FOOD Beans and Rice
- Thread starter nehimama
- Start date
Thanks @school marm
For now I cannot have any whole grains and only white rice. Yes, I know that is counterintuitive for diabetics but everything with this gastroparesis seems that way. But I can try and utilize the above method to lower the glycemic index of the white rice and maybe I'll be able to do more than eat soup for every meal. LOL.
Profit of Doom
Dismember
Put your crockpot in a pressure cooker to compensate. Or use Tri-Ox.
Recipe tips from Dr. McCoy.
Please tell me more. Details, please!
I like natto! My Japanese friends were always shocked at the thought of an American actually enjoying natto - with mustard.
Just Plain Mom
Alien Lizard Person
Thank you! I'd never heard that.
Having been raised in Hawaii, white rice--sushi rice--is my preference, my comfort food. This may have changed everything. Husband doesn't really care ("More beans!") but "happy wife, happy life," right?
We, too, test religiously, so I will be experimenting in the coming week!
Yippee!!
Night Owl
Veteran Member
You do what you have to to survive. If beans don’t kill you, you will eat them. Reality is hard to swallow.
Melodi
Disaster Cat
I eat beans nearly every day (most often for lunch). For my housemate's sake, I make most of the meals vegetarian, and I have finally found some recipes I can live with that don't use chicken broth or pork.
I have not had any problems over the last two years mixing dried beans - usually white "kidney" beans (some are probably cannelloni), pinto beans, and black or brown beans. If I am including the white beans, I always presoak overnight in case they are a type of Kidney bean - (over here, it is hard to tell). Then I bring it to a boil in the morning and put it on a very low simmer either on the regular stove or the turf stove if it is going.
The last time I had to deal with old-old beans (like I brought for Y2K in 2015, I never could get them soft even in a pressure cooker (it may be our super humid climate), but they got soft enough for chickens, so that's who got to eat them. These days, I have a German-made electrical grinder that can do beans, so I would likely make bean flour. You can use that in bread or make a "refried" bean or bean paste.
I have not had any problems over the last two years mixing dried beans - usually white "kidney" beans (some are probably cannelloni), pinto beans, and black or brown beans. If I am including the white beans, I always presoak overnight in case they are a type of Kidney bean - (over here, it is hard to tell). Then I bring it to a boil in the morning and put it on a very low simmer either on the regular stove or the turf stove if it is going.
The last time I had to deal with old-old beans (like I brought for Y2K in 2015, I never could get them soft even in a pressure cooker (it may be our super humid climate), but they got soft enough for chickens, so that's who got to eat them. These days, I have a German-made electrical grinder that can do beans, so I would likely make bean flour. You can use that in bread or make a "refried" bean or bean paste.
An allergy is much different than a "sensitivity ". If you are truly allergic to a food, it WILL kill you to eat it. And even if you aren't at the point of anaphylaxis, it can be causing other damage... my grandson gets severe esophageal spasms from any of the foods on his long list of allergens, but by the time they figured it out, he had severely damaged the lining of the esophagus.
I know, too many people these days use the word "allergy" casually, but true allergies are serious.
However, if you know you aren't allergic (which really takes medical testing, as many gut symptoms are similar between allergy and sensitivity), then there can be ways to mitigate symptoms. But if you get, for example, serious diarrhea every time you eat beans, it won't be long before eating them daily will kill you before actual starvation would.
It's not as simple as some think.
Summerthyme
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The InstaPot has a really nice procedure selection which, to date, really does a great job on old hard beans.
Sebastian
Sebastian
How to Make Nattō in an Instant Pot | How to Japanese
howtojaponese.com
I use black beans instead of soy for obvious reasons. You can use most any bean. My serving is 3-4 oz otherwise I get nose bleeds. Some like it cold but I warm it slightly 15 sec in the microwave. Tamari and hot sauce. Yum.
