We all gotta eat a good depression meal sometimes. Something you eat when you don’t have nearly enough energy or wherewithal to cook for long but you desperately need to eat. Depression meals are an essential part of living in the 21st century.
Famous Looney Sandwich
I named this sandwich myself when I was about 5 years old, no clue why I called it that.
Simple:
2 slices of bread
Crunchy peanut butter on one side, butter and sugar on the other side.
Bam.
(I suppose you could do honey instead of sugar to make it a lil healthier…)
Saucepot Noodles
What you’ll need:
like 2 cups of medium egg noodles
a cup of broccoli florets
a half cup of frozen peas
Do a makeshift sauce with about 1 tablespoon of butter, 2 bulbs-worth of minced garlic, about a tablespoon of chicken bouillon powder, a bit of crushed red pepper, and a bit of dried basil.
Cook the egg noodles in a saucepot for about 8 minutes, adding the broccoli and peas in at around 4 minutes so they soften. Once cooked, drain it all, then add the butter, garlic, bouillon powder, and spices. Stir it all up. fuckin delicious, trust.
Hobo Stew
Hobo stew is basically just an easy stew made with as much ingredients and nutrients as you can possibly find to nourish you. Traditionally its base is beef, onion, carrot, and potato, stewed together with whatever flavorings you can get your hands on as a hobo. It can be made with tomato paste and ground beef for a more chili-like feel, or it can just be chunks of beef or chicken stewed until tender and seasoned with whatever Silk Road spices you have on hand.
To make a good hobo stew, you need to have a decent understanding of what flavors go well together - for example: chili powder, paprika, onion, garlic, and tomato go very well together in a beef based stew. But if you were to add herbs and spices like basil, ginger or cinnamon, it wouldn’t taste so great, now would it, Janet? So if you’re new to cooking, hobo stew is a good way to experiment with flavors and textures and learn what it takes to make a decent, cheap, fulfilling, but delicious meal.
You can add really any other palatable ingredients that you have on hand. Beans, pasta, rice, corn, celery green beans, peas, etc. all make good hobo stew ingredients.
Love to all my hobos out there <3
Easy pickles
Once you finish a jar of pickles, leave all the pickle juice.
Slice a cucumber and place the slices into the same jar, let sit for a few days to incorporate. Waste not want not.
Canned Dolmas (stuffed grape leaves)
Canned dolmas (grape leaves stuffed with rice, lemon juice, and spices) is a fantastic food for many reasons. It makes a great snack or small meal, it is non-perishable and easily portable for a hike or a go-bag, it requires no preparation, and it’s delicious, nutritious, and filling, and it’s relatively cheap (approx. $3.99-$4.99 per can). Find them in the international food section in the grocery store, or visit a Middle Eastern market.
Tabouleh / Cucumber Salad
Tabouleh is a delicious, cold Middle Eastern dish made of couscous, parsley, and tomatoes. Simply cook the couscous and let cool. Finely chop the parsley and dice the tomatoes.
You can add more things like red onion, kalamata olives, cucumber, chickpeas, and feta cheese.
Season with a little bit of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.
Cucumber Salad
1 cucumber
1 roma tomato
1/2 red onion
Dice it all up, splash some olive oil, red wine vinegar, a lil salt and pepper.
Ez pz.
Antipasto
Slice some cheese, slice some salami, pepperoni, or summer sausage, maybe some prosciutto if you’re feeling bougie, get some olives or brined peppers, your go-to pickle, and some crackers or a hunk of bread. Easy snack/lunch that’s surprisingly satisfying.
See our Working Class Salad Recipe
Kale Salad
Any sort of salad with kale is great for a packed lunch. You can toss it with the dressing beforehand and it won’t get soggy by the time you’re ready to eat it. Try Caesar, Greek + lemon vinaigrette, heavy on the veggies + a creamy vinaigrette, or anything at all, doesn’t matter, nothing matters, this life is a joke, eat dirt or somethin.
Stir-Fried Ramen Noodles with Veggies
Cut up veggies like onion, carrot, broccoli, cabbage, or whatever else you have lying around that you need to use up.
Take your favorite ramen packet and boil the noodles, add the cut up veggies to the water so they soften. Drain it all.
In a non-stick skillet, add a drizzle of oil, add the noodles and veggies, add the seasoning packet that comes with the ramen, add a splash of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and chili oil or sambal oelek, and stir fry for about 5 minutes. Cheap, easy, filling.
Rice Paper Spring Rolls
Fill them with literally anything. Could be veggies like lettuce, bean sprouts, shredded carrots, mint, Thai basil, or maybe grilled chicken or pork, or maybe tofu or shrimp.
Dip in fish sauce, peanut sauce, sambal oelek, or dumplin sauce.
Instant Soup
Make a quick broth using chicken bouillon, salt and pepper, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, and any other seasoning you like + hot water. Add some veggies like shredded carrots, cabbage, onion, celery, mushrooms, or anything else you need to use up. Let sit for a minute so the veggies soften. MAD easy.
