[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.