You may have money, clothes and drugs but nothing shows lack of refinement more than a shit palate. When you travel this world as a Hobo you will invariably be thrust upon hard times. Sometimes when you're wearing a barrel around your waist and a frying pan on your head there's nothing you can do about your physical appearance to appear classy. But when you eat, you can always prove how damn classy you are.
Every so often a culinary science emerges that is beyond the sum of its ingredients. That is to say something more than the actual recipes and dishes becomes important. From the sheiks of Kizmiaz to the classic Arab harems of ole Muscata the story of those who invented their cuisine often transcends the dishes themselves. As it was for those legends, so it is with the hobo's guide. Nowhere else in human history has the attitude of the connoisseur been more important that in hobo cuisine.
Andy Straub: Hobo Master of Sense and Sensibility

A hobo can eat a dog turd but if he eats it with paprika on a plate he is at least eating it correctly. To eat properly as a hobo you have to put yourself above the pedestrian mentality and look beyond the limit of what is on your plate. There are many dishes that you can prepare using stolen gourmet items but there are also many, many dishes that can feed families of Mexicans for less than a dollar a week. Sure, they involve plaster but if you eat them with paprika on a plate then your eating them with class as well as taking the chalky plaster taste out.

Weather your eating a dead piegon, a condom with hot sauce or raw salt hobo cuisine is more about the attitude than the food.

A bum, like a Spaniard at a bar mitzvah, will eat anything with a toothpick in it. Not so for a hobo. A hobo can prepare any substance rock, mineral, vegetable or otherwise into a meal, but it must be a meal. A hobo can take your mundane food and transform it. But do not, because he consumes those substances, lump him in with the consumers of those substances.

Resourcefulness can save your Hobo palate even when your unprepared.

So it is most important, above all else, is that when you eat as a hobo you say; how can I add class in the way of flavor and delectability to this ordinary dish and how can I do this through deceit or theft. Additionally how can I use this improved "common man's grub" to my greater benefit? Perhaps I can barter this food for drugs or use my skill in preparing this food to weaken the defenses of a young girl or her parents, or maybe I can hide a knife in this food and bring it on the train.

 

For more information on how to eat like a hobo refer to the Recipes of the Hobo Section