I started going to the food bank a few months ago. I didn’t feel I needed it but a case worker suggested it. I thought I made too much money to qualify but I fit in under the income ceiling so twice a month I get about three bags of free groceries and once a month I get one or two bags of just produce.
The first time I went to any food closet was back in the eighties. Some are better than others but one thing it seems they all have in common is they will give you bags of rice, pasta, and dried, uncooked beans. I always use to never cook those. I would throw them in the back of a cupboard or on a shelf in the back and let them pile up… They just looked too complicated to cook and too much trouble and I had my doubts about how good they would taste. They looked unappetizing. Too plain.
Now I have all these bags of the rice, beans and pasta in my kitchen and I started looking online for recipes and I discoved a bunch of tasty looking recipes for those things. And incidentally, they all have a lot of fiber which is needed. But I tried cooking some rice and it’s easy. So is cooking pasta and beans. So I have a whole shelf in my top cupboard stacked half a foot high with these. Cooking these things are going to save me a ton of money on groceries for at least two months, probably more.