A Snap Cookbook Good and Cheap

Introduction

Eating is one of life’s greatest pleasures. In a perfect world, healthy and delicious food would be all around us. It would be easy to choose and easy to enjoy. But of course it’s not a perfect world. There are thousands of barriers that can keep us from eating in a way that nourishes our bodies and satisfies our tastes. Money just needn’t be one of them. Kitchen skill, not budget, is the key to great food. This cookbook is a celebration of the many delicious meals available to those on even the most strict of budgets. Cooking on a limited budget is not easy, and there are times when a tough week can turn eating into a chore. I hope the recipes and techniques in this book help make those times rare and tough choices a little more bearable. Learning to cook has a powerfully positive effect. My hope is that this book will empower people to become better, more conscious cooks, able to conjure deliciousness in any kitchen, anytime, anywhere. Good cooking alone can’t solve hunger in America, but it can make life happier—and that is worth every effort.

This Book

I created this book at the capstone project for my MA in Food Studies at New York University. After I posted a free PDF on my website, it went viral on Reddit, Tumblr, and elsewhere—almost 100,000 downloads in the first few weeks! All the supportive feedback gave me the courage to launch a Kickstarter campaign to get printed copies Good and Cheap into the hands of people who don’t have computers or who wouldn’t otherwise see it.

About My Choices

These recipes are designed for the budget of people on SNAP (the US program that used to be called Food Stamps). The meals are generally healthy and use ingredients common to most low-income New York City neighborhoods. More than in most cookbooks, the recipes are flexible and encourage substitution based on availability, taste, and price. I want you to tailor things to your taste. That is the joy of cooking!

My intent was to create satisfying food that doesn’t require you to supplement your meals with cheap carbohydrates to stave off hunger. I strove to create recipes that use money carefully, without being purely slavish to the bottom line. For example, many recipes use butter rather than oil. Butter is not cheap, but it creates flavor, crunch, and richness in a way that cheap oils never can. To encourage people to eat fruits and vegetables, these recipes do not feature large amounts of meat. Many recipe collections created for Americans use meat as the central feature of most meals. My recipes celebrate the vegetables rather than the meat.

A few recipes call for fancy kitchen equipment, but in my work with low-income families in New York, I have found that items like blenders, food processors, and electric mixers are not as rare as you might think. I did not, however, attempt to tackle the very real situation of people who have no kitchen, no equipment, and no space to prepare food. I simply cannot hope to do those issues justice in the bounds of this project.

A Note on Prices

The prices in this book come from two sources. The first is data I collected from four grocery stores in Inwood, a relatively low-income neighborhood on the north tip of Manhattan, where I surveyed prices for the pantry items on the opposite page. For non-pantry items like specific spices and a wider variety of fruits and vegetables, I consulted an online grocery store. Naturally, prices in other cities—even other neighborhoods—will vary, so please think of the numbers as a guideline.

Pantry Basics

With these commonly available items in your pantry, you’ll always have a wide variety of meals on the table within minutes. Keeping a well stocked pantry is the key to easy, fast cooking at home. When you’re living on a budget, building up supplies does take time, but just keep adding each week and you’ll get there in time.