How often do you buy groceries?
What types of things do you consider “essential”?
Do you make a list when you go shopping, or just have an idea of what you need?
Do you do one big trip all at once, or do you pick up just enough to make what you’re eating that night/the next day?
These days, we tend to sit down on Sunday evening and plan out our meals for the week, then go shopping on Monday. We go to the farmer’s market Saturday and plan our meals around what vegetables we could buy locally.
I don’t consider very many things essential. Maybe dry beans, rice (sub millet, quinoa, or other cookable grain as needed), lentils, flour, and salt? Without those I’d have troubles surviving, with an adequate supply of those I could live for months, it’d take a while to even get sick of all the things you can make with it. I’m willing to cut pretty much anything I need to out of my diet if it’s not available and honestly I think the obsession with having all foods available at all seasons is weird.
How do you do your beans and lentils? My mental illness has me stockpile food, so I have quite a bit of black beans and lentils, but I just can’t figure out how to cook them to make them work for me.
The red lentils seem to be less bitter than the brown ones. Lentils seem to be the best option, since you don’t have to soak them as long as beans and I struggle with that aspect of food prep.
If you have trouble with the soaking, black beans do very well with a “quick soak”.
Cover them with water about twice the depth of the beans. Add about 1 teaspoon (~5 ml or 5-7 g) salt.
Bring to a boil and keep it boiling for 2 minutes. Then cover and turn off the burner/hob. Let soak for 1-2 hours.
Add any extra seasonings now (but nothing acidic). Then bring back to a boil and then simmer until soft. Adjust seasoning and you’re done.
They should take much less time than cooking from dry. How long will depend on the beans. Older beans can take much longer, but most should be soft in 1 hour or so.
Yep. That works well unless you’re cooking at altitude, then an overnight soak is the best and easiest way. Unless you own a pressure cooker.
Some beans you can get away with not soaking at all, just cook them low and slow for a couple hours. I’ve done that with great northern beans.
All kinds of ways, but I think a good few recipes to check out are:
I can find a recipe similar to mine for any of these if you like