Melodi
Disaster Cat
Oh, I just remembered that you should look at traditional or recently traditional food in your area for combinations. For example, rice won't grow in Ireland at all, and Maize Corn isn't practical outside the Southeast, and even then, it mostly doesn't form cobs and is used as cattle feed. I tried for ten years, even with strings intended for use on the East Coast of Canada or F1 Hybrids sold here, and got enough one year to make lunch. It is impractical in a "victory" or "prepper" garden.
But in the nearby UK, and to some degree in Ireland, by the 19th century, "Beans on Toast" has become a famous dinner, especially with students or those on a low income. Beans will grow here. The ones that grow best are the old European beans (lima beans), which I dislike and aren't very useful for many of the things I want to eat. But as a survival food, I would plant it. But I've also managed to grow pintos and other "dried" brown, white, and black beans (many strains from France can handle a wet and cooler climate). Most do best against a sunny wall or the sunniest area you can find or even inside a conservatory or greenhouse/polytunnel. But it would be possible, in most years, to get enough to use after the dried bean storage ran out.
Peas grow here almost by themselves, and they were the staple long-term storage in Ireland and the UK. Dried Beans were kept for sieges, famines, and just getting through the Winter.
But your best long-term bed (after the rice runs out) here anyway, to go with the beans, is wheat bread, wheat noodles, Oats, or Barley Cakes. I mean, it depends on how bad things get. Rice and maize cornmeal (called polenta here) may be a trade good coming in from Southern Europe and obtainable but a bit expensive for every day.
I suspect that if supply chains tank for several years, we will be eating a lot of "peas pottage" with carrots, onions, and garlic. I've made that on the stove in a cloth bag, just like they did in the Middle Ages, and it is pretty good. It is also easy to do with a pot and a fireplace.
But in the nearby UK, and to some degree in Ireland, by the 19th century, "Beans on Toast" has become a famous dinner, especially with students or those on a low income. Beans will grow here. The ones that grow best are the old European beans (lima beans), which I dislike and aren't very useful for many of the things I want to eat. But as a survival food, I would plant it. But I've also managed to grow pintos and other "dried" brown, white, and black beans (many strains from France can handle a wet and cooler climate). Most do best against a sunny wall or the sunniest area you can find or even inside a conservatory or greenhouse/polytunnel. But it would be possible, in most years, to get enough to use after the dried bean storage ran out.
Peas grow here almost by themselves, and they were the staple long-term storage in Ireland and the UK. Dried Beans were kept for sieges, famines, and just getting through the Winter.
But your best long-term bed (after the rice runs out) here anyway, to go with the beans, is wheat bread, wheat noodles, Oats, or Barley Cakes. I mean, it depends on how bad things get. Rice and maize cornmeal (called polenta here) may be a trade good coming in from Southern Europe and obtainable but a bit expensive for every day.
I suspect that if supply chains tank for several years, we will be eating a lot of "peas pottage" with carrots, onions, and garlic. I've made that on the stove in a cloth bag, just like they did in the Middle Ages, and it is pretty good. It is also easy to do with a pot and a fireplace.
Melodi
Disaster Cat
Yep, it should do the same thing pretty much. Just like beans and Corn will. My housemate doesn't like baked potatoes (she's German) but I make them sometimes with vegetarian chili (or meat chili for me). What you want is beans and a carb. They complement each other and bring out nutrients when served in combination. The reason the Mexican peasants didn't get sick on a diet of mostly beans and corn (or even flour) tortillas in the 1930s and many sharecroppers in the US (both black and white) did get sick and die, eating just corn meal; was because the Mexicans had the combination of at least Beans and Corn (or less nutritious but still works flour) and the American Sharecroppers did not (some did, but not everyone).
