Slevin's journal

[mountainFrugal]

I think it would end up being hummus flavored garlic paste at about 5 chunky garlic cloves per 1x of this recipe

We shall call it gar-mmus when it is over 50% garlic! haha. Good point on the hand dicing though and we will add garlic to taste over your base recipe only if necessary.

[Slevin]

Core food node: Rice and Beans

The backbone and one of the core nodes of my diet is the best meal to ever be invented, rice and beans (in all of its delectable goodness).

Rice and beans, you say, how could someone like frugal me ever afford to eat something as gaudy as that?? Well do not worry, as I have journeyed to the land of the bean gods, and offered my soul, and was rewarded with simple and sacred bean recipes as to bring rice and beans to the masses!

Meta: Its rice and beans, literally the best food on the planet. Buy 50lb bags of each, make this recipe once a week, eat it, and put all your hard earned money in your savings account instead of your food budget.

Chile seasoned black beans (think Chipotle but 3x better):

Hands on prep time: 15-30 mins, depending on how quickly your stove top or instant pot heats up.

Pressure cooker time: cook 30 - 50 mins at high pressure (this may be different depending on altitude, 30 might be too long at sea level, 50 is what I found works best here on the front range at ~1 mile high), then let it natural release until it has lost its pressure (30 mins minimum, more is better). I often just forget about it for an hour or two after the high pressure cook time ends.

Ingredients list is per 1lb of dried beans (2.5 cups). Output per recipe will be 6 cups of beans plus sauce (very important + yum).

Ingredients:
1lb dried black beans (2.5 cups) ($1.50)
1 yellow onion ($0.50)
4 cloves garlic ( $ 0.15)
1 red / yellow bell pepper ($ 0.75)
1 Tbsp Better than Bullion (veggie)/ actual veggie bullion: ($0.28)
1-2 Tbsp oil (whatever is needed when sauteing):
4 Cups water ($0.00)

1-2tsp coriander (< $0.05 )
1Tbsp dark chile powder (< $0.05)
Salt (add only after cooking) (negligible)

Total Cost: $3.33 Per 6 cups beans (good for 6-12(?) meals depending on how much you eat, a can of beans is about 1.5 cups of beans for reference), cut out the bell pepper or sub a couple of stalks of celery to cut price to $2.58 - $2.70. If bought in bulk, price of beans can be dropped to <$1, bringing the total to $2.08-$2.20:

Instructions:
Heat pressure cooker / instant pot medium-high/ high with oil
Dice onion
Toss onion in pressure cooker, keep stirring while these cook to translucent
While onions are cooking, peel and dice garlic and chop up bell pepper into small pieces.
When the onion starts looking translucent, throw in garlic. Stir occasionally
After the garlic has been in for a couple minutes, add the bell pepper. Stir occasionally
After the bell pepper has been in for a couple of minutes, add 4 cups of water, spices, 1 Tbsp bouillon. Stir thoroughly to combine.
Add in beans.
Pressure cook for 50 mins, then let pressure release naturally (or for at least 30 mins).

TL;DR instructions: Just saute the 3 veggies to build up an aromatic base, then add the water and spices and beans. Pressure cook at high for 50 mins, then let it naturally release. If cooking without a pressure cooker, same prep instructions, but soak the beans overnight before cooking, and just simmer everything for 2-12 hours while stirring occasionally and adding more liquid as needed.

Rice instructions: Put it in a rice cooker, figure out best rice to water ratio for this specific rice, click the button, let magnets do the black magic of proper cooking for you. Seriously, if you live in a house, and eat a lot of rice, have a rice cooker. They’re like $20-$50 on craigslist and pay for themselves very quickly.

Rice instructions without rice cooker: figure out correct water to rice ratio (1.5 is a good start). Boil water, throw in rice, simmer till all the water is gone. For some reason this is just infinitely worse than a rice cooker and 100x the effort every time (also if you change elevations all of your calculations are off and you need to figure it all out again, much less forgiving than the rice cooker).

Meal cost + macros (if you are into that sort of thing):
Assuming rice is $1/lb (in bulk it is often cheaper than this), and 1lb dry rice (2.5 cups) is 7.5 cups cooked, then we want 2 cups of rice per serving (400ish cal), rice is about $0.13 per cup, so about $0.26 per meal. Assume we are combining with 1 cup beans for the meal, and we get the following:

Meal base cost:
Rice: $0.26
Black beans: $0.35 - $0.55

Base cost: $0.51 - $0.81

Meal base macros:
Cals: 627
Protein: 24 grams
Fat: 1 gram
Carbs: 133 grams
Fiber: 17+ grams (not counting veggies in here)

But I usually want some other toppings on this meal, let’s say some fat, which we can grab from:
(1-2 tbsp olive oil): $0.12 - $0.24
Half an avocado: $0.38 - $0.50

Any of those will bump total cost to: $0.75 - $1.31
And the macros to:
Cals: ~ 788 - 867 cals
Protein: 24 - 28 grams
Fat : 15 - 28 grams
Carbs: 133 - 141 grams
Fiber: 17 - 25 grams

Eating this meal 2x per day is $1.02 - $1.50 - $ 2.62 per day,
Which scales to $30 - $45 - $78 per month
Which scales to $360 - $540 - $936 per year.

