Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Five meals, one fridge clean-out

A no-spend week of pastina, shakshuka and pantry alchemy

Published May 12, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)

A version of this essay first appeared in The Bite, Salon's food newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus recipes, food-related pop culture recommendations and conversations about what we're eating, how and why.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to tweak everyday foods until they feel like slightly better versions of themselves. To that end, we just wrapped our “Basics Made Better” series over on “The Bite,” which focused on exactly that: taking dishes that have quietly become part of many of our de facto repertoires and shifting them, ever so slightly, into new territory. Augmenting a humble cinnamon coffee cake with plush ricotta and floral cardamom. Coaxing extra fudginess out of brownies with coffee, without sacrificing the requisite crinkle top. Turning stovetop pasta into a spicy, creamy Cajun version that tastes like if the average Rainforest Cafe were suddenly staffed entirely by people with experience on the line at French bistros.

And yes, sometimes that means recommending specialty ingredients genuinely worthy of a relative splurge: the good vanilla, candied citrus, Kewpie over the bottom-shelf mayonnaise.

But that’s exactly what those are: little luxuries.

Most meals, though, are less decadent than that. Which is why I was thrilled when a handful of “Bite” readers landed in my inbox requesting a short-run series focused on budget-friendly recipes and cooking tips.

Because unless you occupy a very specific income bracket — one I certainly don’t belong to — you’ve probably noticed things feeling tighter lately. Grocery prices remain stubbornly high. For millions of Americans, SNAP and WIC benefits have been throttled or remain under threat. Gas prices leave people feeling squeezed from another direction entirely. And somehow, impossibly, $20 at the supermarket feels like it buys less and less every month.

Still, I believe there are ways to find indulgence in the space between scarcity and abundance. More than that, I believe it’s a teachable skill — one built on generations of ingenuity, adaptation and care. We have different names for it depending on the culture and era: Italy’s cucina povera, Depression-era “waste not, want not” cooking, the deeply practical art of stretching ingredients without making dinner feel bleak. Many dishes now elevated to restaurant darling status — barbacoa, ratatouille, pasta e fagioli — were born from exactly those constraints.

And in the coming weeks, we’ll........

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