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Ya don't have to eat corn and beans every day. You eat it most days. It's the fallback position when you run out of other stuff. Nor is corn more boring than wheat when you know how to cook it. cornbread, muffins, biscuits, polenta, mush, Johnny cakes, pancakes, (with eggs) crepes, hominy, grits, tortillas, tacos, corn egg noodles, hush puppies, (with fruit) cobblers, the batter for fried fish/chucken/duck. Corn flatbread with peppers and cheese melted on top.The pastry for meat pies.This diet of field corn and beans sounds like it could save me a lot of money but I suspect I would get diet fatigue pretty quickly. I want to keep food acquisition, storage and prep labor to a minimum. I would also like a little more variety in the diet. I realize that it will cost more but it will make it easier for me to stick with it longer term. I am confident I can do it for around $3 a day, for now. We'll have to see where inflation goes.
I am only worried about storing a couple of months worth of food at one time. As I gobble up one months food I will replace it. Then when that months food is eaten and replaced i will eat the other months worth of food. That will keep a nice rotation going so nothing expires and needs to be tossed.
However, if you can eat wheat and have a grinder you can substitute wheat grain for corn.
Assuming you're going to replace your food every month means 'you'll be buying 12 times in small amounts, paying severalfold higher. And not taking advantage of the fact that it is all cheaper in the fall or early winter after harvest. And that it stores well.
Just pinto beans would get boring. So you also buy white neutral flavored beans good in veggie or chicken or turkey dishes/soups that don't overwhelm the poultry or veggies.
Assuming you can buy what you want at good prices is a huge assumption these days.
If you garden you can grow your own corn of especially flavorful varieties. Corn cake flour corns that make fine textured bread and cakes. Flint corns for Johnny cakes and polenta. A special corn for pancakes that actually tastes like wheat pancakes. I grow and eat them all. Along with with five different 4 different flavors of dry beans, two garbanzos, and a cowpea.
As for labor, of course cooking food from dry grain and beans cost more work than opening up cans or using commercial processed products. However, $3/day means you're poor. Poor people who manage to survive gracefully while poor do so in part by substituting some labor for the money they don't have. Its not necessarily time lost, as it substitutes all or in part for the hours extra time at a regular job that you don't need to do if your food costs drop. Part of why many people didn't come back to work after covid is many families discovered they came out ahead if one parent stayed home and did more of the family's childcare, food growing, and cooking instead of getting a job to pay others for that, with the tax collector collecting both directions.
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