Lifestyle #3: Rice & Beans

Rice and beans is an ancient trick we poor rich kids learned from poor poor people. This is a time-tested recipe to feed yourself for a week for $3-$5.

Ingredients:

1/2 that old, half-onion in your butter drawer.

1 can goya black beans.

2 whole carrots (1 for eating while you cook because you skipped lunch, and are feeling faint).

1 cup dry rice.

1 of your roommate’s bay leaves.

2 tblespoons of your roommate’s olive oil.

1 spoonful of leftover tomato paste (that you filched from your parents’ cabinet).

Heat oil in skillet. Dice up old onion, put half into the skillet and saute until clear. Add dry rice and bay leaves. Toast on high, then add two cups water and cover. Saute remaining half onion, add carrots, diced, and cook until tender. Open can of black beans, wash off, and add to the mix with tomato paste and a dash of roommate’s salt. When the rice is done, combine the rice with the beans into one pan and cook a little longer till some, but not all, of the rice starts to get crispy. Eat this for a week. Enjoy as you stay at home.

If you’re feeling flush, buy 10 tortillas ($2). For burrito, take one piece of roommate’s cheese at a time so he/she doesn’t notice and place concoction inside toaster oven. For stir-fry, steal one of roommate’s hot dogs or slice of tofu and reheat with roommate’s olive oil in skillet. If bread is lying around, make a sandwich out of it and flavor with roommate’s hot sauce. If you don’t have a roommate to steal ingredients from, you are obviously not a poor rich kid, because how in the world can you afford to live by yourself.

Letter From an Employed Friend #1

Dear Unemployed Friend,

I lurv you. You make my days as a gainfully employed young lady so much more FUN. I email you, you respond within minutes. You are always on gchat. You can always meet me for a cigarette at 2:43 pm on a Wednesday. You will happily get shitfaced with me on a Monday night for no good reason (as long as I’m paying). You make me feel good about my fashion choices:

You always know which bar has free food from 7-9 pm. You stand in line for the free movie screenings and give me your +1. Whenever I mention you, my parents suddenly become very proud of me. You rock my world, unemployed friend. I will happily not abort your baby should we ever choose to have class warfare and “merge and acquire” the employed and unemployed worlds.

Love,
Your friend, the slightly less downwardly mobile daughter of the revolution