[malandrew]

To add to this:

(1) Get a starbucks card and use it until you earn the gold card. This gives you free refills on basic coffee or iced coffee. This means you can work all day on decent wifi with all you can drink coffee. Get a small coffee since you get refills. If you drink fast, get a medium so you don't need to get up as often. Just make sure to tip the baristas occasionally.

(2) Rice and beans. Get a 25lb bag of each. Learn how to cook them. To save time, invest in a large pressure cooker and 1-quart jars. Make beans in bulk and freeze them. When I go into rice & bean austerity mode to save money for stuff, I can get my per meal costs down to about $1. My roommates and other people who have tried them think they are some of the best beans they've tasted. Besides trying many types of beans, also try lentils. To make sure the food doesn't get boring, remember that spices are your friend. Go get cheap spices from a Mexican or Chinese market.

If you want to learn how to make a big batch of beans one day, message me. Just be ready to come over with the kinds of beans you want and about a dozen quart jars. I have a 21-quart industrial pressure cooker. We'll cook up a big batch, which you can take home with you and freeze. Each quart will give you about 4-6 meals when paired with rice. Just send me an email in my profile.

[jamesjguthrie]

Hey malandrew

What kind of dishes do you cook up when you're just doing rice and beans? I eat a lot of beans e.g. usual baked beans in tomato sauce, kidney beans, chickpeas, garden peas; and I do like various rice dishes e.g. indian rices, thai sticky rice.

Can you give me an example of a couple of dishes that you usually eat when you do this? 1) I need to save some money (wedding, startup) and 2) I need to improve my diet.

[malandrew]

Usually, when I am on "bean-mode" there isn't a ton of variety in the dishes. I'll employ some of the approaches you mentioned, but I'm personally not super bothered by the lack of variety when it comes to rice and beans. I'm half Brazilian, so rice and beans have always been a stable food on my dinner table so I don't get too bored of it.

Besides what you mentioned I also toss in cheese (get your cheese at Costco, best value out there), fried eggs, sometimes some fresh spices from the potted herbs I have.

Besides the beans you are buying, try cannelloni beans, black beans, great northern beans, etc. There's a lot of variety in taste among legumes. If you branch out, you'll find a lot more options.

The other great thing about the pressure cooker is that you can still enjoy meats, because you can buy really cheap "stew meats" and other cuts of meat rich in collagen and other connective tissue that will break down at high temperatures and high pressure. A lot of these cheaper meats would require 6+ hours of cooking at a simmer in a crock-pot, but with a pressure cooker, you can prepare a fully cooked meat stew in 1-2 hours.