Hey, neighbor. How are you doing?
Doing good. How are you? Good, good.
Can I get some ice from you?
I have water.
You don't have ice? No.
Okay. All right.
Bye bye.
Hey, how are you?
Pretty good. How are you?
Good. Can I borrow some ice?
Oh, I appreciate it.
It's the best way to get ice without having to pay for it when you don't have a
refrigerator. Ask the neighbors.
Ron's a great neighbor.
He stops and asks to borrow flour, sugar or whatever.
A lot.
Bye bye.
He's very frugal.
I'm a foodie.
I love everything to do with food.
I think people can enjoy a foodie lifestyle on a cheap budget.
Every dollar we spend on anything other than food is a waste.
I got the apartment a few years ago.
I don't see the need to spend money on furniture.
I'm a floor guy.
I sit on the floor and it's very comfortable.
I mean, it's just tossing money into the trash receptacle.
That's what I think of furniture.
I worked for a cookware company that always puts on displays, presentations.
And what happens is a lot of manufacturers send me samples of their product.
So what I did was I found some two by fours and these are Styrofoam peanuts.
So I just take all the peanuts, throw them in there, and then I cover it up with bubble
wrap. And then this is a tablecloth, and it makes a perfect bet.
The average cost of furnish a one bedroom house is $2,000, and clothing expenses for a
single professional can reach $400 a year.
Ron spends a total of $20 decking out both his house and his closet.
One, two, three shirts and two pairs of shorts.
And that's it.
And by the way, I own no underwear and no socks.
I teach cooking classes.
You know, when I go to do any kind of demos, I take this all with me.
I set up shop and basically do presentations to help people understand that you don't have
to have a lot of money to eat well.
Taking showers outside, washing all my clothes at the same time.
Saves me so much money.
You get to get your shower, you get to get your clothing cleaned.
You didn't spend a dime.
Whew. It warms up after a while.
I never care what other people think.
They'll look at me and I'll get looks.
And you know what?
I want to take a shower, and I'm saving a whole lot of money.
And what's wrong with that?
Each time Ron showers and does laundry at the beach, he saves $1.89 on water, energy and
detergent bills.
Well. People in Southern California go to the beach a lot.
And the most important thing is they drink wine and they throw sometimes bottles out
that contain wine.
Then. Ha, ha.
All right.
When I find any, I'll pour it into the tube.
It's going right into the box.
If you want to go out and have a drink, you're probably going to be spending at least
$10 for a glass of Cabernet or merlot.
This way of finding wine costs you nothing.
I can't think of anything more exciting than getting something for free.
These are Lamb's quarters.
A weed that's completely edible.
Part of the spinach family.
Fresh cilantro costs about $1.99 a bunch.
Papalo is a weed growing all over Los Angeles, and it's known as the summer
cilantro. By picking wild herbs and vegetables growing in the cracks of the
street, I would say I save at least $40 a month.
Who locks trash.
Excellent. Oh, yeah.
Lots of lobster.
Look at this. This is a gold mine, man.
The shells are great. You know, you throw them into a pot of water and all the meat
will boil right out.
When I pick up a discarded shell, I'm seeing all kinds of meat.
I'm seeing things that weren't eaten within that lobster.
Wonderful. That are extremely valuable, especially when you're paying, what, 30, $35
a pound at least.
Look at this. I mean, who leaves the table like this?
Wow. Delicious.
Cooking instructor Ron Maestri runs a class called Gourmet Meals on a Fast Food budget.
For $40, students can learn how to make meals for next to nothing.
Six people are coming to the cooking class.
I have all of my students participate and serve them the dinner that we all prepare.
Hey, how are you?
Welcome. Grab a glass of wine.
Make yourself comfortable.
Hey. Welcome. Have a glass of wine.
All right. Well, thank you guys for being here today.
What we're going to be doing is we're going to create a really great dish.
That is my specialty, and I think you'll enjoy it.
Sounds good. Sounds great.
All right. Does anybody want any more wine?
Why not?
