On being a financially challenged vegan
DirtyDirtyVagrant
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It seems like many of the cookbooks I have are calling for whole spices, fresh herbs, exotic rices, olive oil, and some rather expensive bottles of wine. This just wont do.
So I'm looking for meal ideas. Quick things I can do for breakfast. Salads or soups for work lunch, or sandwiches I guess (whatever). Tips on stocking my pantry and so forth. No eggs, no dairy, no meat.
So I'm looking for meal ideas. Quick things I can do for breakfast. Salads or soups for work lunch, or sandwiches I guess (whatever). Tips on stocking my pantry and so forth. No eggs, no dairy, no meat.
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Honestly, doing vegan on the cheap and keeping your nutrition levels stable is pretty fucking hard. You might dial it back to vegetarian or pescatarian. Is there some reason you're going full vegan?
If you don't actually have a valid reason for doing it, and you're on a budget, you're going to be much, much, much better off dialing it back. Give it a go, but you're going to find it's not very fun or healthy when pinching pennies.
So...things I can do with beans, lentils, frozen vegetables, pre-jarred minced garlic, chickpeas, almonds, tofu, morningstar/boca stuff, whole breads, whole noodles.
I love everything I've listed there. I'm especially fond of green beans and asparagus. I'm just asking for recipes that don't include saffron and flecks of gold and the stillborn fetuses of royalty.
E: I should say thank you for the link. Some of this stuff looks
Japanese and Indian style. I know for a fact that Golden Curry brand (Japanese style) is Vegan in the US. Not in Japan though, for some reason.
But find yourself some vegan curry sauce and just replace the meat in the preparation with the veggies/protein you prefer.
It is tasty as hell.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
E-mail the companies or call them and ask them if they're vegan friendly if you absolutely must be sure that an animal wasn't used in the production of the bottle that your herbs are in.
If you are cooking with wine, the actual quality of the wine is not particularly relevant unless you're a chef in a high-end restaurant. At a most basic level, a cheap bottle of white and red will be quite sufficient for your needs for some time. If you're seeing recipes that call for specific expensive wines, I guarantee those recipes were written by wine companies .
Whole spices and fresh herbs are wonderful. In many cases, they can impart significantly more flavor than ground and dried equivalents. However, the secret is that by adding more of the ground or dried equivalent, you also get more flavor. This is an inferior approach (and can still be somewhat expensive, depending on what spices are being called for), but it's what anyone on a budget is doing. It's also what most people have to do in the winter when they can't get decent fresh herbs.
Exotic rices...there are significant differences between various kinds of rice, but if you can't afford to buy long-grain basmati, or organic brown rice, then so be it. White rice can be substituted in almost every case, although if you tell people you're doing this you'll probably get a lecture on why it's terribly inferior.
Olive oil isn't particularly expensive if you buy it in the grocery store. High-end olive oils are, sure, but it's an extremely subtle difference in a recipe. You could probably taste the difference in a salad dressing if you were looking for it.
The advantage to this is that when your finances improve, you already have all these recipes mastered. All you have to do is un-substitute.
As for asparagus and green beans, I really enjoy them both sauteed in a diluted soy sauce, with a hunk of ginger and just a touch of garlic thrown in.
http://www.lbveg.com/
It is not fully vegan, but most information in there (things like how to prepare beans or balance a meal) would still be helpful.
As a vegetarian I find my food costs to be pretty small. The same grocery advice applies to everyone: the more food you make yourself, the cheaper it is. I.E., buy ingredients, not meals. If you aren't going for anything exotic, then many fruits and vegetables are very cheap. To get proper nutrition and sufficient calories you will need to eat things other than fruits and vegetables of course, but with substitutions when what's called for is pricey, you should be fine.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
When I'm time or money pressed I'll cook a staple "main" with a different spice mix and toss it up into a wrap, taco, or salad. Think taco seasoning, curry seasoning, some tasty sauces. Curry lentil tacos with vegan sour cream sauce! BBQ mushroom sandwiches. Eggplant tossed in pasta with some fresh tomatoes and black pepper.
Also Vegetarian Times has some quick, easy, affordable, and tasty vegan recipes.
