Cooking on a Budget

From Tight Budgets to Flavor-Filled Kitchens: Our Southern Cooking Story

When we first arrived in Georgia, John was working as a residential construction superintendent, and I was working at a daycare center. Wages were low, and our budget was tight, tight, tight. There were plenty of times I’d head to the grocery store, start filling my cart, then find myself putting things back because I just didn’t have enough to cover it all.

I vividly remember balancing my checkbook and thinking, How did that little string of numbers add up to so much?

Cooking at home wasn’t just a preference back then—it was a necessity. Eating out felt like a luxury, even then... and let’s be real, it’s even more expensive now. That’s part of the heart behind The Hippie Gourmet: we want to help make cooking at home feel like the better, more joyful option. Because honestly, it often is.

We believe that going out to eat should be an experience. Something worth dressing up for (even just a little). Something you remember and say, That was amazing. Totally worth it.

What’s more disappointing than spending time and money on a restaurant meal and thinking, We could’ve done this better at home? Maybe worse, feeling kinda gross afterwards because it was full of who-knows-what. Many places cut corners on ingredients, adding extra fat, sugar, and salt just to make it taste passable. But your body? It knows the truth.

At home, you’re in charge. You know what’s going on, you can adjust the seasoning, and you can make it work for your body, your taste buds, and your budget. But for a lot of folks, eating out is still the default—because we haven’t made eating at home easy enough. That’s where we come in.

The Hippie Gourmet is here to help you fall in love with your own kitchen. To make cooking easy, satisfying, and something you look forward to. So that when you do eat out, it feels special—and when you eat at home, it still feels like a treat.

When we first moved to the South, we noticed something else: pork was everywhere. On the West Coast, we’d mostly eaten beef and chicken, with the occasional seafood dish. But Southern menus introduced us to a whole new world of flavor, and we were hungry to learn.

One of our earliest cooking influences was Emeril Lagasse (BAM!). We still love to watch him cook. He introduced us to bold, layered flavors that we’d never really explored before—and he changed the way we approached meals at home.

And speaking of flavor: New Orleans? It's one of our favorite cities on earth. Happily, it’s just a few hours from where we now live on the Alabama Gulf Coast. And let me tell you, when we go to New Orleans, we go to eat.

Another Southern staple that caught us off guard at first? Grits. We asked the exact same question as the character in My Cousin Vinny: “What is a grit?”

At the time, we truly didn’t know. But I do remember the first time someone made me homemade cheese grits—and I thought, Well… this is life-changing.

It turns out I’d been eating something similar all along, we just called it polenta back in California. The preparation is different, but the base ingredient is the same. Today, shrimp and grits are on just about every coastal Southern menu we love, and it's still a fun little adventure to try them in new ways.

Since moving to the Gulf Coast, we’ve also been spoiled with some of the best seafood around. That’s opened up a whole new pantry for us. Ahi tuna, in particular, is now a staple in our freezer. It’s quick, delicious, and so easy to turn into a healthy, satisfying meal with almost no prep.

We're excited to keep sharing the meals, memories, and flavor-packed tips that help us skip the mediocre takeout and keep things fresh, simple, and so dang good at home. Here's to eating well, living long, and loving every bite along the way.