Sad to say, potatoes may not grow in Ireland if the supply chains break down because of fungus in the soil left over from the Great Famine in the 1840s. Organic Seed Savers Ireland doesn't even do potatoes anymore because they no longer consider it a sustainable crop here. For a household, you can grow some (and we will try) in buckets or barrels in a secluded porch, conservatory, or greenhouse. But if the blight is bad, anywhere the wind blows can kill the plants, and the tomatoes too. It is possible to make homemade tomato (and potato) blight spray, but it is complicated. Nightwolf had the formula, but I'm not sure we could source the ingredients in a time of breakdown. On the coasts, there is seaweed that can help (organic farmers use it here), but it isn't a cure-all, and there isn't enough of it for everyone in a crisis.
Melodi
Disaster Cat
And don't forget the Italian minestrone (or clean out the fridge) vegetable soup or stew. It often has beans in it, as well as lots of vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onion, carrots, zucchini, eggplant, spinach, or whatever you have to hand. The most important things are the tomatoes, garlic, and onion; well, beans and Italian herbs make a pretty good soup on their own. Serve with cornbread (polenta), and wheat rolls, or add pasta to the soup, and you've got a change from ordinary beans. Food fatigue is a real problem, people can slowly die of it - especially small children and the elderly (which many of us now are). It isn't intentional, people just get bored of the same thing all the time and gradually eat less and less. Little children, may simply refuse the food.
Melodi, Thank you for your replay. I did not know that people had a problem only eating cornmeal, nor did I know that Ireland can no longer really raise potatoes. You did answer my question as to whether potatoes and chili would serve as well as beans & rice. Thanks.
An interesting tidbit from historical Ireland, *before* the potato blight hit (and it sure does explain why the famine hit them so hard after blight arrived) is that potatoes and whole milk actually supply all micronutrients necessary for health. Men ate around 5-8# of potatoes and a quart of whole milk daily, and were able to work hard.
One Irish Dexter cow and a medium sized potato patch (we got 900# last summer off 5, 60 foot rows) could support a family.
Summerthyme
One Irish Dexter cow and a medium sized potato patch (we got 900# last summer off 5, 60 foot rows) could support a family.
Summerthyme
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According to the genealogical stuff I've read - I'm Scotch-Irish on my dad's side - is that families would opine how they couldn't live on as small a plot of land here as they could in the Old Country. They were forced to add meat to a diet they once really only had meat in very small amounts.
SuElPo
Veteran Member
Melodi
Disaster Cat
Ireland grows many potatoes right now, although last year's harvest was a massive failure because the wet Spring caused them to rot in the ground. But that is a natural thing that can happen to any crop (crop failure from natural causes).
But today, farmers must spray their fields with commercial Blight Spray to grow potatoes commercially. There are some organic potato farmers, but they tend to use the type of seaweed I mentioned or cross their fingers. Some grow in large poly tunnels (greenhouses), but many of our organic potatoes come from other parts of Europe.
We get "Garden Grown" potatoes here and even grow those ourselves. Those are potatoes grown with limited amounts of blight spray (tomatoes, too). Meanwhile, we spray when there are blight warnings. Normal commercial growers here spray repeatedly every few days (or weeks), whether the crop needs it or not, just in case. However, home gardeners and "Garden Grown" potatoes are grown with the minimum sprays and chemicals required to get them through their life cycle. The local radio carries blight warnings, as does the online press.
Any nightshade can get blight, but peppers and many tomato varieties are more accessible to grow indoors. Also, some potatoes, tomatoes, and pepper strains are "blight resistant." The blight can still get them in a bad year (like 1946 was), but they are much more likely to make it through an outbreak, especially with some help.
This year, there are few potatoes in the store (and not many that look good) because of crop failures not just here but also in other places that supply Ireland, like Israel and Southern Europe, which had either war or bad weather affect their agriculture.
Our potatoes were OK, but we didn't grow that many, and all of them were in containers inside a conservatory.
Edited to add: The Irish were forced into Mono-culture by their British Overlords who insisted the peasants live on a diet of mostly potatoes and often skimmed milk (the natural kind) because all the other food was either sold in UK Markets or used to feed the British Army.
