jeff fox wrote: Sun May 11, 2025 4:00 pm When's the last time you guys made plain old baked potatoes? So damn good.

Any time I eat a baked sweet potato (especially some of the Japanese varieties) I wonder why I don't eat them every day. In fact I should try to plant some right now (they require deep, loose soil I think. We've got some empty pots..).

Owen wrote: Sun May 11, 2025 6:09 pm Brown up some ground pork.
Whisk together soy sauce, brown sugar, and chili garlic sauce (the huy fong stuff)

I do something like this (but add some grated ginger too), simmer it up, and spoon it over rice. Simple and very good. A drizzle of sesame oil at the end goes a long way.

You can buy a hambone from the butcher or even the Honeybaked Ham store for like $7 USD.

Soak a bag of dry pinto or navy beans all day in cold, clean water.

Rinse them three times until all of the fartstarch is rinsed off.

Put the beans and the hambone in the slow cooker. Cover with water. Add salt/pepper, cumin, a couple of crushed garlic cloves, a Bay leaf if you're fucking fancy, fresh epazote if you can get your hands on it. Cook on low overnight and into the next morning.

For less than $10, you can eat that for several days. Roll them up in tortillas or serve them with collard greens and cornbread. Pair it with rice if you want to stretch it even further.

Variation:
Soak navy beans or other white beans all day. Rinse. Cover with water and add salt, garlic, olive oil, a Bay leaf IYFF and rosemary. Use an immersion blender to smooth it out. Dip warm bread in there and get happy.

Both of these freeze just fine.

Heat a big pan and add olive oil until it's shimmering.

Vigorously salt some water and once it's boiling, add 60 grams of dry pasta per person. (max 3 for this recipe)

To your skillet, add chopped garlic, a chopped shallot or half a white onion, and crushed red pepper.

Add a giant handful of cherry tomatoes and a squirt of tomato paste.

Once the garlic is toasted (but not burnt) add a cup of whatever wine you have leftover from the last time you had guests.

Once that's cooked down, add a can of tuna (the good stuff, in olive oil).

Salt/pepper/etc. Add lemon zest and the juice from half a lemon.

Once the pasta is two minutes from being done, according to the directions on the package, add a cup of the pasta water to your skillet, then toss your noodles into the pan.

Do the flippy thing and let the pasta finish cooking in the pan.

Serve with fantasies about living in Tuscany.

penningtron wrote: Mon May 12, 2025 8:20 am

jeff fox wrote: Sun May 11, 2025 4:00 pm When's the last time you guys made plain old baked potatoes? So damn good.

Any time I eat a baked sweet potato (especially some of the Japanese varieties) I wonder why I don't eat them every day. In fact I should try to plant some right now (they require deep, loose soil I think. We've got some empty pots..).

I eat baked sweet potato a lot, with black beans, fried eggs, or just chili crisp. Smoked sweet potato is a top 5 BBQ side for me.

dontfeartheringo wrote: add a cup of the pasta water to your skillet, then toss your noodles into the pan.

"Things you wish you knew at 20" came up the other day. "Finish pasta in the skillet with the water" was the least sad one and also would have gotten the most use.

Another top 5 BBQ side is Serbian coleslaw. About as cheap and easy as it gets -
- shred a head of white cabbage, the finer the better, and mix with 2 tablespoons of salt. Leave it in the bowl for a half hour
- blender an onion with 2 tablespoons vinegar, 3 tablespoons oil, and a dash of sugar
- squeeze the salty water out of the cabbage and mix in the onion/dressing. Let it steep for a half hour before serving

An entire can of anchovies including the oil, melted into some olive oil and butter, sautéed with some garlic. red pepp flakes. Dump in a big can of crushed tomatoes and cook low for 10 minutes...one of the best pasta sauces you can make. Beats the FUCK out of that bizarre Marcella Hazan sauce that sucks. And doesn't take 3 years to make.

Split pea and ham soup in the pressure cooker, using a leftover ham bone from a cheap spiral-cut ham, when they go on sale after whatever holiday.

I throw some 1" potato cubes in the air fryer probably once a week. Usually toss them in oil and garam masala, or sometimes salt, garlic, and sumac before cooking, then serve with chili crisp.

Leftover protein from the night before into some ramen, along with whatever stir-fried vegetables I have on hand. I'll eat that probably 3x/week for lunch. Also add chili crisp.

Honestly, I eat chili crisp with probably 75% of my meals.

I just cooked a 10 pound pork shoulder for 18 hours in a slow cooker "Kalua Pig" style, meaning stabbed it many times and rubbed sea salt and liquid smoke all over it before it went in. Now I'm gonna use it to make Hawaiian, Korean, Chinese, and Mexican food for the next week. Rice and corn tortillas for carbs. Lots of scallions will be involved as will salsa, chili crisp, soy condiment, fish sauce, avocado, cilantro. Throw it in a pan every night to brown before serving. An egg may work its way into it one night.

Cheapest, best thing in the world - learn how to make chinese tomato and egg. Its simple and shouldn’t be as good as it is but once you figure it out you’re set for life.

Less cheap but still very economical:

We buy diamond kosher salt and decent olive oil (still grocery store stuff) in bulk and cook simple things with it like this and live like kings. Broccolini sauteed simply with just that is amazing.

Shrimp Gambas is a once a week fav. It’s a Spanish dish, but there is some kind of Filipino equivalent my wife would make until we started fucking with this.

1-1/2 lb of shrimp, parsley, garlic, lemons, dry sherry, paprika/red pepper flakes, olive oil, salt and bread. My wife likes good canned tomatoes added, so sometimes that, but I don’t think its that necessary. We keep frozen french bread in the fridge and its actually better than the regular grocery store bakery stuff.

You can use the leftover infused oil for pasta the next day.

Use that decent olive oil to make nicoise salad during the week as well. This recipe is my fav.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you plan in advance and buy legit light and dark soy sauce, Sichuan pepper, pickled mustard, black vinegar, and some other stuff you can make great simple Chinese food for very cheap. The trick is to make your own Sichuan oil and to do all your shopping at an asian store. The only good chili oil we ever bought was at this little peking duck place in Houston, but that was like the one time I didn’t regret making my own. It lasts.

Cold noodles, mala chicken, dan dan, cucumber salad, all sorts of very fresh stuff can be made. I really like this website for recipes.

I am hungry for wood ear mushrooms now.

jeff fox wrote: Mon May 12, 2025 11:12 am An entire can of anchovies including the oil, melted into some olive oil and butter, sautéed with some garlic. red pepp flakes. Dump in a big can of crushed tomatoes and cook low for 10 minutes...one of the best pasta sauces you can make. Beats the FUCK out of that bizarre Marcella Hazan sauce that sucks. And doesn't take 3 years to make.

Yeah I don’t understand that Marcella Hazan recipe. Never worked out that great and we make something similar like this all the time, which is an improvement.

Going to try this with the anchovies.

Perfect mexican rice = buy a half liter of salsa, dump that into rice in an insta-pot. Press "rice"