed to say flavor profile but nobody's arrested me yet) Servings will change drastically depending on what you add - but last time I made it like 10 servings came out.

One unmoving pot pasta:

I hate when they say one pot but you boil the pasta first then put it the side and make the dish. I'm not moving a pot filled with boiling water. No. I reject your loophole.

This is a favorite easy crowd pleaser. decide which veggies and protein you want. Make that. For this we'll assume I'm using tj's meatballs (2 packs) and frozen veggie foursome (3 packs) - I'd saute a big onion then toss in the balls - let them sear a bit then toss in the veggies. cook for a bit then toss in the canned (bpa-free!) tomatoes (one large crushed with basil and another chunky tomato sauce) and 1.5-2 of those cans of water. let it boil then toss in 24 oz of pasta - I like brown rice or veggie pasta as it takes overcooking better and this process is finicky. stir it under the water as best you can and close the lid. halfway through stir again to make sure all of them are submerged and the stuff at the bottom isn't sticking. top with a packet of your favorite vegan cheese and close the lid again. once done open the lid and stir the cheese in. makes like 11 servings.