I have a friend doing a Ph.D. on Irish Food before the potato and another friend doing this as a hobby, and they both found that before the potato, the Irish diet consisted heavily of dairy products (butter, cheese, milk) along with oats, barley, and soft wheat. Before and after the potato arrived, people did have some access to chicken (old stewing hens), eggs, lots of berries, wild greens (especially nettles), rose hips, and other things they could "glean" in season. So, people didn't just eat potatoes; it was the daily stipend.
Ireland had plenty of food during the Great Potato Famine, but it all went to England since it wasn't potatoes. People had no potatoes for themselves or the family pig called "The Gentlemen who Pays the Rent." Those raised on the same diet at the peasant farmers but were sold at the end of the season to get rent money. Without that, many were kicked off their land to starve to death "On the Road."
This is why historians consider The Great Potato Famine to be the world's first officially man-created famine. Although there was plenty of food, people could not afford to eat or grow it.
Which is something I think about when we are prepping. All those foods the Irish used to eat: Diary Products, Occasional Beef, Pork, Chicken, Oats, Barley, Shell Fish, and the like were still here but unobtainable except for the wealthy, and even they had issues if they were not English.
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SuElPo
Veteran Member
My mother made the best green beans. She canned many quarts every year, and added bacon. Yum!
When things go down. I believe the world is in for a real shock. Most of us depend on food grown commercially, and not from local to their zip code. I think that there is wisdom in developing local sources and learning to eat foods in session. Well except for coffee and that sort of thing. 
L.A.B.
Goodness before greatness.
Beans and rices.
Where’s The Crickets?
Where’s The Crickets?
bracketquant
Veteran Member
Bean me up, Scotty.
packyderms_wife
Neither here nor there.
I'm allergic to white beans, aka navy beans, and great northern white beans, and am fine with all other types of beans.
Melodi
Disaster Cat
Oh, I wanted to point out as well that food sensitivities (which were often called allergies when I was a child) can be debilitating or even fatal in a long-term situation. For example, my only "real" allergy is shellfish; if I eat that, my throat starts to swell, and I have a classic anaphylactic response.
After a long saga as a child, it was discovered I was not "allergic" to dairy but to Chocolate and Cola Nuts. But today, it is called sensitivity. But my Mom noticed that every holiday, I would eat a lot of chocolate, then I would first get a headache, then my nose would stuff up, then I would start to run a fever, then it could go to my lungs, and I was very sick. It turned out to be - chocolate. Headaches every day at 3 pm in high school turned out to be the cola at lunch. The local GP figured that out; he said, "You are drinking a coke at lunch, aren't you?" Then he explained that cola nuts and cocoa beans are members of the same family.
As an adult, taking hay fever meds every day, I can eat a tiny bit of chocolate if I want to, but usually, I don't bother as I don't like the potential side effects. Side effects that if I was forced to eat, say, chocolate energy bars every day for a couple of weeks, have me running a high fever and lead to a lung or sinus infection. It wouldn't cause them, but the side effects could make an opening.
Then there are mushrooms, and my new arch-enemy is being put into nearly everything processed these days: Trehalous (and its relatives made from mushrooms and/or a related fungus).
I can eat this stuff and often do it by accident (especially these days). As a one-off, I'm just sick with both vomiting and severe lower digestive issues that are a bother now, but experiencing, say, over a couple of weeks in a crisis could kill me from dehydration.
This is almost certainly not an allergy but a mutation that some people have (mostly Inuits, and I have Canadian East Coast Family links) that prevents them from processing mushrooms (or trehalose). Even articles about the "miracle" additive that lets processors lower salt and sugar admit that people with this mutation can't eat the stuff. There are only a few of us, so who cares? (sarcasm alert).
