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We’ve often heard about howAmerica’s poor tend to have unhealthy, fast-food-based diets, compounding health problems for those who can least afford the necessary care. This is silly. There are extremely cheap and healthy sources of energy that take little time and less effort. Here are two things that you should be making and enjoying, whether you’re poor or not:

1. Tofu

Fresh tofu is way, way tastier than store-bought stuff. Plus, if you’re like me and like super-firm tofu, you can make it as firm as you want it (most store-bought varieties are too soft for my taste) – or go the opposite direction.

For a 1/2 cup serving of tofu, you’re getting about 10-11 grams of protein, 227mg calcium, 5g fat, 1-2mg iron, and 94 calories – that’s less than 1/3 of the calories in the same amount of ground beef, and with beef you’re only getting twice the protein.*

Making tofu requires kitchen stuff you already have, an acid like lemon juice, and a whole bunch of soybeans. Soybeans are incredibly, unbelievably cheap. Like $10-20 for five pounds of the stuff. Overall, homemade tofu’s a winner.  I could explain how to make tofu but that sounds boring, so check this out: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Tofu

2. Seitan

Slightly more expensive than tofu, but totally delicious, seitan is usually called a “vegan meat substitute.” This is silly. It is a delicious spongey-textured substance that, yes, can be used in place of meat in recipes, but it’s really nothing like meat. It’s like seitan. Therefore, omnivores can and should add seitan to our rotation of protein sources, if for nothing else, than for variety.

Seitan gets its awesomely weird texture from its main ingredient, Vital Wheat Gluten. This is the gluten from wheat, obviously – basically what’s left when you wash the starch out of the wheat.

Vital wheat gluten is a protein powerhouse. In one, JUST ONE, ounce of the stuff you get 21 GRAMS of protein. You only get 4g of carbs and 104 calories.

This recipe is easy enough to explain so I’ll just go ahead and do it here. Boil a big pot of water with a few tablespoons molasses and soy sauce. Take 2c vital wheat gluten, throw in some herbs (powdered ginger, garlic powder, marjoram, oregano, you know, whatever), a couple tablespoons soy sauce, and mix it with 1c of water (add more as necessary). Knead it up for a few minutes, slice it, and throw it in the pot for an hour or so.

Happy eating!

*This is in no way intended to imply that the Edukatorz don’t like beef. I’ll have my burger rare, still mooing if possible, thank you very much.

From Flickr user kusine

I don’t know if you’re aware, but the latest fad is pretending you’re Laura Ingalls Wilder.  That’s right, all things homemade and preserved are IN!  Far be it from you to be left behind.  I’m going to assume that since the New York Times is writing about it, you’ve all been pickling, canning and preserving for ages.   There have been all kinds of cookbooks, articles and the like.  For you less trendy unfortunates, I am here to bring you up to speed on some basic techniques:

1) Canning

Ah canning.  Nothing says “I am a pro-fucking-fessional” like slaving over vast kettles of boiling water, racks of sterilized jars, and all kinds of weird implements.

Canning itself is pretty easy, and the USDA publishes a very good guide every year.  If you’re new to canning and want to impress your friends (and let’s be honest, why else would you be doing this?  Because you want to save food for later?  PSHAW!  You’re supposed to pretend you’re Laura Ingalls Wilder, not actually become her.), tomatoes are a great place to start.  Please forget all those stories about botulism and dying.  Tomatoes are acidic, and following the USDA guidelines and adding a little lemon juice or vinegar PLUS the processing time renders them completely harmless.

You can get seconds from your local farmers market for dirt cheap (sometimes less than $2/lb) and the jars look quite pretty when they’re done.  It’s a bit of a process, but it would make a great (and cheap) date.   Plus, canned tomatoes and rocks make a great centerpiece.  I am not joking.

2) Pickling

I love pickles.  Not the cucumber kind, they’re alright.  I mean pickled asparagus, pickled cherries, picked zucchini relish (yes, it exists and it is DELICIOUS).  Bring it on.  You can make shelf stable (non-refrigerator) pickles, but for the first timer, refrigerator pickles are easiest.  Besides, you can show them to your parents when they ask why your fridge is full of PBR and no actual food.  Pickling is a simple as making a vinegar solution, pouring it over some vegetables (or fruits), and placing in the fridge.  Trust me, when you show up with a jar of home pickled grapes at a party, suddenly that $10 wine you bought looks WAY more expensive.  Also, pickled red onions are the perfect condiment for pretty much everything.

3) Jam and Marmalade

Yet another thing that seems intimidating, but really isn’t.  You can make freezer jam, but why would you bother, when the real stuff is possibly easier than canning tomatoes.  You boil fruit down with lemon (to provide pectin, or the stuff that gives jams and marmalades the ability to be sort of solid at room temperature…BOOM SCIENCE BOMB) and sugar, pack it into sterilized jars, and sit back and enjoy the fruits (see what I did there) of your labor!  Marmalade works pretty much the same way, but in my opinion, is much tastier.  I opted for these 2 over jellies and preserves because they are easier, and should meet the vast majority of your sweet-things-to-spread-on-toast-and-eat-with-cheese needs.

