You aren’t even close when it comes to value foods. You’re suggesting that people eat what are, essentially, highly processed foods that have a high potential for adulteration and for being harmful. I applaud the sentiment, but I can go you many times better.

Lentils and rice are very very nice. The combination of lentils and rice make for what is referred to as a “perfect protein” or “complimentary protein”. That is, they contain, together, the essential amino acids that humans need. They are highly nurtitious (I am talking about brown rice, by the way, not white rice, which is useless). They cost about a dollar a pound or something not far from that. They come in dry form. When you cook them, they absorb twice their weight in water. In other words, two pounds of these puppies make six pounds of food. Add in a variety of fresh or frozen vegetables seasonings (they taste especially nice curried) and you can eat for a week and a half on lentils and rice, and at a cost of about a dollar or less a day.

I eat a lentil and rice curry one day a week, though I do it because I like to reduce my animal protein consumption and because I love my curries. I usually have enough leftover for lunch the next day. Actually, Mrs DBK and I have it together for dinner one day a week.

Dried legumes (beans) and brown rice (lentils are a legume) are a great, cost effective, and delicious way to eat. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to learn how to cook them and make them delicious. For instance, instead of spaghetti sauce, get canned tomatoes and add them for flavor. You won’t need as much as a whole jar of spaghetti sauce and you have less to fear from adulteration.

The fact is that, in terms of nutrition and cost effective eating, there is a wide range of alternatives that you can use if you give up the processed, “fast” foods. And as far as speed is concerned, it takes 45 minutes to prepare brown rice. Start the rice, get the lentils ready and start them when the timing is right (takes thirty minutes and, if you don’t want to fuss, start put everything together to cook them). All in all, you can spend maybe ten to fifteen minutes of prep time, a total of 45 minutes of cooking time, and you have a delicious meal. While it is cooking, go do something else.

Actually, I was checking out of a grocery store on the Eastern Shore, VA, one day and realized an quite shabby elderly man ahead of me was buying several cans of cat food with cheap bread and stuff, and getting a sad look from the clerk. It occurred to me….

When olives are $1.60 at the grocery store and $.99 at the dollar stores, I’m with you. If you recall, it was the high brand IAMs that was a problem, not Purina.

Ruth

It gags me to say this.
You can buy dry beans or lentils, and brown rice, at Wal Mart. You can also buy bar Ivory there.

It’s hard to find what my dad called “staples” and my mom called “dry goods” without resorting to Wal Mart these days.

But the chain has decided to divest itself of yard goods, superior quality thread and notions, and many other useful items; many of its stores no longer even carry patterns.

Perhaps the pendulum of supply and demand will swing back to the specialty shops and the mom-and-pops; perhaps, though, it’s that Wal-Mart can’t force suppliers to cut prices or quality or both for these items. As is certainly true of their workers, if they can’t get something for cheap, they quit carrying it in the stores.

Or it could be there’s no demand for yard goods, notions, needles and thread — maybe I’m just part of the greying generation that sews, crochets, knits, etc.

First, I realized, after submitting my comments, that they seemed harsh and unnecessarily critical. It isn’t that I think Lambert is that terribly wrong, but that I think there are superior alternatives to spaghetti as far as inexpensive food goes, both in terms of nutrition and quality and food safety.

The supermarkets around here (NJ) carry the staples. I can even get red lentils, which I prefer to brown lentils.

Another food note: if you are like me and try to conserve your funds and make the best stuff you possibly can, and you are also a foody (yes, I’m a damned foody), then you think kindly of chicken. A roasted chicken is not only a good meal for several days for anyone, but you can take the carcass and the bits of vegetables you would normally throw away when cutting vegetables and freeze them, then make chicken stock when you have the time. Once you’ve made the stock, you can use it to cook rice and/or lentils or whatever dried beans and so on that you prepare. This gives you extra flavor in your food and uses all of the stuff you buy to its maximum. I can get two quarts of stock from a single chicken frame (“frame” is the term for the carcass). The flavor is better than the canned stocks, too. With a little knowing how, you can prepare the most delicious meals for very little money. Why throw away the rinds from citrus fruits when they are terrific sources for flavoring. Lemon or orange zest actually adds more flavor to a food than the juice. Why buy dried herbs, which are pretty expensive, when you can grow your own and have them fresh, then cut them down just before they flower and dry them and save them yourself? I have a bag of lemon thyme at home that is a staple in my cooking, as well as my bag of dried oregano. Mint and basil also are easy to grow. If you live in a warmer climate and have a yard, grow your own rosemary. In year or two, you could have a rosemary bush. My brother in California has a rosemary bush. He keeps it trimmed like a hedge at about two and half feet high and about two feet wide.

Try the whfoods.com web site for info on really healthy foods. Many of them, like barley, for instance, are pretty inexpensive. One cup of cooked barley has about 13.5 grams of fiber, which makes it a very heart-healthy grain. (Lentils also have about that much fiber in one cooked cup). Dried peas (make pea soup) is very healthy and inexpensive. All the legumes, as I said before, are good for you.

Got a friend who hunts? Ask him or her for some venison. That’s inexpensive if your friend bags it and you freeze some for yourself. Venison is an exceptionally healthy meat, with tons of B12, B6, B3, and B2. We know someone who hunts, but doesn’t eat venison. We usually get around five pounds of venison a year from him. We freeze it and use it at meals (we’re now down to about four or five ounces of animal proteins a serving when we eat animal proteins). It makes for many meals.