All right, let's do some wine here.
Wine in a box.
I could turn any cheap wine into a fine wine.
This is actually a hyper decanting process.
You take the wine, any inexpensive wine and pour it into the blender and give it about
30s and it will take any inexpensive wine and will make it taste expensive.
It's really nice.
That's excellent. That's really good.
So how cheap a wine can we actually go?
I spent nothing for this wine.
Got it out of the trash can.
I just poured out whatever they didn't drink.
It's not like they drank it and then spit it back out.
They didn't get to it.
The wine is. It's a little sketchy, but actually, I never would have thought it would
have been as good as it was.
Okay, everybody, now we're going to start first with this stock that I created.
And as you can see, I've got the lobster shells in here.
We're going to pull out these tails here.
And you know what?
In the meantime, why don't I get you guys busy?
Why don't you each open up one of those cans of tuna fish?
Now, for this, I would not recommend tuna fish in oil.
I would recommend tuna fish in water.
All right, everybody. Now take your tuna fish and dump it into the strainer.
I need you to pass it around.
What we're going to be doing is a version of Lobster Thermidor.
But what happens if you can't afford lobster?
We're going to replace the meat with tuna.
This is a real easy, simple way to do this.
And I'll bet you no one will know the difference.
Lobster costs at least 30, $35 a pound.
My lobster costs about $0.59 a can.
Okay. Take the tuna and put it into the lobster stock.
Boiling tuna with the lobster stock infuses the tuna with the lobster taste.
We have our mustard notice.
Their mustard package, mustard, ketchup, salt, pepper, sugar.
I got these free at any restaurant.
And then we will mix it all around.
Now, I don't feel it's necessary to go out and buy utensils for any reason.
Just take a wire hanger, stretch it, and then give it one of these to bring it
together. And now what I've just created is my own homemade whisk works just as well.
And it costs you nothing.
This is this is like really tough to do.
It does take practice.
It's kind of weird.
It beats using a spoon.
Okay, guys, now we've got the mixture here.
I'm going to ask you all to come around the front over here, so come on around.
Now what we're going to do is fill in each one of these tails with the tuna mixture.
Why don't you sprinkle some breadcrumbs?
Excellent. Okay, Next.
This is a total blast.
This makes me very, very happy.
Getting everybody involved made a big difference because everyone can see just how
simple it is to do.
I'm going to put these into the oven and we'll be ready to serve in 5 to 7 minutes.
All right.
I'm actually really interested in to see what it comes out tasting like because of the
change from lobster to tuna.
You know, it smells like.
It looks like it.
You know, we're going to find out if it tastes like it.
It smells interesting.
You have one, two, three, four, five, six people to feed.
This entire meal cost us less than $5 total.
What we've done is we've created lobster thermidor that cost less than a couple of
dollars each person.
Bon appetit, everyone.
Oh, wait. Bon appetit.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
Very good. Very good.
Wow.
I enjoyed this dinner actually, a lot.
It didn't have no strong fish taste to it.
It didn't taste like tuna at all.
All of the greens that you are eating grow wild through the sidewalk.
I was picking off the side of the street.
You really just have to know what you're looking for as far as the shells go.
I got the lobster tails from a dumpster.
I went to a seafood restaurant and picked out all the lobster tail.
We used the shells.
We used the meat that was inside and left over and I made this incredible broth.
And you're eating it.
Everything that I did was not unsanitary.
Everything was rinsed.
I put those shells into the stock so it would boil out bacteria.
Does it change the way it tastes?
No.
I mean, it's really good.
It's got a strong seafood taste, but it's not overpowering.
It's very.
Good. That's real good.
I actually enjoyed the meal a lot.
That's the irony part about it, that you find out that you basically were eating
everybody's leftovers, but it turned into a great meal.
They came here with the desire to learn something new.
Everyone was very, very receptive.
It really was a success as far as I'm concerned.
I am never going to stop being cheap because there is so much pleasure in the reward of
people's gratitude.
Cheers. Thank you.
Thank you.