Cooking Cockroach: A Guide to Modern Poverty

by Joey Truman

Joey Truman, today’s “poet of the appetites,” pays tribute to food, and all who have eaten it, in Whiskey Tit’s first foray into food writing, Cooking Cockroach. From dented cans and found foods to homemade spices, immerse yourself into methods, tips, and poor person’s techniques in making delicious food without delicious amounts of dollars. From taco burgers and hot pot to campfire chicken legs, Joey wastes not a dime nor a morsel while charming the masses with his one-of-a-kind kitchen skills.Because starving to death is no excuse for a lousy meal.

172 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2018

Reviews

[🐴 🍖]

(got some catching up to do; apologies to any followers for blowing up your TL.) at its best, legit like a cross b/w sam pink and mfk fisher, a combo that wouldn't have seemed possible but is p exhilarating. there's one chapter of weird lashing out at an ex which was enormously off tonally plus just plain unpleasant; will ascribe that to the author being hangry.

[Dave Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the holidays upon us, and people apparently still intent on hosting gatherings despite the latest onslaught of not-quite-as-bad-as-the-last-variant Covid cases making us all afraid to go to the store (don't go out and get the virus, let your friends bring the virus to you!), what better time for a review of a hilarious, low-difficulty "cookbook" full of exciting techniques for creating delicious treats from whatever you might have lying around your kitchen (or under your couch) (or in the collapsed tool shed at the edge of your property that you're afraid to go into). Seriously y'all, when I say low-difficulty, I mean low. Author Joey Truman's recipes aren't so much about savoring life as surviving it. They are outgrowths of his conscious decisions to reject capitalism in favor of principle, and embrace poverty in the name of his art. They are stews born on the floors of punk rock flophouses. Tacos hastily assembled between shifts washing dishes. Meals of necessity.

I'll admit, there have definitely been times in my life when I could have used this kind of cooking advice. I thought I was pretty thrifty at one point, back in my studio apartment days - a magical time many men go through in their 20s when things like open-face peanut butter sandwiches, store-brand spaghetti with canned red sauce, or (and I definitely mean "or" here, rather than "and" or "alongside") melted cheese on $2 tortilla chips can constitute a complete meal. But I've got nothing on Joey Truman. At the very least, his hot takes on the major spices would've been a gamechanger for some of those sad bachelor dinners. Likewise, where I might have searched coat pockets and couch cushions for enough change to avail myself of the Taco Bell 99 cent menu, he would take that 99 cents and turn it into tacos for a week (and probably beer too, somehow). Indeed, the price points on some of these recipes can feel like financial wizardry, especially coming from the notoriously inflated climes of NYC, but the real wizardry of this sweet little book comes in the margins - in the honest stories of good times and hardships, successes and failures, family and friendship, that Truman tells while his supersaver delights are simmering on low heat.

Using his endearing exploits in improvisational cooking as jumping off points, and amusingly specific prep steps like "if you have a beer, open it" and "your daughter should be sitting next to you at this point" as segues, Truman proceeds to recount personal anecdotes spanning his entire life. A chapter on the proper division and distribution of "Saltine Crackers with American Cheese Slices" is just the lead-in for recollections about childhood days spent tramping through the woods with his brothers. "Tex Mex Tacos" (and several others) serve as the entry point for some real talk about working in the lowest rungs of the service industry - uproarious tales from the kinds of kitchens Anthony Bourdain would've never poked his head into (and even Guy Fieri might think twice about). In later chapters, Truman uses food to tangentially touch on more serious fare - everything from first love to divorce, parenting his daughter to saying goodbye to his father, and his own brushes (plural) with death by starvation. Through it all his straightforward, "shit happens" affect serves as an oddly comforting reminder that however down and out you might be, there are almost always people out there doing more with less and getting along just fine, and in an age of celebrity chefs and food as Instagram art; of fast-and-cleanse diets and gut-rupturing eating contests live on ESPN2 - an age when we all seemingly have "a complicated relationship with food" - that's a wonderful thing to be reminded of. So crack open a cold one, throw everything in your freezer in a bigass pot, host an ill-advised (Zoom) Christmas gathering (for the love of God, use Zoom), and let this subversive "cookbook" take you back to the simple joy of just having survived another year; the joy of just not being hungry; the joy of finding ways to feed the things that you love.

