Remember my cookbook?

Back again from our final trip of the summer to the beautiful Berkshires where I reconnected with childhood places and happy memories of my now-gone relatives from Vienna. I continued some of the questioning I began in the Balkans and got more specifics on the dangerous  journey undertaken by my grandparents, mother, and others as they escaped Vienna in the late 1930s. Truly, my very existence is a miracle.

I may depart from my blog's original purpose--to spread the gospel of frugality--and turn to more personal matters as I attempt to wrest information from the very few surviving relatives--who themselves remember very little and were greeted with silence about those terrible times.

For the moment though, I am back to frugality. After all, if we weren't frugal we couldn't go to the Balkans to ask questions of Ildi, my mother's cousin's widow. Since I am interested in a return visit, I am once again checking the food ads and making lists of necessary items to search for in thrift stores.

And it is time to make yet another pitch for the cookbook Frugal Son and i put together from Miss Em a few years ago, when she went off with a scholarship that provided a dorm room but not a board card. How to cook with limited resources, no car, a small fridge, and NO STOVE?

Thus was born our little cookbook. I have not really made an effort to market it, but copies sell now and again. And now--after all these years--a review! A good one!

Seriously, get your college student a rice cooker (very cheap), some rice (ditto) and a few other things. This will be a much-appreciated gift. I and my post-college kids (and their friends) use the book all the time. Not just for the stove-free.

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5.0 out of 5 stars This book is great! I was on a trip with a fridge ... July 10, 2014

By JEC

Verified Purchase

This book is great! I was on a trip with a fridge available for use. Needed a cheap option for cooking meals, so I searched the Kindle Store and found this book. After reading I picked up a rice cooker and made a few of these recipes. I haven't tried them all yet, but I plan to, and I did enjoy the ones I made. This is an excellent cookbook for dorm, hotel room, and at home cooking.

A Plug for my Cookbook: A Gift for the Harried

We are not Black Friday shoppers. In fact, we have been lounging around all morning. No doubt the good deals are gone. Thank heavens for that!

Even so, I have a plug or pitch or whatever you want to call it. If you look at my other blog, you will see that my zeal for helping out the poor, hungry student--or any busy person really--has been reawakened. The reawakening is courtesy of a review in a college paper, which outlined the experience of a college cook: armed with a college cookbook (not mine!), plus $50.00 worth of ingredients, she produced 3 small meals, none of which came out very well. UGH.

For the same $50.00, you can buy your College Cook my cookbook ($2.99 on Amazon or for a pdf here--look to the upper right), a rice cooker, and a box of ingredients: rice, canned tomatoes, tuna, broth, canned beans, tortillas, and so on. Enough to make almost a week of meals. The book calls for a single shopping trip, mostly canned and shelf-stable ingredients, and offers a series of COORDINATED recipes that use the ingredients in different ways.

Rice Cooker Meals for Everyone, Even Me

Now that I'm back in school, I'm more frazzled than usual. Out comes the trusty rice cooker. I used a recipe in a regionally published cookbook as a base.

Like many regional cookbooks, this one has recipes that are all kind of the same, calling for Rotel tomatoes and Cajun seasoning in almost every dish. I put together something based on Cabbage Casserole, which involved throwing into the rice cooker some cooked ground beef (I had this frozen), some onions, bell peppers, green onions, 1 cup rice, 1 cup or so of water, a few handfuls of preshredded cabbage and OF COURSE a small can of Rotel tomatoes. Turn on the rice cooker. It will know when to stop. If you need to add more liquid, do so.

Serve with hot sauce, also OF COURSE.

My hero Roger Ebert is right: the pot knows. I left out several things, including a pound of sausage, that I didn't have. It was still good.


The author says that this tastes like stuffed cabbage. Well, I wish. My grandma (from Poland) was a terrible cook, but she made wonderful stuffed cabbage. They didn't have Cajun seasonings or Rotel in Poland--or Brooklyn--though they probably do now. This tastes like what your Cajun grandma would have made.

After a long day at work, I must say I enjoy throwing a bunch of stuff into a single pot, letting the pot do the work, and then having enough to eat the next day. At which point, you will have to wash a single pot.

