Lentils are another good legume. Look up a daal recipe for any lentil you find, and basmati rice

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?

Core memory triggered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcWhHJXgxgc

Brown rice, barley, or other whole grains have much more protein than white rice

White rice is pretty much pre-diabetic junk food that's been stripped of most of its fibre and nutrients. I'd recommend always replacing with something like the above, or my favorite, steel-cut oats.

If you get dried beans, make sure you follow the directions to pre-soak them.

When cooking from dried, some baking soda in the heating process can greatly speed things up. The use of a potato masher here and there can also speed up the softening of the beans, and makes it easier to tell how far along they are.

Get some bulk garlic powder, paprika, cumin, crushed red pepper, black pepper, etc. Season and salt the pot to taste.

Don't forget MSG, which boosts up the savory / umami taste. It's cheap, you don't need a lot, and there is no such thing as an MSG allergy. (altho very occasionally people can have sensitivity)

Rice and beans together make a full protein, so eat them together.

Rice takes up arsenic when it grows, if you eat a lot it can add up. It's mostly in the bran which is in brown rice and is removed for white rice. Rinse many times before cooking and you can either boil in lots of excess water and drain (like you do with pasta) or parboil it. https://health.osu.edu/wellness/exercise-and-nutrition/how-to-reduce-arsenic-in-rice

https://sheffield.ac.uk/sustainable-food/news/new-way-cooking-rice-removes-arsenic-and-retains-mineral-nutrients-study-shows

Fortified short grain white rice... hit up Costco or Sam's, or your local Asian market, and you can score a 20 lb bag for like $15 which comes out to literally a few cents per meal. (well... pre-tariffs at least... nowadays idk)

From there, add beans, or eggs, or chicken broth, or literally almost anything else: shit off the clearance wrack, from the food pantry, w/e. If it's a meat or veggie, it'll go with rice. In the case of the pantry, if you're not actually sure what it is, it'll still probably go with rice. Got a bag of spicy cheetos you forgot to close and now it's all stale? Don't throw that shit away, smash it up and throw it in with your next batch of rice - now it's spicy! (I've done it - texture's a little weird, but otherwise came out better than expected). Rice is ridiculously versatile.

Disregard the hate for white rice being nutritionless junkfood - it is, but when money's that tight, you don't give a fuck. The fortified rice mitigates that a bit, and in my experience is usually cheaper. It's a starting point: add what you can to make it less shit; and even if it's a meal of just straight rice, that's still better than an empty stomach.

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.

leave it to lemmy users to disparage the primary staple of 3.5 billion people. "Pre-diabetic junk food" lmao sure ok

This will cost an extra few dollars but still totally worth it..add curry sauce! Aldi has butter chicken, korma, and tikka masala sauce for abt 5 bucks a jar and it is really good with rice and beans.

Wish I could but I can't stand neither beans nor rice. Gotta have meat and green veggies in my meal.

That means that I only like chili without beans. At Asian restaurants I always ask for no rice and substitute noodles. The only beans I can tolerate are refried. So at Mexican restaurants I ask for no rice and double beans.

While we're at it, I don't like potatoes, either. I'll eat them, but I won't go out my way to order them, unless the alternative side dish selection is no better.

Edit: FWIW I'll eat it all if I'm hungry, but none of these things would be my first choice.

I eat this almost daily and I'm not ashamed to say it.

We also do the sauté onions (which is just onions cooked slooooowly). They caramelise and become sweet, add some generic chicken seasoning to them (I use a salt/paprika mix from the general store), tinned baked beans in tomato sauce, rice, and that's all. Spice it up with some jar jalapeños and its a damn fine meal for nearly no prep or cost.

Any suggestions for relatively inexpensive breakfasts, or do people also eat beans/rice? Right now I've been eating overnight oats, but they aren't filling at all and taste terrible (and a lot of recipes have ingredients that oxidize weirdly overnight that I've tried eliminating). Tofu scramble takes a long time to prep, there's not enough freezer space between my roommates and I for meal prep, and my apartment has tons of shitty restrictions they've gone after me for, so can't use a second freezer or instant pot. I've been eating beans/vegetables + rice + salsa for dinner though and that works well and is always filling (maybe I should switch to brown rice from what I'm reading in this thread).

Rice, oil, little tomato paste or *sauce, pinch of sugar, whatever spices you have -> mexican rice

Large skillet of cooked rice, 1 scrambled egg, salt. Stir egg in to rice over heat and mix until cooked. Eggs and rice. Decent flavor, super filling, reheats well.

Rice, soaked black or soaked red beans, Filé powder, chilli powder, salt. cook like it's just rice. red/black beans and rice, heartly flavor, super filling.

1 single sausage patty cooked and chopped super fine, file powder, skillet of cooked rice, salt - > dirty rice.

1 serving of cheap uncooked spaghetti broken into 1/2 inch pieces, 3C uncooked rice, 2 tlbs of high heat oil, stir until pasta browns a bit, water barely to cover, stir in salt, dry italian herbs, butter if you have it, tight lid. stir occasionally, DIY Rice-A-Roni.

Throw a single uncooked chicken wing in a large pot of uncooked rice and water, cook normally. it will flavor the rice and you can still eat the wing or tear the meat off into the pot.

Yes, vegan food is wayy cheaper (and healthier too). It's one hell of a life hack

Also, if this sounds too boring to anyone - do not underestimate the power of keeping a bunch of fun hot sauces around. They don’t have to be too spicy, but something similarly vinegar based will have a decent shelf life and be pretty cheap per serving.

I’m not just eating pantry staples again, I’m enjoying a smoky chipotle bean stew on top of some fragrant mango-lime-habanero rice.

It's the return of depression meals, 1930s style

Also especially if you have a big family or friends go to the restaurant supply store. Last summer they had 50lbs bags of potatoes for $10. Lots of produce like that for cheap in bulk.

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.

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.