SO YOU NEED TO STOP ORDERING IN
...and spending $80 every time you go out.
If you feel like you can’t leave the house without spending $40, you’re not alone. It’s true, everything is [f*cking expensive] everywhere all at once. If you, too, find yourself mentally pricing out each sip of that dirty martini you ordered and wondering if 401ks will even be ‘a thing’ for our generation, I get it. As tempting as it is to flick over to The Infatuation or Eater to peruse new restaurant openings, I couldn’t help but wonder… will my savings account be depleted by the time summer rolls around and I really want to go out. But, at the same time, I also think about this tweet a lot (and how those ingredients now cost closer to $70). Some dishes are just not worth it (looking at you, bagels). So take advantage of the dreary, unsettlingly warm-yet-still-maddening winter weather and cook! To spark your culinary imagination, we’ve rounded up some of our recent favorite recipes (ones without an influx of inflated ingredients, we promise) that help us prioritize dining in (hey, wouldn’t that be a great cookbook title?!).
INSTEAD OF…
Going to that café with $8 lattes and $12 toast:
I’ve talked about this in the newsletter before, but one of my favorite games to play when I cook is ‘How much would this cost at a restaurant?’ It’s especially fun at breakfast time: Every drizzle of tahini, slice of avocado, or sprinkle of feta cheese adds a cool $1-3 dollar upcharge to your imaginary brunch bill. I’m frequently struck by sweet breakfast cravings, but like pancakes-for-the-table sweet, not red-velvet-waffles sweet. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by the bitter-sweet balance of this cocoa-almond oatmeal that caught both our eyes on the Food52 feed. The recipe’s ‘genius’ tip involves cooking oatmeal in a nonstick skillet, which not only cut down cook time and cleanup, but also gave the oats a pleasing texture with more bite than the usual. I’ve been topping my oatmeal with caramelized bananas (add $3), or melted butter, maple syrup, and crispy quinoa (add $4) since having a bowl topped with the latter from Standard Fare in Berkeley months ago that broke my brain.
More into savory? The Cofax burrito is so good it almost makes me want to live in L.A. But making big batches of Deb’s breakfast burritos (add tater tots or crushed tortilla chips inside) will probably smack some sense back into me. We also must mention this spinach artichoke frittata that friend and reader, Lindsay, texted Gab about this week. We like the sound of making this on a Sunday morning and having leftovers to eat with little salads and slices of sourdough toast for lunch for the rest of the week. Please admire her work showcasing the “globs of cream cheese”.
Picking up Sweetgreen:
What I miss most about working in an office is noon. Once noon rolled around, everyone usually had an idea of what they were going to have for lunch, and I could finally start asking them what those ideas were. Someone always had a “lunch meeting” at a nice restaurant, or brought leftovers of their decadent dinner from the night before. One person would whip together some variation of eggs and toast in the office kitchen, filling the entire floor with the smell of hot, salty oil while they did. And the rest of us would trot over to Sweetgreen and pick up our pre-ordered salads, all of which would be missing at least one ingredient. Sad, I know, but I work from home now, and it feels wrong to eat Sweetgreen anywhere but a desk in an office — a true office, not a second bedroom-turned-office — so these days I forage my pantry when I want to make a salad for lunch. And I never forget an ingredient. This Greek-ish salad with quick tzatziki sauce, artichoke hearts and crunchy pepperoncini looked delicious to me, a girl who almost always has sliced turkey in her fridge. I also really liked reading through this salad chart by Julia Turshen — I love the sound of the Italian chopped salad with roasted peppers, red onion and provolone.
Having a $45 sushi set delivered to your door:
You know those sushi sets that seem like a great deal until there’s tax and tip and service fees and delivery fees and something called a “busy fee” and suddenly you feel like you should just make a box of Annie’s and call it a night? Here’s the problem — I regularly crave raw fish with such a fierceness that makes me think I may just be iron deficient. But, ever since my boyfriend and I figured out that we could just buy our own sushi-grade fish, things started looking up. Sushi-grade fish is everywhere, and you would be surprised at how reasonable it can be priced, especially in comparison to going out for sushi. We now hit up Osakana with regularity for ¼ lb. each of several fish, and the total costs less than one of their chirashi bowls. Some must-haves to make your own chirashi, poke, hand rolls, and onigiri even better: kewpie (duh), this extra crispy roasted seaweed, this “umami topping” crunchy garlic-chili condiment, and a giant bag of fried shallots from H Mart. And if you need a little appetizer, it never fails to wow me how easy-yet-impressive the gyoza cornstarch slurry lace skirt is to execute at home.
Cleaning out your bodega’s Ben & Jerry’s supply:
A few Sundays ago, when I thought I’d be coming home to a quiet and clean apartment, I instead opened the door to my boyfriend and all of his friends watching football and eating dumplings on the couch. Naturally, I channeled my frustration into baking a batch of brownies before locking myself in my bedroom and letting Desperate Housewives lull me to sleep. My I need brownies right now! recipe is this poorly named one. They’re dark, delicious and chewy as written, but I think they really peak when half of the granulated sugar is subbed for brown, and bitter chocolate shards are stirred into the batter. I also always sprinkle them with a 1:1 mixture of cocoa powder and powdered sugar once they’ve cooled a bit. In the morning, I saw the pile of leftover squares, and immediately started making the base of this fresh mint ice cream. Three or four drops of green food coloring got it to the perfect pale green that all great mint chip has. After steeping, chilling and churning, I layered crumbled brownies with the grassy cream and froze it all again. Each cold spoonful is somehow rich and refreshing. And if you don’t have any leftover brownies, use Oreos (bonus if you can find the mint ones or still have some peppermint ones lying around from the holidays) or chocolate chips.
The OATMEALS! 😮💨