Survival and Emergency Preparedness

LAST EDIT MAR 16 5:10P

So, This thread is gonna be a bit of a story. while I'm sure we all have Rice & Beans on hand, how many of us have actually cracked a bucket and used them? Well, in light of the Zombie Corona Virus Apocalypse, I'll be working from home for a while. As such, I thought I'd take the opportunity to up my skills a little. So here is what I'm going to do...

I have a pound of white rice and a pound of pinto beans. I'm going to get them ready, prepare them a few different ways and report on what it took to do this. I'll be adding a variety of spices, or cans of "bonus materials" to kick it up a notch just to see what we can do. I'd expect some diced tomatoes and green chilies to show up early in the series. We'll see what happens, and I'm open to suggestions. No matter what, I'll be keeping it very disaster oriented though. No gourmet cooking here!

I'm already certain that it is going to take way more water than any of us expect. I'll keep a running totals for meals, calories and whatnot and a brief index of the thread so you can check in here for updates and such. So here we go...

Basic Nutrition:
Pintios: 245 cals per cup cooked. 2.5 cups in this "lb" = 612 calories
Rice:206 cals per cup cooked. 2 cups = 412 calories

Water Total Use:
Pintos: 6 cups + 3 cups = 8 cups
Rice:5 cups

Mar 15: 2 cups of Pintos into pot w/ 6 cups of water overnight.
Mar 16: Same Pintos rinsed, boiled, and simmered for 3 hours
Mar 17-22 Busy - Pinto's in fridge.
MAr 23: 1lb of white rice

Step 1. 1 lb of pinto beans in a pot with six cups of water and allow to soak overnight.
* Just a small FYI - most cooks recommend sifting your pintos for small rocks. The last thing you need during a long term SHTF is a cracked tooth. You'll have time. Do this. I actually found a small hard clump of dirt in my beans!

Update in the morning...

I'd say that veritety and nutrition will be the issue.

You need to add spices and protein. It isn't hard. Think of Italian and Spanish foods and tastes.

Tomato sauce
Hot sourse
Italian spices

Also think Asian - soy sause, teriakie ets

Add some chicken or tuna fish.

And you will be fine.

Well, seeing that we are in the Zombie Corona Apocalypse...TIme to start brushing up on the recipes.

like it ...
and we even sort thru the lentils for other seeds, sometimes other small items.

Post-Soak / Boil-Simmer Update:

So I have now emptied the water. FYI - you should not keep this water to resource. The soaking / boiling aspects are to remove some wonderful little chemicals called Lectins. Bottom line - no eating raw beans or old bean water!

Step 2:
Take the beans, and pour into colander
Rinse them and the pot briefly (not measuring that water - but it was there/used!)

Step 3:
[reserve this space for other ingredients]*
Place them back in original pot and set to medium high until boiling
Add 3 more cups of water (2" over the top of the beans is recommended)**
Put 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper (maybe 2)
Then put to simmer for 3 hours

*This is the main spot where you could add peppers, chiles, onions, bacon, etc...
**This is the other place for things you don't want to cook to soften before the boil

I now have a pot of beans & paste! Nothing fancy flavor wise, just a little spice from the ground black pepper.
All told, we are 9 cups of water into this, and 3 hrs of simmer level heat, plus a boil. Lot of energy and about 1/3 gallon of water.

Next we move to rice....

Sorry for the delay - on with the rice! So I'm now adding a 1 lb bag of rice to our 1lb of pinto beans.

Rice is "simple":
2 cups of water per cup of rice.
1lb bag of rice = 2.5 cups

Heat water to boil, add rice and simmer for about 20 Minutes.

When we get done, the fun begins. We'll discuss total water, time, cooking heat use, etc...and make some meals!

So - here we are! 1lb of Pintos and 1lb of rice. After all of that we have:

About 1000 calories. To get there we used:
13 cups of water - almost a gallon
Heat for 3hrs and 20mins.

Pretty water/energy intensive for 1000 calories....

When we do lentils and pasta... good cal count, the water that cooks the lentils , cooks the pasta.... ala one pot meal.
less water usage

Try making Iranian rice. Look up a recipe. Essentially, you parboil in very salty water, rinse, put in replacement water and a lot of butter. Finish cooking. Put a folded towel on top to catch the moisture. The result is a desired crust on the bottom of the pot called digh. The rest of the rice is fluffy above. No, you don't need to use Basmati rice. You also probably do not have special crushed berries, but don't worry about that. Sometimes fake saffron is put on top when serving.

So I just had a soft taco with rice & beans for lunch. I added some green Tabasco for a little flavor.

A couple of heaping bean spoons, a couple of rice, flavor and wrap it up. Tasty and filling. Not sure how many I could make from this.I'm guessing about 8...