[Maxwell Olin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sort of an Apricots on the Nile for the down-and-out set? This is an interesting exercise in experimental writing, wherein the author describes his own life and experiences by intermingling recipes for meals he's made along the way - both regulars and one-offs. The narrative and culinary portions are interlarded with Mr. Truman's personal musings on various topics, typically - and unsurprisingly - hunger and poverty. It's important to foot stomp right now, at the very start, that this unexpected alloy of autobiography, cookbook, and ruminant sententiae actually works.

In my opinion, Cooking Cockroach is successful because it uses its manifold forms to deftly manage texture. At the very start of the book, the focus seems to be mainly on generating reader interest, which is critical. And so the sheer novelty of his descriptions of how to put together a fire to roast a chicken leg on page six are titillating, making one happy to continue:

"Next, take a hatchet and cut chunks of rotting, dryish wood from a fallen tree a little deeper in the bushes, preferably walking over used toilet paper and empty beer cans to get there.
Next, bring the chunks of rotting, dryish wood to the fire pit and stack in a way that they make the fire very smoky. Observe people moving to get out of the smoke. Feel bad."

If the whole book had continued simply in this vein, it would have been amusing and kind of romp-ish, without being (I think) properly memorable for anything more than its amusement. But the author starts to glissando into meatier, weightier fields once he's established your attention, which lends his narrative a kind of transformational momentum. The first meditation on poverty - the one with the veteran under the bridge in the "Four-dollar, Three-day Hot Pot" recipe - is still mainly fun, but hints at more serious subject matter to follow. I remember, in particular, the opening paragraph to the chapter that starts on page 79:

"I'm not poor, I took a vow of poverty. Or maybe it should be; I'm not broke, I took a vow of poverty. The implications are different. Being broke means you don't have any money at the moment. Being poor means you never have any money. You're a blight on society. I'm not broke, I'm poor."

And then you begin to get into the reasons why someone would choose to live in this sort of state (the "vow" of poverty is voluntary) and be a self-proclaimed blight on society, which is valuable content. If this had been offered up out of the gate, it would have risked sounding like a hipster social experiment or simply being inappropriate to a narrative format - the kind of thing better handled as an essay than anything else. But the in-and-out the author plays with the various forms is sustaining, without ever feeling artificial.

It's the right length too, which is important. Any shorter and it would have felt like an experiment that someone tried without seeing it through to the end. Any longer and it would have collapsed under the weight of its own canned beans and shredded cheese.

The only criticism I have is that, basically, my expectations for what the book would be were wrong at the start. Given the subtitle "A Guide to Modern Poverty", I'd thought the theme would be something more like social commentary, centering on the conditions of life in the author's hometown of Laramie, Wyoming. This meant I was thrown for a brief loop when the action changed to a different city, decades later (if my memory serves, this occurred on page 58). But once I'd reoriented to view the work as properly an exercise in experimental memoir, the good times started rolling again.

So many tacos.

[Ashutosh Sahu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utterly fucking terrible. I cannot believe this poorly edited, poorly written, internally inconsistent piece of dreck was published... If you've ever known an addict, you know how they like to pretend to be noble and ask you not to feel bad for them... that's what this book was, in its entirety. Read like a high schooler was just trying to fill the page. It's not about cooking and its not about poverty. It's a series of half-baked anecdotes which often assume you know all the various lowlifes and losers in the author's life, without introduction.

To make matters worse, I bought this directly from the independent publisher and so can't get the refund I so richly deserve. Stay the fuck away!

[Aina Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joey Truman makes me lololol. Funny is often brilliance and he probably is. My mom thinks so anyway.