Plating Poverty: Live Well; Work Less.
An approach to living well without devoting your entire life to tedious, mindless work.
My wife, Savannah, and I started plating poverty after we visited a few food banks and she found enjoyment in creating delicious, healthy, beautifully plated dishes out of free ingredients. Then we would go to a grocery store and gasp after getting the total at checkout, slumping defeated towards our beat-up minivan.
At the time, Savannah was also pursuing a career in fancy kitchens as prep cook. When the reality of that career being a virtual dead-end came into focus, she transitioned to working in management –– which proved incredibly soulless, depressing, and harmful to our daily lives.
So we decided that she would quit her lucrative job and start this site, doing part-time jobs as needed to stay afloat. We go to local food banks once or twice a week, at which point Savannah starts using the near- or already-expired ingredients to create amazing meals and snacks.
One of Savannah’s gifts is plating; what might normally be a boring and mediocre breakfast sandwich is, in her hands, a luxurious, perfectly seasoned, beautifully presented creation.
Cooking is an act of love, and creative plating is a fantastic expression of that love. With Plating Poverty, we hope to encourage others to utilize free food resources near them and provide ideas for whimsical plating that can add quality to your life and a way to express your love to those around you.
Cheers!
A little bit more about us
Savannah and I met several years ago in Taiwan. I owned a dive bar there, and she liked my margarita. The rest is history.
In the years since, we’ve traveled the world and ended up (hopefully temporarily) in the US. But our love of Taiwanese food has only grown over these years, and that’s why this cuisine is a major focus of Plating Poverty.
Savannah also grew up in Mexico, which affords her a unique understanding of the broad range of the cuisine there. She has recently been making green and red posole, which are now my new favorite things to eat.
Currently, we live in Denver with our infinitely loving rescue dog, Chopin. We play tennis (with Chopin), go on long walks (with Chopin), and take advantage of several South Broadway happy hours (without Chopin, regrettably). We’re planning to move back to Taiwan within the next year, provided we can train our asshole dog to sit in a kennel for the 14-hour flight.
We hope to continue creating free & cheap recipes, along with videos on several social media platforms, to help monetize our passion for cooking and for generally living well in relative poverty. With any luck, we’ll have wild success and be forced to start our new venture: Plating Obscene Wealth.
