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Comment by felipemnoa | Hacker News Reader

>Staples like rice and beans are only really cheap when you're buying them in dry form, bulk. This means you need to season them and cook them, which can be a long process.

I don't know. You make it sound as if it were difficult to cook these staples. During my college years these were the easiest things to cook, along with pasta and tomato sauce. Basically it was just a matter of filling the pot with water, dropping the ingredients and then just wait.

Similarly with tomato sauce, add the ingredients in a pot and just wait.

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Adding rice and water to a pot and heating it has about a hundred failure modes that make the result unpalatable and ruins the reagents. Even when it goes correctly, the result is pretty bland, particularly to someone used to packaged food.

One cannot merely put the ingredients of tomato sauce into a pot, heat it in some arbitrary way, and expect the result to be recognizable as tomato sauce.

I think you're massively overstating the complexity of making rice.

I don't mean this to be a larger statement on the economics / logistics / choices / what have you of being in poverty.

One cannot merely put the ingredients of tomato sauce into a pot, heat it in some arbitrary way, and expect the result to be recognizable as tomato sauce.

That's literally the description of a famous tomato sauce[1]. You can add a cup or two of water and a pound of pasta to the same pot at some indeterminate time towards the end of the process.

Feel free to argue that arbitrarily heating it may involve burning it. Whatever. Pasta with tomato sauce is ridiculously easy.

[1] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015178-marcella-hazans-...

If your rice is bland you are not seasoning it right. Garlic or onions work great for this. And don't forget to add salt to the water!

As for "failure modes" you can make things more consistent by boiling the water in a kettle before adding it to the rice. You really can't go wrong this way.

This is my recipe for tomato sauce.

1-Slice 3 to 5 tomatoes

2-Slice 1 to 2 portobello mushrooms.

3-Add olive oil to pan

4-Add ingredients to pan

5-Add salt to your liking.

6-Cover pan

7-Let it cook in a slow fire, no need to stir. Usually takes around 20 to 30 minutes. You can stir at the end to mix the sauce a bit.

-Use this sauce to top your pasta (pasta al dente is the best). Also add some Feta cheese.

Delicious.

p.s. I guess it would be more correct to call it chunky tomato sauce.

You'd be surprised.

> bulk. That is also a keyword there, we don't have money to buy in bulk. I only have 5$ for food...not spending it all on one item or starving the kids till I have the money to buy bulk.

Obviously I haven't lived everywhere in the USA but in most states if you are poor enough to only have $5 to spend on food to feed your kids you qualify for SNAP benefits which will give you a few hundred dollars for food.

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