Starving musician mode

I was as poor as anyone can be for a long, long time. From 1971, when I left home, to 1994, when I got my first full-time university teaching job, I was awfully poor. I lived in dread of my car having a problem, or having something that I didn't plan for suddenly come up.

I ate, exclusively, what my friends called "poor food." Lots of pasta, tuna, rice, chicken legs, apples, and vegetables in my Chinese stir-fry dishes (which I learned to make while living with a Taiwanese family as a grad student in Chicago. No bread, sweets, alcohol, frozen meals (other than the ones I made and stored). Now that I am on the other side of that, I still eat some of the same stuff I did back then. Now that my wife is out of town for a few weeks on some artist residency, I brought out one of my favorites:

5-6 ounces of rotini
5 ounce can of plain tuna
dry parsley flakes
coarse black pepper,
salt
olive oil
lemon juice

A meal like this is eaten for bulk. To create this sensation of mass, I heat the water, stir in the pasta, turn off the heat, and keep covered for a half hour. This bulks up the pasta, seriously. I drain and chill this for an hour. I had the olive oil and lemon juice so that every piece of rotini has been covered, lightly, of course, with these dressings. I then stir in the tuna, parsley flakes, pepper, and salt. After thoroughly mixing this up, I let everything chill for another 30-60 minutes.

Even after landing a dream job with decent money, I would still eat this for breakfast. Either this, or something that my father-in-law brought in from Portugal: sardines and rice. With such a high carb level, I have to be very careful about when and how much I eat. Sure is good, though. After returning home from two months in the hospital at the Mayo Clinic, I have to be very careful about what goes in my mouth these days. Sometimes soft, gooey stuff like this is hard to swallow. It is the initiation stage of swallowing that I get stuck on. It can be a somewhat frightening part of eating alone. Small bites and lots of water on hand.

Why don't restaurants serve dishes like this?

What are some of your starving musician concoctions?

In Greece a couple of these will do it

http://rwapplewannabe.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/souvlaki-at-lefteris.jpg?w=500


http://rwapplewannabe.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/when-in-athens-eat-souvlaki/

souvlaki,the starving Greek musician's stapple food...:lol:

In Greece a couple of these will do it

http://rwapplewannabe.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/souvlaki-at-lefteris.jpg?w=500


http://rwapplewannabe.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/when-in-athens-eat-souvlaki/

souvlaki,the starving Greek musician's stapple food...:lol:

In Australia we have a joke about a "badly packed kebab"....I dunno if the joke is just an Aussie thing or is more widely known, but anyone who knows the joke.....well lets just say there's something really wrong with that pic

I heat the water, stir in the pasta, turn off the heat, and keep covered for a half hour. This bulks up the pasta, seriously.

Well, poor or not - if I did this now, my wife would leave me - lol!

But seriously yes, it was a lot pasta for me and the Asian version - various noodle type stuff. I would also get a bag of frozen veggies and some ground chuck (the cheap stuff) and cook it while mixing in an onion, a tomato, salt, pepper, oil maybe some mustard if I had it. It made a 'heavy' meal that would last me at least two or three days.

*I was also very adept at getting myself invited to peoples places for dinner.

I was a vegetarian for years, and I still don't eat a lot of meat. My favourite is Indian; the trick is have the whole spices. I could eat lentils and rice every day, and that's a cheap meal.

In Australia we have a joke about a "badly packed kebab"....I dunno if the joke is just an Aussie thing or is more widely known, but anyone who knows the joke.....well lets just say there's something really wrong with that pic

http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/lucas/images/two_fried_eggs_500.jpg

If we had any Ham, we'd have Ham and Eggs - if we had any Eggs.

I remember when all the band members lived in a rustic old house in Oregon. We had a cast iron pot on the stove that was always on super-low. We put potatoes and onions in. As the supply diminished, we just sliced up more potatoes and onions. We probably didn't wash that pot for, well, hmm, let's see, I'm sure we must have washed it, or did we...

http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/lucas/images/two_fried_eggs_500.jpg

ahahhahah not just an aussie joke then

Larry, I'm sure you can find a restaurant that serves stuff like this. The good news is, you'd never have to worry about running into me at that place. Ackh. And I tried being a vegetarian once but I couldn't find what food group the meat went into.

Pesto pasta and cheese is pretty cheap here. I can get a kg of spaghetti for about 1$, the jar of pesto for 2$, and a week's worth of cheese for 8$. Remember theese are swiss prices (for perspective, a cleaning lady makes about 15-25$ per h, a big mac costs 8$, and a cup of coffee 4$)

When I was poor, I bought a loaf of bread, some lunch meat, and cheese, and that would feed me for a week.

The first band I went on the road with, PB&J was a life-sustaining staple. Easily made while riding in the truck or van. Better than ripoff fast food.

I thought no one ever ate them and they were for decoration, but I used to survive on the hot dogs you see sitting for days at the gas station.

I read the Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox ate orange peels and tomato paste when they got out of the army!

Oh gosh... I feel like I'm reading about my future.

Oh gosh... I feel like I'm reading about my future.

:lol: My thoughts exactly.

I was just talking to my wife yesterday about one of my part-time-community-college-teaching-era dishes:

2 cups of rice
1 can of black beans
1 jar of salsa
1 brick of cream cheese

Cook the rice in a big pot, then throw in the other ingredients and stir it up, and you got burritos for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 3-4 days.

Back in the late 80's-early 90's my roommate (also bandmate) and I cooked a lot of minute rice with spaghetti sauce over the top. We'd always insist on a meal as part of the bargain when gigging and would willingly eat leftovers from the evenings buffet (though most of it was cold and hard at that point).

My roommate also had a part-time job at a grocery store where the employees could take home damaged goods at no charge. We ate a lot of bent and dented cans of beans, corn, asparagus, etc. A hacksaw was the most-used utensil in our kitchen!

I've been married for 16 years, have two children and the dreaded "real job". after a 14 year hiatus from gigging, I started playing again in 2009 with my son who is a fine bass player. I've enjoyed telling him the stories of old, but honestly I don't miss the metal shavings in my canned veggies! :wink:

Kraft Dinner was cheap and it would go further when other cheap things were added to it. We usually had a garden, and when that source dried up we'd buy marked down veggies or frozen veggie bags and cheap weiners for adding to the KD. A loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, cheap soft drinks (remember PopShop?), condiment packages from fast food places or pubs where I played, bargain bin cookies, freshwater fish I caught, and stuff my Mum sent home with me. Often we bought a bushel of apples or simply cooked the wild ones we found.

Meals at my parents or friends places were always welcome, as were meals as part of the gig fee, and I would always take food in exchange for labour, even if it was beer and pizza, or maybe especially if it was beer and pizza.

I usually had a day job or night job where free food was often left in the staff lounges. I wasn't above offering my services on the side for food or other considerations.