#the sad bastard cookbook

[indelibleevidence]

People with low spoons, someone just recommended this cookbook to me, so I thought I'd pass it on.

I always look at cookbooks for people who have no energy/time to do elaborate meal preparations, and roll my eyes. Like, you want me to stay on my feet for long enough to prepare 15 different ingredients from scratch, and use 5 different pots and pans, when I have chronic fatigue and no dishwasher?

These people seem to get it, though. It's very simple in places. It's basically the cookbook for people who think, 'I'm really bored of those same five low-spoons meals I eat, but I can't think of anything else to cook that won't exhaust me'.

And it's free!

[zillanovikov]

sad bastard cookbook on kobo

if you have a kobo and you wanna do this sad bastard a solid, please "buy" my free book so my number go up and the empty vastness in my soul can be temporarily filled

[ythealleycat]

Learning bookbinding, and after making a few blanks for practice, decided to go with @zillanovikov 's The Sad Bastard Cookbook for a first serious piece

[existencebringsonlypain]

only read more if you're NOT my mom. this is about the gift, so seriously mom don't look

okay guys. so. my parents recently split up, and I'm living with my mom. My mom only knows how to cook like four things, and they're all "stick em in the oven for 45 minutes and they're done!" style cooking. I remembered seeing a post talking about the Sad Bastard Cookbook, for those with low spoons- aka, cookbook with a fantastic sense of humor, requires very little effort, and has pretty decent results. I think she'd love it if I gave it to her as a Christmas present.

Here's the conundrum- the PDF for this cookbook is free, zero dollars. The printed version is sixteen dollars new. Obviously I don't want to spend sixteen dollars on something I can get for free, but I know my mom would both appreciate it more and use it much more often if she didn't have to go to her computer for "every" (like three per) step.

So, physical's the way to go, right? Well, maybe not. My mom used to bind her fanfics herself, back when she had these hundred-page-long fics. She's got binders full of pure fic (which, turns out, actually just mostly smut). So the other option is, I take advantage of her paper and ink while she's at work and print it all- here's hoping she's got enough ink- and print it all, hole punch, and bind. I'm willing to do that, but I will not do it happily, and it'll be mediocre at best.

[novelistparty]

the dinner scale:

food - anything you can grab handfuls of

snack - an item you'd usually never call a meal or part of a meal

ugh-I-can't-even dinner - a lot of a single item from the previous categories

"dinner" - same as the last but you maybe put it on a plate or used a napkin, you probably wouldn't tell everyone about it, but otherwise no worries bc you're eating plenty

dinner - you purposely prepared something for a meal but still wouldn't tell people about it bc people might thoughtlessly and unfairly criticize you for eating a bowl of plain rice or noodles as a meal

True Dinner - 2 to 4 distinct items you might have prepared in some fashion that complement each other. A sign that you have a LOT of energy and it might also worry you because you wonder how long it will last

Dinner for Other People - likely something between "dinner" and True Dinner that you might never otherwise make and it will exhaust you and the people will enjoy it and think you adept and capable but the next night you might eat a bowl of popcorn and graze leftovers to be super clear: I recommend eating enough to feel well, no matter the form nor manner. People should offer you full respect for doing what you are able to care for yourself, no matter how far it falls from "a proper meal" for more information about getting enough food when you just can't even, try The Sad Bastard Cookbook. I like it because reading it undid all of the "proper" ideas I had about eating and let me throw out the shame I carried around about eating whatever as a meal when times are tough

[faintingviolet]

The Sad Bastard Cookbook (CBR15 #22)

When my brain is cooperating, I enjoy cooking. But as a neurodivergent person who lives by herself and absolutely has no idea what is presently in my refrigerator at any time (yes, even immediately after going to the grocery store) keeping myself fed has always been an interesting challenge that I attempt to hide from the world around me. I also tend to get stuck in eating the same thing over and…

[sawyerquinnbrown]

I hate to cook for myself. Give me a house of 6, 10, 20 people and yes, cooking is fantastic! I have Contributed! I have Made Others Happy! But just for me? No, no, no. Too Much Effort. When I make food for myself, it is Curséd food. Not delicious; merely sustenance. So for a while there I was subsisting on frozen food that I could make in the toaster oven. Okay by ‘a while’ I mean years, and by…

[sabotabby]

@forgetmenothistory

For the days when you’re at rock bottom, Night Beats presents…The Sad Bastard Cookbook, illustrated by me! 🥲 #cooking #vegan #food #vegetarian #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #mentalhealthmatters

♬ original sound - ForgetMeNot History

Please enjoy Marten’s latest Sad Bastard TikTok!

[mstornadox]

This may be relevant to your interests: The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So That You Don’t Die by Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov and illustrated by Marten Norr. The book’s longline is “A completely free cookbook for the zero spoons crowd.” Bagels are listed a core ingredient. Download the PDF at https://traumbooks.itch.io/the-sad-bastard-cookbook

So many simple recipes, such delightful commentary, no judgment. Includes vegan and vegetarian variations; more complicated ones when you have more energy; shopping lists; and meal plans.

Here is one of my favorite recipes: Apple Slices Yes:

how to stop ordering take out how to stop ordering food when you're hungry and burnt out how to stop ordering when you have no money how to cook food with no energy or time how to survive on one everything bagel a day

[zillanovikov]

Being an author is great

I love when the zon algo (incorrectly) says that I reviewed my own books so they're no longer for sale

Especially when it's the Sad Bastard Cookbook which is a free cookbook ebook for people with depression or chronic pain or other struggles. Please don't take that away from my readers, daddy bezos. People need it.