On the cheap side here, having a meal which is anchored to around $360 dollars / year is why this is one of the core pieces of my food system, as well as the fact that rice and beans is infinitely adaptable to different palate types, depending on spicing + additions (always veg) + sauces + ability to add either component (rice or beans) to whatever other meals you are making / need an ingredient from.

Possible downsides:
Some people don’t like carbs
Some people don’t like fiber
Some people don’t like eating the same thing incredibly often

[Autotroph]

@Slevin
Thanks for that information, I plan to incorporate R&B more into my diet
I don't understand people who do not like carbs (unless you have carb intolerance). The same goes for people who are averse to 'fats'.

[jacob]

Pressure cooker time: cook 50 mins at high pressure, then let it natural release until it has lost its pressure (30 mins minimum, more is better).

50 mins under high pressure sounds like a very long time. Is that some kind of altitude corretion or are you going for a mushy consistency? Mine takes about 20 mins to reach the "chewy"-state.

[Slevin]

50 mins under high pressure sounds like a very long time. Is that some kind of altitude corretion or are you going for a mushy consistency? Mine takes about 20 mins to reach the "chewy"-state.

I think it is weirdly a function of both altitude and your ratio of water to beans (more water -> shorter cooking time from my experiences, with 1:8 ratio cooking time is like ~20% shorter) but you’re definitely right, this is adjusted for the front range (25% longer again), I’ll adjust the recipe accordingly.

[Slevin]

@Slevin
Thanks for that information, I plan to incorporate R&B more into my diet
I don't understand people who do not like carbs (unless you have carb intolerance). The same goes for people who are averse to 'fats'.

Everyone has a different somewhat complex digestive system, so I think everyone will tolerate things somewhat better or worse.

Add to that the fact that I think people are influenced by whatever dietary science* trend is sold to them by social media or television or social circles near them, and so they will gain an idea of what they think is the best diet, then tends towards that (especially if it works for them) until something different comes along and is worth trying. And I think many of those systems are viable.

For example I tend towards a non-animal eating diet for my own moral and ecological ideology, and I’m lazy and hate going to the store, and I like big buffers in my amount of food in my house (in case there is a big storm / fire that knocks out infra for a week like in late December). So I built my food system to be based on mostly shelf stable goods with longer lasting veggies, and add shorter shelf life veggies to the top in smaller amounts. It is just one diet, but one that works well for my eating system, works well for buying large amounts of goods when they are on sale and keeping them thus keeping my cost a little bit lower than the rolling average, I end up being able to buy almost everything in bulk stores / rescued foods stores, so waste is minimized, and most of these shops are within walking or biking distance of my house, so I can consider it exercise to go and get foods when we are out and enjoy the nice weather (most of the year anyways).
* often highly mapmaker biased, while trying to argue that it is unbiased or the “true best diet”

[Slevin]

Just threw up a huge post about rice and beans, so thought I would add at least one picture in here.

Already ate some with dinner (soft tacos, made with the beans, homemade sourdough tortillas, cashew sour cream, and pickled red onions), but here’s the 10ish cups of chipotle beans I made for the week for the DGf and I.

[mountainFrugal]

Yum! We also have a growing collection of mason jars that we use to store everything (dry, cold, cooked, frozen) and for glasses to drink from. They are very versatile!

[Slevin]

If there were compounded worst case scenarios all occurring at the same time... back to meditating all day and eating beans and rice and drinking tea.

Switching threads because it isn’t relevant to the actual thread, but this is literally what I do with my off time given the choice to do anything (well I don’t meditate all day), but so much that I even have a tea room to do it all in (instead of a formal dining room). From Saturday morning:

[Slevin]

Yum! We also have a growing collection of mason jars that we use to store everything (dry, cold, cooked, frozen) and for glasses to drink from. They are very versatile!

Yeah, that’s why I have them too! My Dgf cracked up the first time she saw my giant pull out drawer full of the 4 cup wide mouth ball jars.

[mountainFrugal]

That is a peaceful setup you have going there. After thinking more about the tea ceremony question (sub-thread) my partner and I have been thinking that could be a good use of the space in front of our fireplace. We do not own a couch, but want to be able to sit close to the fire. Currently we are using camping chairs. lol. A low live edge table like this could be a nice aesthetic solution. I will have to keep my eyes out in the forest for a piece like this. Could roughly approximate the shape with a chain saw (although I have not done any milling with a chainsaw yet) and then do the detailed finishing work with a hand plane and sanding. Thanks for sharing!

(also assume you have your cards on the table for your @blackjack games)

[Slevin]

Hahaha, the cards were there for the morning gin rummy game. We’re big cards game fans here.

Yeah I think your tea space would be a great, aesthetic, multipurpose solution. Soft woods are fine if you don’t have any pets, but my cats (even though they aren’t allowed up there) have done a number to all my pine furniture, so I had to move to hardwoods. I didn’t make this live edge table myself, but I have a plan to produce some small number of them once I retire from the FT gig and have a garage / workshop to actually do projects in (largest failure of my current space).

