Thanks for stopping by. My name is Ivan. I am Filipino but I grew up in West Virginia and farm towns in Illinois. I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I enjoy trying to reproduce recipes at home that I have tasted elsewhere, especially country diner recipes. It also helps that I have worked in many restaurants through the years and sold food to restaurants and grocery stores and meeting great cooks along the way.

My very first venture in tapas-style cooking was before I even knew what tapas-cooking was. At a very young age I was intrigued with my sisters new Christmas gift. It was a Hasbro Easy Bake Oven. Remember, the toy oven with the 100-watt light bulb back in 1970’s. Since then I’ve always liked small dishes.

My cooking style is to produce Tasty Small Recipes for two people. Hence our site 2plus0 Dash Cooking, which was renamed Frugal Spoon in 2021.
The Youtube site and website were created so I could stop blowing up my family’s phones with pages of recipes. My texting to share recipes hit critical mass in April 2020 during the Stay-At-Home Covid-19 outbreak. It was a perfect time for me to try to become a newbie Youtuber. I found my dusty 9-year-old Sony DSC-WX9 16.2 MP Camera and started pressing Record.

Why change the name to Frugal Spoon? First, it was easier for people that I met to remember than 2plus0 Dash Cooking. People used a plus sign instead of spelling it. Also, it is part of my style of cooking. People confuse the definition of frugal with cheap. I am probably somewhere in between the two definitions. But I believe everyone is frugal in their everyday life. I like to squeeze every bit of value out of everything, especially food. If we pay $50 for an unbelievably, great 12-ounce steak dinner, then I am happy and I am grateful for the experience. If not adios. I will make your steak better and cheaper at home. It may not be comparable at first, but I will keep working on the recipe until I get it right.

I experiment with food every day. My philosophy is why should I make 5 gallons of chili when experimenting with chili, especially when I decide I don’t like it. So I use fewer ingredients when I make our meals, so I can alter or re-make the recipe on the fly without wasting too much money. No thawing a block of chili out of the freezer. If it tasted bad fresh, then does it taste better after it has been frozen?

My Plus1 of 15 years and I don’t share the same pallet. I modify recipes to her taste and make a separate version for myself. I am basically an at-home short-order cook that takes special requests. We like Tapas-Style diversity in our meals so I make Small Tasty Recipes.

Life Tip: If you are a foodie and love to experiment with recipes and your Plus 1 doesn’t then restrict your Plus 1 from the kitchen when you are cooking. My Plus 1 loves calamari. She orders calamari every time we eat out. She caught me preparing a 3-foot long squid in the kitchen. Well, we don’t have to worry about ordering calamari in the restaurant anymore. Shhhh. I slice the squid thin lengthwise so it looks like noodles and put it in my Cioppino Seafood Stew and she loves it. LOL. Just hide the squid remains behind the block of chili in the freezer.

My recipes are complete as of the time they are published. Like all home-cooks, I experiment and find a better technique, add a better ingredient, or burn my food beyond recognition. I will update my recipes on this site when I learning something that makes my recipes better, and I will share them with you, including mistakes that I made to avoid.

Drop me a line on my Contact page if you have any questions or if you can help me make a better recipe! Above all. Remember to share your recipes.

Adios