Allow me to drop a SCIENCE BOMB:

Why doesn’t marmalade need the sort of processing that tomatoes do?  Well, there is a massive amount of sugar in marmalade.  Sugar is hydroscopic and literally sucks up all the available water, leaving nothing for bacteria to use to grow.  And if you don’t know, now you know.

If you’re a close reader of food blogs (like me), you’ve noticed everyone abuzz over this piece in the NY Times.  Let me summarize it for you: SALT IS THE DEVIL AND WILL KILL YOU DEAD, IMMEDIATELY.

This is, shall we say, completely and categorically false.  Is salt bad for you? In excess amounts, yes.  Can you cook without it? Yes.  Will those things be worth eating?  Probably not.  Much like acids, salt perks up the flavor of foods, and makes them taste…well, more like themselves.  Salt is important.  Books have been written about it.  Wars have been fought over it.  Some of our earliest roads were based on animal trails to…salt licks!  The word “salary” comes from the Latin root “sal” because Roman soldiers used to be paid in…you guessed it- SALT!

Salt gets a bad rep because in the glorious country of excess, we tend to use a LOT of it.  And while the amount in processed foods can reach absurd levels, I’m here to edukate you about using it in cooking.

Let’s divide salt uses into three main things: 1) salting pasta (don’t pretend like you don’t eat an assload of pasta.  It’s cheap, it’s delicious, and it plays well with others), 2) salting other things, and 3) brining.

First up – brining.  Before you get all “hey-don’t-use-those-fancy-terms-with-me,” brining is just soaking meat in a salt (and usually sugar) solution.  Salt is key here, because it performs two very important purposes.  The first has to do with diffusion.  Simply put, when you dunk a pork chop in salty water, the salt levels in the water and the pork chop want to be even.  So the salt leaves the brine and heads into the chop.  While there, it helps tenderize the meat, upping the deliciousness level.  A more detailed explanation, care of this guy, can be found here.

Onto salting pasta.  Despite what you’ve heard, pasta water should be three things: 1) salty like the sea, 2) boiling, and 3) completely and entirely free of oil.  The only way you’re going to flavor the inside of the noodle is by cooking it in salty water.  Try it- cook up 2 batches and see which tastes better.  Pasta cooked in normal water tastes flabby and gross.  Flabby and gross pasta is not Edukatorz approved.  Harold McGee, every hipster’s favorite NY Times food scientist, agrees.  Also, you’ll notice salting the pasta means you can often get away without salting the sauce with it.

And finally, salting other things.  I’m going to assume there’s not a WHOLE lot of cooking happening on this here blog, so I’m going to keep it basic.  You can see McGee’s tips on salting vegetables in the article above.  As for other things, just remember these basic rules: Salt early, salt often, and salt in small amounts.  This is where tasting your food is key.  It’s also important to remember that if you’re serving something cold, the flavors are going to be muted, so you’re going to need to make everything a little saltier in order for it to taste the way it should.

That, friends, is your introduction to salt*.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date in my kitchen with these.

*For those of you in the advanced class: a great primer on how to salt (and what to do if you oversalt)

Belmontmedina has a new Twitter, follow her at @belmontmedina.

Now that we’ve taught you how to dress appropriately for a hipster spring, aspiring hipsters will surely be wondering what to do with themselves in this fine weather. While hipsters generally claim to be allergic to sunlight, this is not strictly true. The hipster barbeque is a quintessential springtime activity, just be sure to wear your sunglasses and adopt an appropriate air of lethargy.

Choose the Right Beer

Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller and so on are far too fratty for a hipster. If you actually like beer, microbrews are a must. The more obscure, the better – just make sure you’ve read about them in the NY Times food section and can give a snobby lecture on it. However, the obvious choice for mass consumption is PBR, or the local cheap alternative (Natty Boh in Baltimore, Iron City in Pittsburgh, Yuengling across the mid-Atlantic, etc).

Music is a Must

While it’s tempting to bring your ironic 80s cassette-only boom box, the other hipsters don’t have tapes. Try to get an iPod speaker set up so that everyone can participate in one-upping each other on the obscurity of their music. If you aren’t sure what sort of thing you should being to look impressive, check out this guest post from Sam Chase that gives an overview of hipster music.

Location, Location, Location

Backyards are fine as far as they go, but you can’t be seen in a backyard, and you can’t tweet about how awesome you are for barbequing in one. A much better option is to find a visible front porch in a very cool neighborhood, an abandoned parking lot, or just a street corner somewhere.

What Do Hipsters Eat?

Well, cocaine, obviously, but you can’t exactly grill that. Because you will probably have a lot of vegans and vegetarians and such, make sure you’ve got plenty of grillable veggies (peppers, asparagus, maybe even some tofu). Gourmet chicken sausages are a good look and can be sufficiently snobby. Burgers might be too all-American for some of your hipster friends, so you might opt for some steaks. Luckily, most hipsters foodie credentials are seriously questionable, so you can get away with a grass-fed Porterhouse for yourself and whatever’s on sale for everyone else (just tell them it’s organic and they’ll love it).