Most of the people I know do not like beans and rice-based meals nearly as much as I do. For me, it's comfort food.
For most of my early adult life, I didn't make much money -- but I had the advantage of only working forty hours a week. If you're low on money, you can still eat well if you have time to cook, though it took me a couple of years to figure that out. Dried beans and rice are cheap, filling and take time to make. If you've got more to spend, you add more stuff -- fresh vegetables, meat and so on. If money's tight, dry spices are inexpensive and store well.
So beans and rice means I'm doing okay. A little money, a little free time. During the stretch when I was working two full-time jobs, I ate fast food, cheap ramen, hot dogs -- and splurged on peanut butter and jelly or bacon and eggs occasionally. When my wages have outrun inflation, which has happened a few times, though it never lasts, I eat better, but money-saving habits persist. I freeze leftovers, try to plan meals to fit what's already in the fridge or on the shelf. And I'm never without a little "just in case" stock of rice and beans.
Update
3 months ago
4 comments:
We Boomers, raised by parents who survived the Depression of the 1930s then WW II with "everything" unaffordable or rationed, all seem to have had the same values instilled in us as children. As a pretty young teen in 1930s, my mother, like her friends, wore dresses made from floral print flour bags their mothers had bought to make bread with.
Values like that can't compete with kids' cell phones and video games today.
Due to an allergy to flavor enhancers & sulfite-based preservatives, most readymade foods are a no-go for me. And that's a good thing, as that's improved my diet.
My lunch mainstay is a bean, veggie, brown rice & barley stew in a tomato base. It takes a while to prep and cook, but then I just have to microwave the results for a couple of weeks.
I still make things (not my dresses) out of flour sacks that my mother left. I never had a flour sack dress but, I wore feed sack dresses until high school. My first year in high school, Mom bought me 3 dresses from a store!
It wasn't until I was middle-aged that I discovered red beans and rice. Wonderful stuff! I have to make my own, now though, to escape sodium. It isn't as wonderful, but it is still good.
Post a Comment