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.
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).
Here’s some ideas:
Bananas and English muffins with peanut butter are my breakfast go-to. Depending on where you are bananas may not be cheap, but I try to buy in-season fruit at my farmers market that can be made into smoothies if I don’t eat it before it gets a littler older, same with leafy greens. All goes into the smoothie. I also occasionally get 5% milk fat “Fage” yogurt to mix it up. Leftover yogurt can replace milk a lot of the time, and can be added to smoothies. If you can get your hands on baguettes, they can be cheap made into French toast if they get stale.
For your oats, do you not add a bit of salt, some sugar and or some condensed sweetened milk?
But also, toast and some spread of any kind is pretty efficient. Like peanut butter with the amounts you can get can be pretty cheap.
I’m trying 1/8 tsp salt, 1 tsp maple syrup, and 1/2 tsp vanilla, and it doesn’t really help. Although oat milk instead of soy milk improves the taste a little (especially after Costco got rid of the sweetened soy milk version). Using frozen bananas/blueberries turns it into brown gunk when it’s ready to eat. Toast + toppings is probably a good idea.
I do basically the same as you but probably more maple syrup 😂 Or I make it with chocolate milk…
Sometimes I add freeze dried berries. They don’t turn into brown gunk overnight.
What really helps it feel filling is 1 tablespoon of chia seeds.