Let them eat cereal rule

FakeGreekGirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 895 points –
156

You are viewing a single comment

Don't do this, you'll be malnourished. Grains aren't a particularly good food group.

Potatoes don't require much prep, are generally cheap and filling, and will be much better nutrient wise. I'd still recommend rice and beans though. Canned beans work if you have no means to cook.

I seem to remember there being issues historically with poor people relying on potatoes as their food source

Yeah being on the genocide list of the English had more to do with that than the taters

(Note to the reader: they can be boiled, mashed, or simply added without ceremony to a pre-existing stew)

Potatoes are also really easy to grow. If you ever forget about your potatoes and they sprout or you leave them in the sun and they get green, you can put them in a pot and grow fresh potatoes.

Fava beans are also extremely easy to grow.

can they grow in an apartment?

Potatoes grow well in shade. Fava beans can grow in containers just fine, but may need a balcony. I would also get a short variety. A lot of things can grow in a window sill.

There's also guerilla gardening, where you plant on an abandoned plot. Potatoes are great for this because they'll basically grow on their own as long as they aren't overtaken by blackberries.

Beans are cheaper dry than canned though. If you have the patience you can start them in a slow cooker before you go to work.

Garlic, onion, and peppers go miles in making beans taste good while also being cheaper.

I'm wondering now though whether the cost balances out because dry beans require a lot more energy to cook? I know they need at least an hour on the stove, whereas canned beans you can just add to a chilli etc straight away

Most likely, dry ones would still turn out cheaper because they weigh much more after hydration. But this is indeed a matter to consider

This can also be mitigated a lot by cooking the beans in the morning mor a short time, packing the pan into a lot of blankets and then cooking it shortly in the evening.

Pressure cooker is the way for dry foods. Mine will do split peas lentils and mung bean stew in 12 mins.

If you are poor, a pressure cooker is out of reach if you don't already have one.

How poor are we talking? I just found a pressure cooker for $25 on Amazon.

Poor where we are talking about saving cents on buying canned beans vs dry beans because it makes a difference.

When you go in debt every month to just survive, every cent count.

I would definitely indebt myself of 25$, but I am in a situation where I don't need to, so it is easy to say. I don't know what that reality is.

Fair, but it's also the kind of thing that can be found for very cheap/free if you don't mind second hand

I am not aware of the second hand market where you are, but it's hard to find deals here and if you find one, you gotta be fast.

But that's a fair point. It depends on where you are I guess.

I think time to cook food has become a luxry in the eyes of the so-called "invisible hand". It'd be rad to find someone in the community with the time to cook huge pots of the stuff and pay them for the rice 'n beans.

Cereal is expensive, people arent buying it because its cheap, theyre buying it because the invisible hand demands their cooking time.

Oh yeah and don't go calling it a restraunt, cause thats fucking expensive too.

Rice often contains too much heavy mettals. Canned food contains too much BPA.

that's probably why most recipes ask to wash rice before boiling... im certain this works great... if your house's water-pipes were not made of lead hahaha.....haha.... sigh ._.

I think that's mostly to wash the excess starches off of the rice.

โ€œ The PBA method involves parboiling the rice in pre-boiled water for five minutes before draining and refreshing the water, then cooking it on a lower heat to absorb all the water.โ€

This was the only information provided about the method in the article. I do the same thing with quinoa to make it less bitter, guess Iโ€™ll start doing it with rice too.

My understanding is that this is related to whether it's American grown in fields previously used for cotton and other non-food crops due to pesticides.. foreign rice should be ok?

at least it's going to be foreign pesticides

Not a good thing either haha.. as an American, I don't think our farmers are purposely poisoning the rice, but may not understand the pesticides in the soil from decades ago can still fuck people up now.

Potatoes donโ€™t require much prep

You have to peel and cook them, though. That's a pretty big hurdle for people who would consider regularly eating cereal for dinner.

I do like instant mashed potatos, though, and they're fairly cheap.

I'm talking people on survival mode, as I mentioned at the end of my very short comment just eat canned beans from the tin with no facilities to cook. Also you don't need to peel potatoes, you can microwave them also, or bury in a fire if you don't have electricity and are using one for heat.

Cereal is a scam, it's expensive and nutritionally pointless.