My neighbor Margaret told me she feeds her family of four on $40 a week using dried beans and bulk rice from the Amish market

She said she soaks a pound of pintos overnight and cooks them with a ham hock she gets for 50 cents from the butcher, and that one pot stretches into three different meals - burritos on Monday, soup on Tuesday, and refried beans for tostadas on Wednesday - has anyone else tried this bulk approach or am I just late to the party?

3 comments

3 Comments

taraanderson1mo agoMost Upvoted

Wait a minute, I gotta jump in here because that price math isn't quite right. A ham hock for 50 cents sounds way too cheap unless she's getting it from a really small local butcher who practically gives them away for stock. Most grocery stores sell ham hocks for like 2 or 3 bucks, sometimes more if they're smoked. And even with dried beans being cheap, a pound of pintos is maybe 2 dollars at the Amish market so that's 2.50 for the base, and then you need tortillas, salsa, cheese, lettuce, and sour cream for the burritos tostadas and soup. So the real cost is probably closer to 8 or 10 bucks for those three meals, which is still a great deal but not 40 bucks a week for a whole family unless she's really stretching those beans into five or six meals. She might be counting just the bean meat part and forgetting the other stuff.

reese1241mo ago

That's assuming she's buying everything new and not using pantry staples she already had.

the_holly1mo ago

Does anyone else feel like this whole conversation is part of a bigger issue where we're always comparing the cheapest possible version of something versus what people actually eat? I mean, yeah, taraanderson has a point about the hidden costs, but it's like we're doing math on a fantasy dinner instead of real life. Most families I know aren't making three separate bean dishes from one ham hock - they're throwing a can of chili and some frozen veggies into a pot and calling it dinner. The real trick isn't the exact price, it's that we've all gotten so used to processed convenience food that we forget you can actually cook dried beans and it's not that hard. So maybe instead of fighting over fifty cent ham hocks, we should talk about why we're all so scared of a soak and simmer?