You'll probably find that you use a lot more of particular types of spices and not so much of others; like I use way more cumin, coriander, paprika, chile powders and cayenne than I do fenugreek, celery seed, and (excepting the holiday season) cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. Personally I prefer using fresh herbs as they tend to be available yearround where I live and at reasonable expense; for long cooking applications I do dried herbs, but finish with a bit of fresh equivalents, and probably some citrus.
Now if you're trying to sub for saffron specifically you're SOL. It's its own thing. If you're looking for the color you might try some paprika and tumeric (alternately, you could steep some annatto seed in hot oil, but who has annatto seeds?), but nothing replicates the taste.
Adding precious metals to food doesn't really affect the taste, so it's done for other reasons.
There are also interesting ethnic sauces to add some flavor. For example I'm subbing Ponzu for Soy Sauce a lot lately, like in a recipe very similar to JHunz's (plus carrots). It's nice.
I imagine based on your signature that you are in the market for more meals for sustenance and fuel than for fun at the moment at least. For that I would recommend eating a ton of beans, lentils, greens and nuts. (Which is pretty much what my diet boils down to lately)
Also this New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook is not pretty to look at, but is tried and true.
Ive been vegan for 12 years and never had any nutrition issues, the less food specifically marketed to vegans you eat, the better off you'll be nutritionally I find. (i.e. eat a lot of produce, not pre packaged fake meats, frozen pizzas, etc).
The Daily Green has a useful page about what is logical to buy organically for pesticides etc.
As for spices, unless you fancy yourself a foodie, buying whole spices and fresh herbs is not going to make or break your food. Go cheap here.
Even as someone who is something of a foodie (though not a vegetarian), I still agree with this - my wife and I still do just fine with a cupboard of dried spices 9 times out of 10. Although that said, i'm still counting down the days till we buy a house and I can have a massive garden.
Tofurky Beer Brat:
These are like $5 for a pack of 4. Each has 27 g of protein, and 260 ish calories. You can round that out one of those with say a grapefruit $0.30 and have a pretty decent breakfast. Add half a potato worth of hash brown (that's about 2 patties) and it's even bigger.
Also, I can't recommend enough searching for recipes on youtube. You'll often see different people making the same thing different ways. Recipes aren't these static things that you have to follow all the directions for. Just kind of play it by ear, find out if you like it, and then change it for the better.
Here's Hash browns for you: Keep in mind, that you can use a grater for these.
For salads and sandwiches, whenever I've been adding greens, lately I've been using kale. It's really the cheapest green ($0.70/lb) and I prefer the taste of it to lettuce.
For Lunch, you can always do PB+J. You'll have to read the ingredients on the bread carefully. Spaghetti and sauce is also cheap and easy for lunch.
Here's the thing that may save you some money for soups: Use frozen and not fresh vegetables. The quality of the vegetables doesn't matter as much if the end result is going to be in a soup or as part of a casserole. Carrots are also cheap and go well in soups.
An easy cheap soup will be some Asian style wheat noodles, some frozen veggies, and a bit of miso paste.
The noodles generally can be bought pretty easily depending on where you live and look like
Avoid at all cost vegan cheeses. Almost all of them are terrible and expensive. 10 Years later, perhaps you will get it in the back of your mind that maybe the technology has improved and there are good vegan cheeses. These are bad and self destructive thoughts and you should not listen to them.
Change your diet to what's in season. I'm sure there's better pages than wikipedia for that. But, you'll know what's in season when you're at the store just by the how much of it there is and price. When food is in season it is not only cheaper, but also it tastes better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_food#Vegetables
For stocking pantry. At all times I have the following dry goods:
Lentils, Black Beans, plain white rice, arborio rice (You can skip that it's for risotto and may be pricey), Vegetable Bullion Cubes, Spaghetti, Asian Style Wheat Noodles. All of these are cheap and if you add some frozen vegetables of your choosing and some flavoring, then you pretty much have a meal.
Bullion is pretty cheap in terms of flavoring. There's no point in buying those big containers of vegetable broth, when cubes store in smaller volume for longer time and taste the same.
Don't use fresh spices, and also don't go out and buy a lot of spices at once. Maybe start small with salt and pepper and 1 or 2 multi spice mixes like Spike, Tony Chachere's Creole stuff, Garam Masala and Sriracha Sauce Build up what spices you have slowly. Spending a lot of your food money on spices you barely use isn't advised.
If you're on a budget, don't use higher priced more subtle flavors like shallots or leeks instead of a lower priced one like yellow onion. Potato Onion soup is as good as Potato Leek Soup.
