jenforsberg

Earlier this month an acquaintance from church asked if we wanted to purchase bulk quantities of staple items such as rice, beans, and oats from him (long story but he purchased his house from a prepper who had stockpiles of food). We agreed to stop over at his place last Sunday and bought approximately 300 pounds of food for a whopping $30.00! I haven’t even calculated how many years that will last us!

Dave Ramsey claims that in every marriage there is one person who is a saver and one who is a spender. I’m naturally the saver while my husband is naturally the spender. My nickname growing up was “Cheapy” because I never wanted to spend the money I received for birthdays or babysitting.

Financial stress might be the number one reason couples argue in their marriage! We’ve certainly had our fair share of that. So you can only imagine how elated I was the day I received the text from my husband asking if I wanted rice and beans or beans and rice for supper after work. I’d been asking for years for him to share my viewpoint on the easiest way to save money (groceries/eating out) and I had a HUGE financial goal at the moment. I promise I’ll share my huge financial goal and the results on another blog post soon!

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I love my pressure cooker so much that I actually have two of them! Obviously I am too cheap (some people call this frugal) to pay full price for an Instant Pot so I got my first one on Black Friday when I also had a gift card to use. The second one I scored off of a Facebook buy & sell group; it was a steal because the owner had no idea how to use it and didn’t want to learn. If you have an Instant Pot and haven’t used it yet, why not start with the basics? Here is how I cook my rice and beans.

White Rice

1 cup rice

1 ½ to 1 ¾ cups water

Manual setting for 8 minutes. Quick release.

Brown Rice

1 cup rice

1 ¼ to 1 ½ cups water

Manual setting for 22 minutes. Quick release.

Beans

1 cup dry beans (any kind)

2 to 3 cups of water (at least one inch of water covering the beans)

Manual setting for 28 to 30 minutes. Slow release.

Drain when done.

Baked Beans

I use the plain beans I cooked above and googled a recipe for homemade baked beans and just stirred in all of the ingredients (ketchup, mustard, apple-cider vinegar, brown sugar, etc.)