Next time, I'll add some cooked red beans.

We are all College Cooks

What is a College Cook? Someone with limited time, space, know how, and facilities. In truth, I have only one genuine College Cook in my immediate circle: Miss Em, who is heading into her last year of dorm life.

Frugal Son just moved to an apartment in New Orleans: he packed his beloved rice cooker. Mr C--an affiliate of our family, though not officially a member--just moved into his post-grad apartment and received his first rice cooker (courtesy of me and Goodwill) and a copy of the little guide Frugal Son and I put together:

This is not just a collection of easy recipes: we recommend 20 easy to buy and store products; we then offer 2 weeks of recipes that can be put together quickly, with little mess, in rice cooker or microwave, two college approved appliances. Oh, and did I mention that you or your cook will save a ton of money--not to mention time?

We priced it as low as Amazon can go for our program: $2.99. For the same price, you can order it from us and receive an ebook.

Even though I like to cook, I am as lazy as the next person (lazier, probably). I cook with my rice cooker most nights.

Check out our college Cooking blog for occasional posts and suggestions too.

Any other suggestions for the College Cook--even if the College Cook is long out of college?

A Gift for the Grad: Using My Talents

The best gift, of course, is one the recipient wants. I recently bought a wedding gift, using the registry. Gnashing my teeth all the while, thinking I could get 10 things for the price of the one (biggish) gift I am buying. It was the right thing to do though. Right now, I am in the process of buying a graduation gift for Mr C, a recent family friend. On Saturday, I noticed that the 2.8 million dollar home a few blocks away had a yard sale sign. So off we went. Mr C found some sport coats (cashmere and camel hair!) in his size. I said: Let me buy those as part of your graduation pres. He was pleased, so I got him a nice belt too. Hmmm. This is really using my frugal talents. Next, I'm going to buy him a slow cooker (new) and a stick blender (ditto). I already gave him a second-hand rice cooker and a copy of the little ebook Frugal Son and I put together. Finally, I am going to get some food staples for his first real cooking adventures. Mr. C will be working in a Vista program next year while studying for the dreaded MCAT exam. If he learns to cook efficiently, he will have skills that will take him through med school and beyond. I've finally found the perfect recipient! Happy Graduation Mr C!

Give Away: College Cooking Crash Course ebook

Do you know a clueless student who would like the little ebook Frugal Son and I put together last summer? Or would you like one for yourself? You don't need to be a college student to benefit from our 20 ingredient/2 weeks of meals/cheap/easy/low mess system. Oh yeah: no stove. But it's good even if you have a stove. You do need a rice cooker for some of the recipes.

Anyway, I will give away one copy on each blog: see College Cooking Crash Course.

Entry is easy: just leave a comment below. You can double your chances of winning if you leave a comment on both blogs. I'd love it if you'd tell all your friends, but that is not required. The winner will be chosen on Friday.

If you don't win this time, don't despair. I'll be doing this now and again.

City Kitchen: A New NYT Column

It doesn't take much to make me happy. The latest happiness-inducer was a glance at City Kitchen, a column in the New York Times.

This is written for people with city kitchens: no space, no equipment, the usual limitations. In other words, real kitchens. Well, you see why I would like this: it sounds like the College Cooking close to my heart: no space, no equipment, and so on.

In fact, the plight of the College Cook is more difficult, since the City Cook at least has a few burners. I'm hoping to get some more ideas for my dear college Cooking daughter--and for my neglected blog: College Cooking Crash Course.

I guess the San Francisco Foodie establishment will miss the columnist: here is what they have to say about his first column.

It certainly walks the line between aspirational and instructional with steps like: "First, make thin ribbons of raw asparagus, fennel and radish. Then make a lemony, anchovy-inflected vinaigrette." Which prompts the question, are the bustling cities of the world ready to break out the "anchovy-inflected vinaigrette" en masse? Only time will tell.

INFLECTED. That word is--or was--overused in literary criticism for a while; I see it has migrated to food writing. Aside from the pompous word, I am so thrilled! The first column is on the humble bean.

Do you like the column, dear readers?