It doesn’t take all that much to make a delicious rice- or beans-based meal. Though you do need to buy a few more ingredients. Bibimbap is a great rice dish. Emerald dal is spinach and lentils, but I’d put dried lentils in the same cost-effective category as beans (wouldn’t be surprised if they are a bean, assuming peas are also beans) and a batch could last you for a few days.
I actually just spent like two weeks eating almost nothing except for rice and beans.
I had little in the way of spicing it up, some greens I foraged, oyster mushrooms I had foraged and dried, some homemade vinegar with some garlic powder while it lasted, maybe a bit of beet powder. Salt obviously. Pepper, cayenne, or chilie powder while it lasted.
Back on meat and potatoes for now.
Lentils, and peas are old world, beans are new world plants. The lentils and peas will cook quickly, while beans take hours of boiling to cook. That said last time I tried to make rice and lentils it didn’t taste as good idk why.
Imo, lentils need carrots the way food in general needs salt, so that might have been the difference. I assume other sweetish (culinary) vegetables like squash or sweet potatoes would work as well, but since I tried them with carrots, I haven’t made them without to test (seriously, it’s that big a difference, plus carrots are the cheapest of the three).
It doesn’t need to be much, just one or two roughly chopped and thrown in with the raw lentils to cook together. I don’t generally want the mushy carrot mixed in with the lentils afterward, so I just eat it separately (which is why I chop it roughly- if you chop it finely, it’d probably basically melt into the finished dish).
It doesn’t take all that much to make a delicious rice- or beans-based meal. Though you do need to buy a few more ingredients. Bibimbap is a great rice dish. Emerald dal is spinach and lentils, but I’d put dried lentils in the same cost-effective category as beans (wouldn’t be surprised if they are a bean, assuming peas are also beans) and a batch could last you for a few days.
I actually just spent like two weeks eating almost nothing except for rice and beans.
I had little in the way of spicing it up, some greens I foraged, oyster mushrooms I had foraged and dried, some homemade vinegar with some garlic powder while it lasted, maybe a bit of beet powder. Salt obviously. Pepper, cayenne, or chilie powder while it lasted.
Back on meat and potatoes for now.
Lentils, and peas are old world, beans are new world plants. The lentils and peas will cook quickly, while beans take hours of boiling to cook. That said last time I tried to make rice and lentils it didn’t taste as good idk why.
Imo, lentils need carrots the way food in general needs salt, so that might have been the difference. I assume other sweetish (culinary) vegetables like squash or sweet potatoes would work as well, but since I tried them with carrots, I haven’t made them without to test (seriously, it’s that big a difference, plus carrots are the cheapest of the three).
It doesn’t need to be much, just one or two roughly chopped and thrown in with the raw lentils to cook together. I don’t generally want the mushy carrot mixed in with the lentils afterward, so I just eat it separately (which is why I chop it roughly- if you chop it finely, it’d probably basically melt into the finished dish).