(Cooking With Potatoes)
There's no better way to drain one's savings than spending five months away from home with no income. Also, I frittered away quite a bit of money last year on pointless expenses.
Watching my savings dwindle has made me, if not poor, then at the very least frugal. It's also taught me how to cook.
Allow me to explain. Thanks. I�m going to be longwinded again, so brace yourself.
Years ago, I cooked almost every day. I cooked cookies and brownies and, on several occasions, strawberry-rhubarb pie. My area of expertise (in fact, the only area in which I had any skill whatsoever) was desserts.
That�s not to say I didn�t try cooking other things. When our family, like every god-fearing family in the mid-nineties, broke down and bought a breadmaker, I dutifully made my way through the recipe book.
Those familiar with the modern American breadmaker, that spiritual and aesthetic forebear to the equally useful iMac, know its many quirks. The impossible-to-clean stirring mechanism� the strangely medicinal-looking jarred yeast recommended by the manufacturers� the tiny loaves of bread with rock-hard crusts…
Or maybe that was just me. The best I could ever do was white bread. I once made a loaf of white bread that was almost the same size and consistency as an actual loaf of bread.
The worst thing I ever made was 7-herb bread. No one would eat it, so I crumbled it outside for the woodland creatures to enjoy. For two weeks it sat on our deck: untouched.
My cool brother, Matt, showed me how to make Kraft macaroni-and-cheese (his speciality, back when our mom would still cook all his fish for him) a few times, and I managed to make it once or twice on my own.
I can also make sandwiches, juice, microwave chocolate-chip waffles (known as �waffle-chips�), store-bought pizza, and any kind of soup that comes in a can.
I can't cook. I couldn't cook. This weekend, because I was bored and because five pounds of potatoes are cheaper (see "frugal", above) than a loaf of bread, I decided to cook myself a nice hot meal. Behold:
My mashed potatoes were a delicious success. Approximate total cost of meal, including salt and butter: 25 cents. On Sunday I made mashed potatoes again (this time with an onion: The Urbanite had a few to spare), and, once more, they were delicious. On Saturday, Ines, my German mitbewohner, taught me a recipe.