Why would I review my own book? Other people have already done it. More than a hundred times!

Luckily you can still get the pdf on Itch. Because it doesn't nerf books based on a bad algo with zero human oversight.

If you want the print book, um, pls the patient. My author friends assure me that zon does this all the time and it should be sorted out soon. Even if I'm screaming every minute while I wait.

This message was written on Friday Jan 19, 2024. If you see this message later, it might be fixed? Fingers crossed?

[confessionsdiaz]

The sad bastards book is so fun where else will I find "Our society makes it financially costly to be physically or mentally unwell because it doesn’t consider human life to be intrinsically valuable." Under a section on pancakes

[mobilis-in-mobili]

How to make literally perfect Instant Ramen Noodles in an Electric Kettle cause uni dorms are sometimes really fucking shitty as to what they let you take inside

This. This may probably be my magnum opus. Trust me, this thing takes less than 10 minutes, costs under a dollar and is so, so fucking worth it. Practically almost no effort whatsoever, and it's better than the stuff you get off of the stove sometimes. No, you don't have to sit around and keep stirring at the pot in hopes that it'll taste better. You can literally half ass this through an episode of Seinfeld and it'll still work out better than anything you could imagine.

The thing about dorm room ramen is that it's always too runny, mostly overcooked, and at best, a half assed excuse at a shitty meal. The trick with this is to treat it like pasta. The actual pasta and sauces are dealt with separately, and then combined in a final stage with spices where they come together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. That, tragically, is so often ignored when it comes to this it kind of hurts.

Stuff you'll need

An electric kettle, preferably slightly wide - mouthed (sucks to be you if you're American)

The cheapest pack of instant ramen you can find, just not the cup stuff. I used the single unit pack of Top Ramen, but anything's fine, so long as the flavour pack's included.

A small packet of instant soup, the sort that you can drink just by chucking it into hot water. Whatever flavour floats your boat works, really. If unsure, go with Mixed Vegetable. Hot and Sour makes for a mean cup, though.

A pack of crisps (Or chips, as our "we threw tea off the harbour into cold water so that's how we drink it now" friends like to refer to them.) Salt and Vinegar or Cream and Onion will do nicely.

Kay, now what?

Chuck about a glass and a half of water into the kettle, and turn it on. Once the water's at a boil, the thermostat goes off, shutting it down. At that point, get the ramen into the kettle. Break it into two if the kettle's mouth is too small. It's ideal to put it in at this stage, cause that means you get 1.5 heatings as opposed to 2, giving you the perfect thickness needed, cause these do need to be ran through again.

Wait until the water stops bubbling fully (but still hot enough to burn your fingertips off) and you can notice the noodles start to dissociate. If you're unsure, you can always poke a fork in and see how it's acting up. If it's still stiff, give it some more time.

Decant the starchy water from within the kettle now through the spout (Seriously, such a big fucking perk of using a kettle. What other induction - based heating device has a built in colander.) Half a glass first into (big brain moment) a glass, the rest into a bowl. Throw away the water in the glass. You won't need that.

Empty out the flavour and soup packets into the bowl, and stir constantly with a fork for about a minute or so. Do not put them into the kettle beforehand, I cannot emphasise this enough. Make sure there are no clumps being formed at the bottom, cause they usually do, and it's way easier to break them apart with a fork than a spoon.

Pour the contents of the bowl into the kettle with the noodles already present, and this time, heat it all up until the thermostat goes off. And now, open up the lid to let out as much steam as it can. This reduces the amount of water present considerably, and results in a more thicker soup, which is always a challenge with electric kettles.

Wait until it all stops bubbling, and then first decant the soup into the bowl with the spout, and then the noodles after. This is the only correct way to pour them out, btw. Opinions stating otherwise are wrong. Salt and pepper can be added as per taste, but I didn't really find either necessary.

Crumble up some crisps up on top of the noodles. Thank me later.

Seriously, it needs to be talked about as to how fucking considerate ramen is. Dead easy to whip up, cleaning up is a joke, and after you're done downing the noodles, you get some seriously amazing soup to down it with. And in this case, it's a lot better.

And as they say, Osteoporosis.

[sabotabby]

Someone needs the Sad Bastard Cookbook.

collection of my boyfriend being angry about my meals

[dullahandyke]

Also I need to stsrt collecting sad cookbooks I need it. I have a ciuple but I want one that takes me by the hand and sloooowly introduces me to foods one ingredient at a time. Full page of recipe titled 'YOU CAN EAT A BELL PEPPER'

[lilyaceofdiamonds]

I made shepherds pie out of vegetables i bought at the farmers market last weekend and meat i had in my freezer (and a slightly expired pantry can of peas shh) and it took me all fucking day but it surprisingly turned out really well and now i have five tupperware containers of leftovers in my fridge/freezer.

Putting grated cheese on top of the potatoes was a god-tier idea, thank you recipe variations blurb

[sassysnowperson]

YES!! @primarybufferpanel you're amazing, that was exactly the one I was thinking of!

Help me out - there's some good info on tumblr about eating with low spoons/depression. Two I'm trying to hunt down again:

A cookbook, available for free on a platform like itch.io or something, that was all about making simple meals for low energy days. From what I remember the creator made it available as pay what you want and/or free because they wanted people to have it.

A page-sheet, illustrated with a bunch of staple foods (bread, eggs, cheese, peanut butter) and ideas for how to combine them.

If you've got any ideas, or a resource like it that you love, send 'em my way, would you?