Black Coffee
No cream, no sugar. Just straight black coffee, grounds and all, scalding hot. Drink up.
Cheese Toast
Get some good bread, like some actual bread from the bakery, not just Wonderbread or Sara Lee. Toast the bread in a conventional oven or toaster oven with thick slices of cheddar on top until it gets melty. Eat it right then and there are form into a sandwich with sliced tomatoes and mustard and eat it later. If you have it later it might not be warm, but the previously melted cheese will have a great texture and will have oozed into the crevices of the bread. It’s beautiful and I do this all the time.
Steamed Artichokes with Garlic Butter
When artichokes are in season, there is honestly no better vegetable. They are very filling for the price, and pretty easy to make.
Cut about 1/2 inch off the top of whole artichokes, then use scissors to clip the spikey ends off of each descending leaf. Then simply steam them using a a large pot, a steamer basket and boiling water (it works fine if you just have a couple inches of water and no steamer basket) - Place them bottom up in the pot or on top of the steamer basket and steam for approximately 30 minutes. Make sure the pot is loosely covered.
In the meantime, mince 1-2 bulbs of garlic and put in a small bowl. Add about 2 tablespoons of salted butter and microwave for 10 seconds at a time until the butter is melted.
(If you don’t know already) Don’t eat the entire leaves, just dip them in the garlic butter then use your teeth to pull the tender meat off, then discard each leaf. Once you have made it to the heart, remove the hairy part using a spoon, then dice up the heart. Put the diced up heart in the remaining garlic butter and eat up! It’s the most delicious part.
Shame on you if you’ve never consumed artichokes this way.
YOU PUT THE LIME IN THE COCONUT, YOU DRINK EM BOTH UP
Actually Good Potato Salad
None of that disgusting mayonnaise shit. To make 2 servings:
1 large russet potato or 2 small ones, quartered, then sliced thin
3 stalks of celery, diced
4 green onions (single ones, not bunches)
A handful of cherry tomatoes, quartered
4 slices of thick cut bacon
About 6 ounces of sour cream
Flavorings: salt, pepper, garlic powder, a few splashes of hot sauce, Cajun or Creole seasoning, agave syrup, whatever else you like to taste
Fry the bacon and set aside, then fry the potatoes in the bacon grease. Cut the bacon into small pieces.
In a large bowl, combine all ingredients and stir together, season liberally. Put in the fridge to cool.
Shit Sandwich
for all i care.
Easy Breakfast Burritos
Make these in bulk and freeze, then reheat as needed.
Cheese, hashbrowns, breakfast sausage, chorizo, bacon, or ground beef, scrambled eggs, hot sauce, maybe even bell pepper and onions or beans if you’re feeling adventurous. Whatever you’re into mate.
Plain white rice with butter, salt, and pepper
Genuinely delicious if you’ve never tried it. Perfect for leftover takeout rice that is slightly stale.
NEWS & INFO!
Atlanta Police release doctored bodycam footage of activist and protester Tortuguita’s murder during the Cop City protest. Originally they had said there was no body cam footage, until all of a sudden there was body cam footage. Except, they only showed the “aftermath” and somehow the other parts are just… missing. Curious. This is all happening amidst protests against the construction of $90 million “Cop City” police urban training facility in Atlanta, specifically and distastefully on Welaunee native land.
Right-wing infighting is on the rise, from both politics and media pundits. They might implode before they have the opportunity to enshrine fascist politics, we should encourage this and foster unity amongst the left. As much as I am not a liberal or democrat, we must vote blue in the 2024 election. It will be a hellish future for the working class and marginalized people if a right-wing candidate wins.
500,000 workers in the UK go on a general strike - school teachers, civil servants, railway workers. On top of this, a French union has threatened to cut off power to billionaires and lawmakers amidst a nationwide strike over the raising of the retirement age. The working class of the world is beginning to push back against union-busting and unfair treatment.
Elon Musk is once again proving that he is not a “free speech absolutist” by banning left-wing journalists from Twitter for no apparent reason other than for their political beliefs. Elon Musk is a fascist.
Anybody know much about the chemical explosion thing that happened in East Palestine, Ohio??? Seems like it’s getting absolutely no coverage, and from what I’ve read about the types of chemicals in the air (vinyl chloride - used to make a variety of plastic products), it poses a ton of health risk to people in the area, maybe even beyond the area. Pretty sure fish and birds around there have been dying. Journalists are even getting arrested while reporting on it. What’s going on? Why is it not getting talked about?
What up with all the damn flying objects getting shot down over North America lately?
𝕊𝕀𝕃𝕂 ℝ𝕆𝔸𝔻 𝔾𝕆𝕌ℝ𝕄𝔼𝕋
Thank you to all who read and support the endeavors of Silk Road Gourmet and the collective of artists known as Variety Jones. We are a humble operation with the intention of spreading some good in a world of chaos.
If you would like to help further, consider becoming a paid subscriber and gain access to even more information.
Check out our Spotify playlists:
Thank you.