The bottom line: if you are storing food in an emergency and you or a loved one has such intolerances, don't ignore them and hope that people will "just cope." What won't kill or disable you after one unlucky meal (but does make you sick) could be a disaster in a longer-term (even a week or two) crisis if that's all you have to eat.
For our household, that means I have to limit the lot of canned goods I previously had in medium-term storage in case of emergency. Organics are fine but pricey. Usually, just plain vegetables or fruit are fine. But no premade products like canned chili unless I make them myself.
Your household will probably have different issues than mine, but eating beans (if you are not allergic or react to them) is a good idea at least once a week because anyone can have runs and cramps if they suddenly go from a no-bean to a heavy-bean diet. And while it has its comical aspects, the last thing you want is your household stuck in the bathroom or on buckets, unable to function in a crisis. But one bean (or heavy legum like lentils) a week seems to keep most people able to process them.
After a long saga as a child, it was discovered I was not "allergic" to dairy but to Chocolate and Cola Nuts. But today, it is called sensitivity. But my Mom noticed that every holiday, I would eat a lot of chocolate, then I would first get a headache, then my nose would stuff up, then I would start to run a fever, then it could go to my lungs, and I was very sick. It turned out to be - chocolate. Headaches every day at 3 pm in high school turned out to be the cola at lunch. The local GP figured that out; he said, "You are drinking a coke at lunch, aren't you?" Then he explained that cola nuts and cocoa beans are members of the same family.
As an adult, taking hay fever meds every day, I can eat a tiny bit of chocolate if I want to, but usually, I don't bother as I don't like the potential side effects. Side effects that if I was forced to eat, say, chocolate energy bars every day for a couple of weeks, have me running a high fever and lead to a lung or sinus infection. It wouldn't cause them, but the side effects could make an opening.
Then there are mushrooms, and my new arch-enemy is being put into nearly everything processed these days: Trehalous (and its relatives made from mushrooms and/or a related fungus).
I can eat this stuff and often do it by accident (especially these days). As a one-off, I'm just sick with both vomiting and severe lower digestive issues that are a bother now, but experiencing, say, over a couple of weeks in a crisis could kill me from dehydration.
This is almost certainly not an allergy but a mutation that some people have (mostly Inuits, and I have Canadian East Coast Family links) that prevents them from processing mushrooms (or trehalose). Even articles about the "miracle" additive that lets processors lower salt and sugar admit that people with this mutation can't eat the stuff. There are only a few of us, so who cares? (sarcasm alert).
The bottom line: if you are storing food in an emergency and you or a loved one has such intolerances, don't ignore them and hope that people will "just cope." What won't kill or disable you after one unlucky meal (but does make you sick) could be a disaster in a longer-term (even a week or two) crisis if that's all you have to eat.
For our household, that means I have to limit the lot of canned goods I previously had in medium-term storage in case of emergency. Organics are fine but pricey. Usually, just plain vegetables or fruit are fine. But no premade products like canned chili unless I make them myself.
Your household will probably have different issues than mine, but eating beans (if you are not allergic or react to them) is a good idea at least once a week because anyone can have runs and cramps if they suddenly go from a no-bean to a heavy-bean diet. And while it has its comical aspects, the last thing you want is your household stuck in the bathroom or on buckets, unable to function in a crisis. But one bean (or heavy legum like lentils) a week seems to keep most people able to process them.
Canning jars can be used for freezing, with a bit of care. Wide mouth punts are actually sold for canning or freezing. Regular pints have shoulders narrowing to the smaller lid, so will break if overfilled. However, a lot depends on what you are freezing... the beans I mentioned were fairly dry, and beans don't expand much, so it worked putting the jars in the freezer even though I hadn't planned on it...,with the standard 3/4" heads pace. If I tried to freeze broth or milk that way, I'd end up with broken jars! But I've frozen manyngall9ns of soup in widemouth pints, and a lot in regular mouth pants, by leaving the liquid level just to where the shoulder starts to curve.