When you cook, keep in mind that all vegetables have different cooking times. So, it makes sense to put the ones that take longer to cook in first. I generally use the order Tofu > Onions > Potatoes (most dishes don't use, but if you're doing like a Maasaman curry or some potato stew) > Carrots > Squash > Broccoli > Peppers > Greens > Mushrooms. This is kind of a personal taste thing, though.
I can't encourage you enough to experiment with your cooking. Recipes are general guidelines and not some sort of quest-like checklist for victory.
I apologize if the format of this is too stream of consciousness. I was interrupted by work no fewer than 10 times writing this and I lack the motivation to edit it into a better format.
As for specific examples, last night I had braised bokchoy with oyster sauce and it was fantastic. Total cost, probably about a dollar. Here is an eggplant dish that I love, just substitute for the chicken stock
Shop around to find the best prices. Trader Joe's often has good options for the best price, but you can sometimes find items like tofu cheaper (and better) elsewhere. It all depends on what kinds of stores you have around you.
I will mention that while tasty, items like the Beer Brats listed by Niceguy are not going to go very far on a thin budget. They're more like splurge items. If you want healthy breakfasts, go for oatmeal. If you need faster breakfasts than that, find a granola type cereal that's cheap or regularly on sale and eat that with soymilk (or almond milk or rice milk or something like that, but I prefer soy as a protein replacement).
Someone mentioned curry. Seriously, curry makes everything better. I use curry powder in a lot of foods, but my favorite use is in a tofu scramble. Sautee any vegetables (onion, carrots etc...) in a pan and when they're mostly cooked sprinkle curry powder on them and stir them up. Next, take your firm to extra-firm tofu (half a brick to a brick, depending on how much you want to make) and crumble-smoosh it between your fingers. Sautee it all together, add some more curry and any other spices you want and you have a scrambled egg replacement! It helps to add nutritional yeast, but I find it prohibitively expensive most of the time, and don't usually buy it.
a dish that they sell for $10, is probably only going to cost you $3.
One thing to keep in mind: brown rice is healthier but more difficult to use in sushi. You can use it in maki wrapped in seaweed, but learning to prepare the rice and roll the sushi can be a matter of trial and error. I'd definitely start with white rice if you haven't made sushi before.
I'm looking at red pepper, parsley, oregano, cumin, and maybe thyme. Curry spice? Cilantro, maybe?
You could get a curry powder though they tend to be mainly tumeric, cumin, and coriander. You could buy a garam masala or make one (mine's cumin, coriander, clove, cinnamon, and cardomum).
Get some kosher salt, and grind your own peppercorns into pepper.
Personally I also have on hand onion powder, dried ginger, and granulated garlic when I want to add those flavors but don't have time to break them down, or am adding them to a sauce or rub.
Animal products are fairly frequently used in wine making for the fining agent. Some wineries don't use fining agents or use non-animal ones like bentonite. Some grocery stores might be able to tell you what fining agents are used in each wine, but if you can't find out from them you should be able to call up the actual winery and inquire about their own wines.
I work at Trader Joe's and we have info sheets for roughly 3/4ths of the wines that we carry, and often those list the fining agent used. That's not very good coverage in terms of knowing the fining agent for every wine, but definitely lets us find a decent selection of vegan friendly wines.
I live off of garlic powder and onion powder. Well I did when i was in the states, i'm having a hard time finding them down here in kiwiland, but I have the big jars of minced garlic in the fridge, so it's good.
black pepper
white pepper
red pepper flakes
cumin
smoked paprika
ground mustard
curry powder
garam masala
turmeric
coriander
cinnamon
ground clove
ground nutmeg
rosemary
thyme
parsley
sage
Italian spices (oregano, basil, marjoram, and savory I believe) either in a mix or separate
bay leaves
That's what I would consider a good starting spice cabinet. But I've also been cooking for a few dozen years.
I think, in building up ecco's spice cabinets to my liking, the only ones i'm missing is a mix of italian seasoning, parsley, coriander, and ground mustard (although i have mustard seeds).
it's taken me over 2 months to get almost all of these gathered, buying 1 or 2 a shopping trip and when they're on special. but the ones that I couldn't live without and picked up immediately were the curry powder, red pepper flakes, and the jar of garlic.
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