“Observing while in Coscto most Caucasions could care less about rice..but rice helps your meal go much farther.”
Rice is, by far, the CHEAPEST means of obtaining calories, at less than 50 cents per pound (in bulk), or 62 cents per day to get the standard 2000 calories. Obviously you’d eat other food with it, but one could eat at least half of their calories in rice and stretch meat and other foods much further, if necessary. There’s a reason 2/3’s of the world used to subsist on it.
Noodles, flour, and beans are also good too for cheap calories, although not as cheap as rice.
Don’t rule out oatmeal.
It can be fairly inexpensive, depending on what you get it, and it is far more nutritious than rice.
It keeps fairly well, at that.
Add beans to your rice and you get complete proteins.