Summerthyme
Profit of Doom
Dismember
tnphil
Don't screw with an engineer
Growing up, we called it "garbage soup". Boil some meat in stock. Clean out all those partial bags of frozen veggies in the freezer and toss them in.
Usually really good, until that one time my mom decided to throw some fish in. Ugh. 45-50 years ago and still memorable.
Thank you for the actual facts. One of the ways to mitigate symptoms is Beano, but that's made from mold which can cause its own problems in some people.
RB Martin
Veteran Member
It's called diabetes.
Melodi
Disaster Cat
Remember, a temporary reaction to beans or legumes that results from not eating them for a while is different from a "sensitivity" that is, in effect, what used to be called a "mild" allergy. If people don't eat a diet containing beans (or legumes like lentils, dried peas, etc.), they will have lower digestive issues (gas and the runs).
Summertyme is correct with the medical definitions, but when Nightwolf was in medical school, they did teach the difference between allergies that result in anaplastic shock (you swell up and might drop dead if untreated)and more serious sensitivities - like migraine headaches, fevers, severe rashes, congested sinuses, asthma and some other nasty things that CAN morph into something dire (like a deadly asthma attack) if ignored.
There are also lighter sensitivities, like reactions to raw pineapple, raw tomatoes, and other things, that can cause the mouth to swell painfully but usually go down on its own in a few hours. That is a form of hay fever and can also be kicked off by raw corn (or corn on the cob that isn't fully cooked down to the cob). This one is solved by thoroughly cooking the food—ask me how I know, lol.
So, things are a bit more complicated and nuanced than they first appear. I think the reason the term allergy is now restricted to potentially deadly ones is that a lot of restaurants and food producers saw ingredient requirements as "optional" because "everyone seems to be allergic to something." Then, for reasons still not completely understood, a lot more young people started to have deadly reactions to peanuts and sometimes dairy products. A few horrific court cases of children who died even after parents asked to speak to the cook or owner to make sure the food was "safe" got both the laws and the definitions changed - at least in the US, the United Kingdom, and parts of the EU.
Melodi
Disaster Cat
What? I hope you are joking.
RB Martin
Veteran Member
Not at all. Carbohydrates are metabolized into sugar at a rate higher than regular sugar. The only thing that typically hits me harder is pasta. If you are diabetic and are looking to go hyperglycemic that's the surefire way to go!
Melodi
Disaster Cat
Beans are a complex carbohydrate and high in protein. They don't automatically kill a diabetic, but if you react that way, then you would be best to avoid them. Another thing they were starting to teach in medical schools even a few years ago is something traditional healers (and doctors until the 1960s) knew already. Every patient is different, and there tends to be no one-size-fits-all when treating diseases. They (medical school teachers) said the medicine would likely be tailored to each person's specific health profile and reactions shortly.
Of course, there is also the danger of Big Pharma and the medical-industrial complex using that as an excuse to over-medicate everyone and treat everyone as having numerous conditions that need a pill. But that is simply misusing and twisting a legitimate finding to fit their agenda.
Other statements on this thread, like how to lower the index of white rice, which can be used for long-term storage, to nearly the levels of brown rice (which can't be stored for long periods without going rancid), more helpful on the thread like this that blanket states that infer that beans can cause type two diabetes.
Of course, there is also the danger of Big Pharma and the medical-industrial complex using that as an excuse to over-medicate everyone and treat everyone as having numerous conditions that need a pill. But that is simply misusing and twisting a legitimate finding to fit their agenda.
Other statements on this thread, like how to lower the index of white rice, which can be used for long-term storage, to nearly the levels of brown rice (which can't be stored for long periods without going rancid), more helpful on the thread like this that blanket states that infer that beans can cause type two diabetes.
PghPanther
Has No Life - Lives on TB
In Cuba you get free education, free health care.......and a 30lb bag of beans and rice for your month's eating rations from the government.....................