Let Them Eat Rice & Beans!

Sooner or later in our lean times someone tells us, “Well, you just have to eat rice and beans.” Um, we’ve been eating rice and beans for a loooong time now; we never stopped eating them.

Last week our local grocery had a sale on dried beans so I bought some black beans to vary our weekly pot of white bean and vegetable soup. When we got home, I realized that they weren’t black beans but red and I already had a superabundance of red beans. No problem, we were looking for an addition to our menu; we’ll have Red Beans & Rice—my husband is an ace with seasonings. This is a week for using “what we’ve got”.

Dried beans are very inexpensive for the volume of food they make—a bag typically costs $1.29—on sale .99 and can make several meals. The catch is that they have to be soaked “overnight”—I put them in water mid-morning and begin cooking them around 4pm. It’s important to wash and sort them first—the bag instructions make sure that I know that the beans “are a farm product”, which means that there could be rotten ones or even rocks in the mix. They also have to be cooked about two hours, which can pad the energy bill. Perhaps if I soaked them longer they could cook less.

For these reasons I generally discourage people for sending dried beans to food banks; the amount of planning and preparation cooking dried beans takes is often more than a severely discouraged person can manage. But if you’re looking to stretch what you’ve got—they cost still less than a comparable number of cans of beans and have less sodium.

Coupons?

I’ve always been happy to use coupons when they fit products that we normally use—especially when stores double or triple them! However, coupons are offered by the manufacturer as a marketing tool to get you to buy their product—whether you need it or not. If it’s not something you and your family would use or can afford, a coupon will generally not be a good deal.

Sometimes I clip coupons that I might use if the need arises or the sale is good enough but I have to make sure my husband understands this when he shops while I’m away. In his rationale, I wouldn’t have the coupon if I didn’t intend to use it but I’m just continuing in the tradition of Girl Scouts—being prepared. Now that printable digital coupons are available, I’m a lot less likely to print them unless I know that I’ll use them since ink and paper cost me money. However, I’ve never had a store turn down my printable coupons because I’ve used the least expensive “draft” and “black & white” settings on my printer or paper that has something else printed on the back.

I’ve been excitedly reading library books about “super-couponing” but after spending hours upon hours hunting and scrolling online, I’ve netted only a few coupons I could use. Many manufacturers want to know practically everything about you before they will give you a one-time “sign-up” coupon; I’m not sure it’s worth it. However, I’ve discovered (through the books) a site that will send a link to the coupons—all in one place, to my inbox: http://www.couponmom.com

My current thinking is that I might do better with the coupons in the Sunday paper—if we can remember to buy one. Trading coupons you don’t want with friends and family can even out the cost of the paper. Remember to look for them in the pages of the paper too—not just in the inserts.

Please let me know about your experiences in couponing. I’ve made the comment process as simple as possible.