One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to check out all the tea houses in an area, and I fell in love with a table I saw in Fairfax (CA) while visiting my partners parents. So I set up an alert on some keywords on Craigslist, etc and eventually found one with a negative cost of ownership (can be sold for more than I bought it for) and got this one. WL5 obtaining since I don’t have the space to spend months making a huge mess to create tables right now.

We are currently in the process of making more meditation cushions for the table for guests. I’ll post the process in here, as it was not too difficult for me as a beginner to sewing and upholstery(?).

Inspiration table (random humans unknown):


I also think the overall aesthetic of this whole tea house was gorgeous (UL quadrant) and achievable on a shoestring budget, which is something I’m always on the lookout for.

[mountainFrugal]

Please do share your cushion process! Your table is beautiful and I assume will depreciate hardly at all. Another potential solution would be to use scrap wood based around a really nice (thicker) piece of hardwood veneer from a specialty wood shop. Not as nice as a full slab, but you could make it look good.

[mathiverse]

I also think that table is gorgeous. Was the table originally built for users to sit on the floor or did you cut the legs once you got it? Can you share your Craigslist alert terms? I would like to eventually get a table like that.

[Slevin]

@mountainfrugal agreed. I have a couple pieces of old thrifted mid century modern furniture that used that approach, and it still holds up nicely today, even 50-70 years later.

@mathiverse I thought it would be hard to find floor tables in the US but it turns out almost every coffee table produced is 16-20 inches high, which is a comfy range for most people (I’m 6’2”ish and my partner is 5’2”, so we usually have to find fairly adaptable situations for table heights, seat heights, etc). Simple terms are just slab (be prepared for too much used granite), bookmatched, and live edge, then combine those with coffee table (since coffee tables can be from 16-40 inches wide and I’ve seen over 110 inches long, it’s really more of a height qualifier of that 16-20 inches) you will end up seeing tons of unprocessed wood as well (which is where the real return is if you have the skillset and eye to fully diy), then past that it’s just waiting till someone is moving and trying to move through expensive goods quickly. Obviously this is more easily replicable in more densely populated and expensive areas, here I see a few really nice ones pop up per month (and a few overpriced tables are on there eternally), but if I was somewhere without 3 million people within an hourish drive of me it would probably be much more difficult.

[zbigi]

I usually get rid of the water that I was soaking beans in. You seem to retain it in your dish. Don't you have any digestive problems (e.g. powerful winds) from it?

[Slevin]

@zbigi, yes, definitely at the beginning but I would describe it akin to something like exercising a muscle group for the first time. The first few times you eat there might be mild discomfort/ bloating, but after N instances of the same intensity (subjectively for me anyways) the wind is no longer blowing through your sails, so to say. Weirdly enough (at least for me), this is a per - bean function, so if I switch to eating a new bean I will pass more wind, but there is also a cumulative gain, so that the experience is less intense than the first adaptation or two.

I’m not sure (UR and LR) what is happening exactly in the body system for me, but I suspect the initial trials are my body adapting to large amounts of fiber and the common bean compounds, and then the bean switching is something like small adaptation to new compounds or variations on ratios of compounds. I’m also usually considered a high fiber intake person, some days hitting 80+ grams, which can have bad side effects for some people. I think there are bigger issues with a big delta fiber per delta time than the overall amount though.

[zbigi]

That sounds promising. It would be great to not have to do the overnight soak before cooking.

I've read somewhere that the gut bacteria mix of people who eat a lot of beans is very different than of non-bean eaters. That would explain the adaptation period - the "bean friendly" bacteria need time to increase their numbers.

[Slevin]

Not a post about much in particular, but with a much less trivial chance of SHTF than a couple weeks ago, stocked up on food this weekend to be fine going 2-3 months without shopping (if we need to). It wouldn't be "fun" per se, but 50lbs each of rice + beans, few gallons of oil, and a good stock of onions and potatoes. If you like oats, add oats to this list, as they are cheaper than dirt. If you have a root cellar, you can basically add infinite root veggies to this game and be actually fine including some variations for a very long time.

I always store grains in 5 gallon buckets with gamma seal lids, each 5 gallon bucket will hold 25ish lbs of food (assume $7 or whatever for the new gamma seal lid if you don't have any, 5 gallon buckets are often free at the bulk store, but $5 or whatever worst case). Same with Cat food and litter, the 3 of them go through about 15 pounds of food per month, much more litter. Now I have a stock of about 50lbs.

This is all on the wiki, but it helps to be reiterated sometimes.

A nice thing about the simplicity of this system for the ultra basics is that it can be moved very quickly if need be, since if muni water went out, we might end up at my family's cabin in the mountains with a well pretty quickly.

[jacob]

Depending on how you source your water, you might want to add some waterbricks as well. Ditto fuel to cook whatever can't be eaten raw. I just learned that coleman 2-burner stove burns regular gas (like out of a car) although I don't know how well.