I’m sad that this is worth mentioning. But if you are dealing with hunger amid threats to SNAP benefits, rice and beans are very cheap per meal and can be bought in bulk. Here’s some tricks I’ve learned:
If you get dried beans, make sure you follow the directions to pre-soak them. Canned beans are easier to prepare, just dump in near the end of cooking to heat them up. Dried lentils don’t need to be pre-soaked, but I prefer to cook them separately and drain the water they boil in.
Brown rice, barley, or other whole grains have much more protein than white rice and I find them more filling. Whole grains take longer to cook than white grains.
Frying diced onions in the pot before adding the grains and water is an easy way to kick the flavor up a notch. Use a generous amount of cooking oil (light olive oil is healthiest) for cost effective calories and help making the meal more filling.
Big carrots or celery in bulk are pretty cheap too. I like to dice carrots by partially cutting length wise into quarters, but leave the small end intact to keep the carrot together to make it easier to dice down the side. Add them to the same pot as the grains after the grains start to soften. Beets are also great; skin and cube then boil separately until soft. Change up your veggie to get a mix of vitamins
Get some bulk garlic powder, hot sauce, paprika, cumin, crushed red pepper, black pepper, etc. Season and salt the pot to taste.
You’ll only need 1-2 pots and a cutting knife/board for veggies.
I recommend Harvard’s Nutrition Source for science-based nutrition information and they have some recipes too
Edit: discussing big changes in diet with a primary care doctor or registered dietician is generally a good idea.
Probiotic supplements may help with gas.
As a bonus this sort of meal has a very small environmental footprint.
I just want to note that you should make sure to verify that rice is actually cheap where you live, before going with it.
This post seems aimed quite specifically at american audiences (without actually stating such), but up here in the frozen wasteland of scandinavia rice is actually not that cheap at all, quite expensive even unless you go with literally the absolute cheapest brands available.If you live in europe i’d wager potatoes are the actual ideal cheap carb, especially during harvest time when the market is flooded with such an absurd amount of potatoes that the price tanks and might even literally reach 0. Another option to look at is as you say, barley or other whole grains.
Frozen peas are also a nice alternative to beans (though obviously less appealing as the main protein), which can simply be tossed into the food while warm or a bowl of them can be put in a microwave oven at full blast for a minute to get fully thawed.
Beans aren’t cheap where I live either (southern Germany).
My go to rice recipe: spanish rice
Add some refried beans and a protein or cheese, kids will clean their plate.
Beans are protien
Skip the olive oil. If you’re buying it on a beans and rice budget, its gonna be fake olive oil anyway. Just use corn/canola/veg oil.
Rice is way cheaper.
Not where I live.
it entirely depends where you live, here in sweden freshly harvested potatoes are almost literally free in the summer (i think they were sold for 1 SEK per kg last year) whereas the cheapest rice costs as much as normal pasta.
I read on the news recently that some eastern european country had such an absurd potato harvest just now that the potatoes were literally worthless, to the point that farmers were basically weeping at the prospect of finding someone to take the potatoes from them.
As a vegan, this has been my main meal because I’m pretty lazy (usually wrapped in a tortilla with guacamole, but I also eat it plain)
The gas issues are only a problem for a few days / weeks until your gut biome adjusts !
Yes, I think it’s a sign that your diet lacks fiber and your gut is now adjusting to the heightened fiber-intake.
It’s the bean water that comes in the cans.
If you don’t use it - you don’t have the gas.
No idea what they put in it.
That is part of it, but not the complete story. I talked about the same things in a comment elsewhere here, but in a nutshell it’s the combination of fiber and the oligosaccharides in beans. The latter is what leeches out into the bean juice, which is why rinsing beans can go a long way toward reducing gas.
But for the fiber there is no getting around the need to just eat it everyday to get the microbiome adjusted to it. Where people go wrong is eating a ton of high fiber foods all at once and getting miserable with a ton of gas. It’s better to add those foods more gradually to get used to them.
Lentils are another good legume. Look up a daal recipe for any lentil you find, and basmati rice
I’m anaphylactic to lentils and peanuts, and less allergic to other legumes too. If I ever became vegetarian or vegan I think I’d starve to death.
I’m not currently requiring budget protein (I’m still poor-ish but not as bad as some) but my bills are about to skyrocket soon (need to upsize apartment, looking at around ~$600 increase per month) so I might need to look at budget options soon.
Edit: TIL soy is a legume lol.