Peopl are afraid to eat potatoes because they think it will make them fat. Potatoes are very healthy and have lots of B6 and vitamin C and they aren’t expensive at all. Don’t mash them up with butter: use whip to incorporate olive oil and they come out absolutely delicious (and you could also add that chicken stock I talked about). That’s how some French chefs do it: instead of a potato masher and milk and butter, they use a whip and olive oil. It makes the potatoes delicious and creamy and healthy, too. I know olive oil is relatively expensive when we’re talking about really cost-effective foods, but it is delicious and healthy; it’s almost entirely the only oil I use anymore.

I guess I could go on forever about food. Sorry.

Haven’t found an olive oil that I can stand the flavor of in potatoes, though. What you’re describing is from-scratch cooking, which if you have time to do is always best. Having a garden is great, and you don’t have to have a yard or live in the south; that’s what potted plants are FOR! (Plus, they give your house something indefinably fresh and yet earthy.)

Sorry, vegans, but at least it’s not factory farmed, OK? Guess I’ve got to get me a freezer, huh?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I love all your suggestions. And as you’ve seen from me and bringiton going at it, “robust” discourse is OK here…. All your suggestions are great.

But they sound like work, ya know? Time away from the keyboard….

Still, just like going off the grid, going off the food chain isn’t such a bad idea.

The business case for solar panels has always been hot water. But shit, I can heat fire on a wood stove, and the payback period is still not exactly instant for replacing a hot water boiler.

Anybody know about keeping a freezer going with solar, so all my meat doesn’t rot?

Or is there a better way than a freezer?

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

include smoking, drying, and leaving it on the hoof until you’re ready to eat it, which pushes you towards eating smaller (therefore more plentiful) critters.

I would not go so far as to butcher rats, as some Chinese restaurant in a US metropolis was photographed doing not long ago.

I would suggest becoming adept with bow and arrow or even slingshot, and putting out dry corn or planting different things in your yard to entice game.

“Deer Corn” is an abomination, by the way.

Plus salt blox are cheaper, more reliable, and don’t destroy the environment in production. If you get the red ones, and you start putting them out in December, as a bonus the deer coming by the following season won’t have as many ticks, etc. (Something about the added minerals makes the deer less tasty for the parasites)

But deer could be brought in from the country, just like my wood.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

I live in town.

I have squirrel, rabbit, prairie dog and chipmunks (prairie dogs and chipmunks are aka ground squirrels and in the past were considered fair game for stewpots) in the yards/alleys all around, including but not limited to my own, with both quail and doves in the trees in my yard.

Same critters a quarter mile away are not in city limits and therefore are subject to the laws regarding taking game.

I don’t hunt (except with a 35 mm SLR) because, honestly, there’s no need to hunt and I have a constitutional objection to killing unless it’s for the table.

(Exception: I will shoot rabid dogs as a public service)

since Mad Deer Disease (also comes in Elk flavored version) made it east of the Mississippi.

Which took some of the sting out when the BIL who formerly provided us with said venison turned into a Rushbo listening Bush voting loon between one Thanksgiving dinner at MIL’s and the next. Very weird. We blame his wife, but anyway…

Mad Cow is bad enough but at least you stand some chance of suing somebody and providing something for your survivors if any. Who do you go after if you eat wild animal with spongy brain?

There was a case reported in Kentucky a few years ago of a guy who came down with Jakob-Kruchfeld (sp?) aka Mad Human Disease, who was known to be a big fan of squirrel brains. (I have recipes for them both fried and stewed; they are the Ingredient That Must Not Be Named in book/newspaper recipes for burgoo.)

The classic form is probably genetic (as in, a mutation) and it definitely runs in families.

The stuff you learn in jobs, that you can’t talk about while you’re working there, never ceases to amaze me.

Steet clear of the Chinese toothpaste. And the South African deodorant. And the Mexican candy. All could be fatal.

And don’t go buying any discount trailers from FEMA, either.

Creuzfeldt-Jakob I thought was proven to be a brain disorder caused by the prion particle. Now you say it is genetic? Are we talking about two different ailments here?

I could see a succeptibility (or the reverse, a resistance) to prion infestation having a genetic component, but not the disease itself. For that I thought you needed an infusion of those prion critters or whatever they are, thus my reluctant abstinence from deer-devouring.

Of course my understanding of such matters is at about the Discover magazine, or on good days Scientific American level at best so perhaps I should drop back and punt on any further discussion of the subject. :)

prions cause both, but in one — and this one runs in families — there’s no (identified, anyway) link to e.g. meat-eating, etc. that provides a cause.
Variant CJD or “new variant” CJD is caused by the BSE prion (or the scrapie prion if the victim eats mutton).
Some good info is here:
CJD

Read this, please.

Some people appear genetically predisposed to start producing prions in their brains after middle age.

Others get it by eating infected meat. Sometimes, this is brain material. In mad cow disease, cows eat feed made from bone meal of scrapie-infected sheep. The scrapie prion is particularly infectious among sheep.

Similarly, the chronic wasting disease of deer is another very infectious form of prion, which can be spread among deer by saliva. This particular form can also be easily spread by venison. You can get it from plain muscle meat, not just brains. Prion infections may take time to develop, resemble Alzheimer’s in presentation, and may be a dosage-related phenomenon.

But really, if you must eat meat, leave the brains to zombies.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

It’d be a little trickier with meat but damn, children, the stews and chilis and … yeah man. Be sure you work clean, keep your utensils clean, choose your ingredients with care, but home-canning is the poor person’s best friend.

Save mayo jars (not the plastic ones). You can get Mason and Ball rings and lids that will fit. Pressure cookers can be had at thrift stores and estate sales as well as ebay.

Green chili season’s about to START in freakin’ Hatch (RDF Where are you when we need you?) and you can raise rabbits in yards where towns forbid chickens….