The 10 Commandments Of Being Your Own Italian Grandmother

As you’ve probably read on this site many times before, I’m a big fan of home cooking. And I’ve been lucky enough in life to be surrounded by women who are incredibly good at it, seemingly without trying. Growing up, cooking was a central part of our lives, the axis around which our days tended to turn. My most vivid and cherished memories of my mother were of me sitting on the counter, helping her prepare the night’s dinner (or just watching her do it, sometimes going so far as to sing love songs to various ingredients I was excited to see in the dish). But the primary motivator for our from-scratch way of living when I was young was that processed or ordered-out food was simply way too expensive.

I’ve talked before on TFD about the financial precarity my family experienced growing up, and I can largely credit the day-to-day thrift with what and how we ate with us never quite “feeling” as poor as we were. Being creative with how we eat, how we use ingredients, and how we make budget-friendly food a way of life is enormously definitive of our overall financial health. (For most people, food and dining is the second biggest monthly spending category after rent.) And just as being savvy in this way can transform a strapped budget, being negligent or unthoughtful about how one spends on food (not learning to cook, ordering out frequently, defaulting to packaged foods, etc) can decimate an otherwise-flexible income.

So, naturally, one of the chapters in the TFD book centers around food, cooking, and the general mastery of being a budget-friendly domestic goddess. In our book, we tried to approach every element of life through a financial lens, rather than just talk about the hard facts of money. And while there are more “serious” chapters on things like budgeting and investment, there are also many chapters which explore various categories of the way we live (such as eating) and challenges us to do it in a more money-conscious way (without sacrificing a bit of joy). So in anticipation of our book’s release in just one week — a book which you should order here to claim a free gift!! — we’re sharing a little graphic from the food chapter to give you a little taste of what the full chapter will look like (it also features recipes designed to keep you cooking on a budget, ingredient-buying strategies, and breakdowns of kitchen tools and supplies you need to get started).

We hope that you will pick up a copy, and enjoy the book as much as we do!! 🙂