There are some good soy protein options too. Tofu can be cooked a bunch of different ways, and there’s tempeh which is similar but different. One of the lesser knowns is TVP or textured vegetable protein, which is soy, but comes in different forms like mince or chunks (like ground beef). Its pretty cheap (especially in bulk), shelf stable and has good protein.
Soy is also a legume.
Imagine living in a country with 900+ billionaires, with growing tendency, where regular people are discussing about the best ways not to starve.
Not that it’s much better where I live, but damn, what the hell is wrong with this world?
part of it is that the working class, poor to people who incorrectly think they’re middle class included, basically everyone who is not ownership class (where owning things is the primary means of making them money), utterly fail to organize, and sometimes actively work against their own interests (like the “lets make a third party!” morons, the “I am morally superior for not voting” morons, and or course the actively malicious “I let the billionaires tell me that them fucking me was actually brown people’s fault” morons.
I hate the use of working class that excludes front line workers who very much still work for a living. Why call it working class if it’s just a fancy name for lower class instead of fully including all workers?
The elite have always been vampires living on the blood of us peons… it feels new to us because we are living it now, but history shows its been this way a long time, and it was probably the same in prerecorded history too… we, as humans tend to suck…
leave it to lemmy users to disparage the primary staple of 3.5 billion people. “Pre-diabetic junk food” lmao sure ok
It truly is the way too many enthusiasts on any topic think.
Like they can’t fathom the idea that other people are focused on other things despite this being 100% the reason humans were able to create what we have.
If humans all focused on the exact same things, we’d have a very narrow scope and much less innovation.
It’s why its so hard to find good advice.
You go to a cooking subreddit, and they’d have you thinking that unless you knew every artisinal craftsman shop in your area (your local butcher, your local baker etc etc), you must not know food, and that you need 400 dollar pans to get utility out of your cookware when literally just a common stainless steel set would do you just fine, and even if you had to replace it 20 times, it still wouldnt be the cost of the more expensive one.
People live in their own bubbles and expect that everyone else not only could but should meet them where they are in their bubble, rather than realizing that guess what, food is just to eat for most people, not some passion they want to dedicate multiple hours a day to.
I understand your point because often in a lot of hobbies, when you are a newbie, people can be very condescending to you. But I still think that it’s abnormal the number of people that know nothing about cooking, since, contrary to most hobbies, it is essential for us to eat.
However I think that the real problem is that most people are so overworked and we have so much responsabilities, that it is almost a luxury to take the time to cook in our society. I am pretty sure there would be wayyy more people enjoying cooking if they could take their time doing it.
But I still think that it’s not normal the number of people that now nothing about cooking, since, contrary to most hobbies, it is essential for us to eat.
It is not essential to become a cooking enthusiast to eat.
You can be perfectly healthy eating nothing be pre prepared meals and frozen vegetables.
You can be perfectly healthy with a few family staples in a 3 set cookware set.
You can be perfectly ok drinking soylent your whole life.
People on these forums are often enthusiasts as described. They go overboard assuming everyone else must be like them, and this is often an excuse they use for their condescension as if there aren’t vastly different levels between eating because you need to for continued living and whatever the fuck they’re at.
However I think that the real problem is that most people are so overworked and we have so much responsabilities, that it is almost a luxury to take the time to cook in our society.
Nah. I think plenty of people simply do not enjoy cooking and thats perfectly fine. If I had less obligations and more time, I wouldn’t waste it learning to cook to the level they have. I have very little interest in cooking. Maybe occasionally Ill try a fancier recipe but I’m never going to season a pan, learn how to make Croquembouche or add beef wellington as a staple in the things that I eat.
If I had more time, Id be putting that into my hobbies. Id be making more things, going more places, not wasting my time slaving over a kitchen counter.
I fully respect that this is a completely subjective perspective. Obviously for some, they might read “waste” and feel incensed and that language, but that language is simply accurate for me. I don’t expect it to be accurate for everyone.
I have lazily been buying the same bag of high fiber mixed vegetables for monthes because it has the mixture of things I need dietarily and I mix that with frozen meals that have reasonable mixes, and through in some simple cooked meals as well (I mean simple too, like scrambled eggs on toast or vegetable soup or meat with gravy on rice).
To me the time would absolutely be a luxury, but cooking is not what I’d like to spend it on. To me, given we still have limited life spans, it would still be a waste of that span.
Taco seasoning goes great in beans too.
Taco seasoning and chili seasoning are very close to the same thing.
Cumin is the defining flavor of Chili.
