I'm sad that this is worth mentioning. But if you are dealing with hunger amid threats to SNAP benefits, rice and beans are very cheap per meal and can be bought in bulk. Here's some tricks I've learned:
If you get dried beans, make sure you follow the directions to pre-soak them. Canned beans are easier to prepare, just dump in near the end of cooking to heat them up. Dried lentils don't need to be pre-soaked, but I prefer to cook them separately and drain the water they boil in.
Brown rice, barley, or other whole grains have much more protein than white rice and I find them more filling. Whole grains take longer to cook than white grains.
Frying diced onions in the pot before adding the grains and water is an easy way to kick the flavor up a notch. Use a generous amount of cooking oil (light olive oil is healthiest) for cost effective calories and help making the meal more filling.
Big carrots or celery in bulk are pretty cheap too. I like to dice carrots by partially cutting length wise into quarters, but leave the small end intact to keep the carrot together to make it easier to dice down the side. Add them to the same pot as the grains after the grains start to soften. Beets are also great; skin and cube then boil separately until soft. Change up your veggie to get a mix of vitamins
Get some bulk garlic powder, hot sauce, paprika, cumin, crushed red pepper, black pepper, etc. Season and salt the pot to taste.
You'll only need 1-2 pots and a cutting knife/board for veggies.
I recommend Harvard's Nutrition Source for science-based nutrition information and they have some recipes too
Edit: discussing big changes in diet with a primary care doctor or registered dietician is generally a good idea.
Probiotic supplements may help with gas.
As a bonus this sort of meal has a very small environmental footprint.
leave it to lemmy users to disparage the primary staple of 3.5 billion people. "Pre-diabetic junk food" lmao sure ok
It truly is the way too many enthusiasts on any topic think.
Like they can't fathom the idea that other people are focused on other things despite this being 100% the reason humans were able to create what we have.
If humans all focused on the exact same things, we'd have a very narrow scope and much less innovation.
It's why its so hard to find good advice.
You go to a cooking subreddit, and they'd have you thinking that unless you knew every artisinal craftsman shop in your area (your local butcher, your local baker etc etc), you must not know food, and that you need 400 dollar pans to get utility out of your cookware when literally just a common stainless steel set would do you just fine, and even if you had to replace it 20 times, it still wouldnt be the cost of the more expensive one.
People live in their own bubbles and expect that everyone else not only could but should meet them where they are in their bubble, rather than realizing that guess what, food is just to eat for most people, not some passion they want to dedicate multiple hours a day to.
I understand your point because often in a lot of hobbies, when you are a newbie, people can be very condescending to you. But I still think that it's abnormal the number of people that know nothing about cooking, since, contrary to most hobbies, it is essential for us to eat.
However I think that the real problem is that most people are so overworked and we have so much responsabilities, that it is almost a luxury to take the time to cook in our society. I am pretty sure there would be wayyy more people enjoying cooking if they could take their time doing it.
It is not essential to become a cooking enthusiast to eat.
You can be perfectly healthy eating nothing be pre prepared meals and frozen vegetables.
You can be perfectly healthy with a few family staples in a 3 set cookware set.
You can be perfectly ok drinking soylent your whole life.
People on these forums are often enthusiasts as described. They go overboard assuming everyone else must be like them, and this is often an excuse they use for their condescension as if there aren't vastly different levels between eating because you need to for continued living and whatever the fuck they're at.
Nah. I think plenty of people simply do not enjoy cooking and thats perfectly fine. If I had less obligations and more time, I wouldn't waste it learning to cook to the level they have. I have very little interest in cooking. Maybe occasionally Ill try a fancier recipe but I'm never going to season a pan, learn how to make Croquembouche or add beef wellington as a staple in the things that I eat.
If I had more time, Id be putting that into my hobbies. Id be making more things, going more places, not wasting my time slaving over a kitchen counter.
I fully respect that this is a completely subjective perspective. Obviously for some, they might read "waste" and feel incensed and that language, but that language is simply accurate for me. I don't expect it to be accurate for everyone.
I have lazily been buying the same bag of high fiber mixed vegetables for monthes because it has the mixture of things I need dietarily and I mix that with frozen meals that have reasonable mixes, and through in some simple cooked meals as well (I mean simple too, like scrambled eggs on toast or vegetable soup or meat with gravy on rice).
To me the time would absolutely be a luxury, but cooking is not what I'd like to spend it on. To me, given we still have limited life spans, it would still be a waste of that span.
You're right, and I've learned to ignore most advice I read from enthusiasts. I bought a cast iron pan 20 years ago for $15 and I still use it to cook almost everything, including eggs.
I did splurge and buy a nice dutch oven to make baking bread easier, but it's not necessary.
Multiple times now I've been mocked relentlessly for PC building advice or opinions on software development I had that became commonplace within 3 years, like when I said noSQL databases were overrated as hell but they had their uses. Made enemies on both sides lol... And now that's the common opinion.
I'm not a chef but I work in IT. The problem there is IT people on average are horrible at communicating and empathy.
Just get a full La Cruiset set for a wedding gift and you are golden. /S