I just want to add:
If you are in NYC - check out the Chinese and Mexican grocery stores!!! Usually a ton of foot traffic keeps the vegetables fresh. I do most of my vegetable shopping at one particular Chinese store which I find to be the best - [except for the onions (why are the onions so bad - do chinese people not eat yellow onions?)] - and it’s fun to try new vegetables!
Also, strange, and I’m not sure what to make of it - fish in the Chinese grocery stores costs 1/2 of what it at white-people ones.
Not American myself, but my father lived in NYC and his friend (also from our country) said that in NYC if you want fresh food, the Mexicans got your back. I’m not even sure if he meant grocery stores or restaurants, but it seems to corroborate your story.
It’s the return of depression meals, 1930s style
Unlike my dumbass family back then I’m not afraid of spicing my rice and beans like people with melanin
I can’t imagine spices were exactly cheap. When you’re at the point of making water pie I’m gunna guess that spices are an easy enough thing to let go of.
I’m not talking spices from around the globe or some shit. I’m talking jalapenos, serranos, chipotles…
Ya know, cheap staple crops from my region of the world that grow like weeds and add flavor for cheap.
Ok, with as little intended rudeness as possible: Spicing is a weird word, and usualy for clarity anything to do with heat would be “spicing” or “making spicy”.
And yea those are definitely not too expensive at all. I really enjoy using spiciness as a way to add a a lot of depth basically for free. Everything is better with some red pepper flakes.
Frankly I disagree, chili powder and paprika are spices commonly sold as spices and are just dried then crushed chilies. It’s just a preservation method and in Asia chilies are preserved in chili oils so not technically a spice but is used for flavor like a spice.
Really the only problem here is that the language we are using is so fucking bad at describing flavor and cooking.
I mean, a little yes but if you’re specifically talking hot peppers, and you said that you were, then the bulk of what they bring to the table is heat. Flavour for sure a little, but I wouldn’t consider them spices.
I can agree that the language is a little vague. Like at what point does ginger become a spice and not a normal ingredient? Only when it’s dried and powdered?
I’m sorry but if you think chilies only add a little flavor there’s no point continuing this. Have a good one.
Also a very underrated flavoring that’s unjustly stigmatized because of racism is MSG. You can get really big bags of them for super cheap, and it’s an easy way to make any meal taste savory.
Dried lentils don’t need to be pre-soaked, but I prefer to cook them separately and drain the water they boil in.
Pre-soaking lentils (and pouring the water away) makes them easier to digest, in particular it makes them bloat you less.
https://farmhouseguide.com/benefits-of-soaking-lentils/
An exception are dehulled lentils, like red lentils. They don’t need pre-soaking and are quicker to cook, too. I often throw red lentils into the cooking water with my noodles or rice, just to add some protein into the meal.
Some notes about gas: It’s primarily caused by a combination of fiber, and in the case of beans, by the oligosaccharides. The fiber can be handled by gradually increasing intake of high fiber foods. The more you get used to eating them, the less bloated you should feel, and it generally goes down to a normal level of gas that most people experience.
For the oligosaccharides, soaking and rinsing the dry beans does help remove a lot of it. Rinsing canned beans also helps. Taking Beano (or an equivalent) can help too. There are also claims of various spices being able to help as well.
It’s also important to note that different types of legumes can cause more bloating, or less. Experiment with different kinds to find what works for you.
If you’re willing/able to make the effort, sprouting and even fermenting will significantly help with bloating as well.
As a last resort or easy reprieve, opting for low fiber plant foods like white rice and tofu won’t hurt in the short term, though whole foods should generally be preferred because natural sources of fiber of hugely beneficial.
On an unrelated note, I have always hated soaking beans, which is why the Instant Pot has been one of the single greatest cooking inventions I have ever used. Supposedly the pressure cooking also breaks down the oligosaccharides and reduces bloating. I just love it because I can toss in a bunch of beans and oat groats, and have enough of that stuff cooked to easily and quickly prepare meals every day for a week with each batch.
If you want to stretch out your ground beef use 1/4 lb of medium instead of lean and use TVP to fill in the rest. The TVP will absorb the fat and flavour, is quite a bit cheaper than ground beef and is shelf stable. TVP also has more protein than ground beef.
What is TVP?
Textured Vegetable Protein. It’s basically soy that’s been processed in a way that results in a granular product that’s mostly protein, and has a somewhat similar texture to ground meats.
Personally I prefer Soy Curls because those are made from whole beans and still have their fiber, but tvp can be a great choice for people with especially high protein needs like strength trainers.
