Vegetarian on a Budget

[Guest guest]

With the prices of food increasing, it is hard to stock up on certain

items. How do you stay on a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet on a tight

budget?

[Guest guest]

By home cooking meals based on legumes (beans and lentils) and grains.

Even though the prices have gone up they are still a bargain.

 

Shoshana

 

 

, " dkburf "

<kristi.burford wrote:

>

> With the prices of food increasing, it is hard to stock up on certain

> items. How do you stay on a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet on a tight

> budget?

>

[Guest guest]

We have 3 grocery stores within a mile of each other. I watch the sale

prices each week and stock on things we use often. I make up my list from

each store and then pop into each one to get what I need.

 

Homemade soups are nutritious and delicious one pot meals.

 

Buy generic store brands. In 99% of the cases they taste the same as the

more expensive name brands on the same product. Same on medicine.

 

Shopping at Walmart for Dry and canned beans, canned tomatoes, bags of

potatoes, greens, grains, oatmeal, cream of wheat, fresh produce, buying

from Amazon.com(they carry almost anything with great prices, no sales tax

and free delivery on most things, including worthington/loma linda products,

nuts, grains, hemp seeds, agave, soymilk powder, house hold supplies,

etc...), buying spices, produce, baking goods, dry pasta, wheat hoagie

rolls, etc. at Sam's Club are all good values. Bake your own bread. Make

homemade burgers. Buy Tofu, tempeh, canned fried gluten(I love to dice up

this into soups), Miso, at your local Asian market(check your yellow pages

as most cities have several) for best prices. Big Lots often has some good

prices on food products, but their selections are always changing, so stock

up on things you use often, as they might not be there next time you go.

 

Watch Oprah today. She has the whole show today, Wednesday, that she is

devoting to this very topic.

 

Judy

--------------------

With the prices of food increasing, it is hard to stock up on certain

items. How do you stay on a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet on a tight

budget?

[Guest guest]

Apologies if this gets long.

 

Carl and I have been lacto-ovo vegetarians now for close to 25 years.

Our eggs, milk, butter and cheese come primarily from a local farm

family and they charge less than the grocery stores for the eggs,

butter and milk. The cheese is a bit higher but the difference is

worth the extra cost.

 

Honey also comes from a local keeper. Carl bought home 4, 16 ounce

bottles of raw wildflower honey for four dollars.

 

The point here is that you can find some good bargains if you go to a

Farmer's Market or get turned onto local farmers who are willing to

sell to you.

 

IMO, and probably only my opinion, the premade,frozen food meat

substitutes cost more than a thrifty shopper should pay. The store

closest to us is charging more per pound for frozen Gardenburgers

than they are charging for hamburger. Find substitute recipes for

those things, like the spicy black bean burgers, fake crab cakes (I

posted a fake crabless cake recipe a long time ago). Learn how to use

TVP (textured vegetable protein). I have used TVP a long time and

have several sources where it can be purchased cheaply, if you want

me to post, I will.

 

Dried beans are CHEAP. Buying in bulk is even cheaper. Learn how to

use them and learn which ones you like. It isn't much of a value if

you buy 100 pounds of garbanzo beans only to discover you really

don't much like them. (If you do, make hummus. Heaven on pita,

crackers....)

 

Our grocery bill for the humans here averages around 20 a week (two

of us), plus another 10 for eggs, milk, cheese, butter from the farm.

 

Buy in bulk when you can. I just paid 3 buckeroos for a 10 pound bag

of long grain rice. We do a lot of shopping at Sam's Club, where we

buy the 120 pounds of cat food, 400 pounds of cat litter and 50

pounds of dog food monthly. Some Sam's Clubs have bulk beans, ours

doesn't, but we do have a local mom and pop sort of grocery that

sells them very cheaply.

 

Regular oatmeal is cheaper than those packages of instant oatmeal. If

you are interested, I will post my almost instant oatmeal mixture

recipe. We buy peach and strawberry flavored apple flakes to go in

the oatmeal from AAOOB, Walton Feeds and other sites online. They are

the same things in the instant strawberries and cream oatmeal from

Quaker.

 

Cook once, eat several times. For example: Many Bean Chili turns into

taco salad one night and taco casserole another night.

 

Stop buying fancy mixes. You can make your own mixes.

 

Don't approach your vegetarian meals or shopping in the spirit of

sacrifice. You are gaining health and saving money.

 

My husband and I believe in preparedness, so every week we make an

effort to put something into our storage. The most important thing

there is storing things properly. You don't want to spend 20 bucks on

instant nonfat dry milk for your storage or for the week, only to

have it turn to a block of hard milk because it got wet.

 

Try to avoid trendy stuff. Trendy is usually ridiculously expensive.

Unfortunately vegetarian foods are becoming trendy.

 

Don't buy already peeled, cut, diced veggies. Only in America are we

so lazy that they sell veggies already prepared for us - steamer

packages, precut celery and carrots for snacking, precut apples.....I

can buy 5 pounds of carrots for 3 dollars, as opposed to the trendy

already peeled and cut baby carrots.

 

Would you like suggestions for basics for storage or your pantry? Let

me know.

 

Love and hugs, Jeanne in GA

[Guest guest]

my solution is to buy the staples in bulk (rice especially), i buy 5 or 6 jars

of whatever (tomatoe sauce, sugar, etc) when it is on sale. and then i buy fresh

raw food, which isn't very expensive...buying what is in season is usually what

is cheapest. I also almost always make plenty of leftovers and change it up a

little each day until I eat it all (of course I can't do this when my boyfriend

comes over, he eats all that I make and then wants dessert, he's like a 15 year

old boy in a 30 year old body..haha) but that's my secret..and usually I am only

feeding myself.

And by far the cheapest way is to eat at home, I am shocked sometimes how much

it costs to eat out, just 30 bucks for 2 people to eat out is like 3 or 4 meals

for both of us at home.

rice, pasta, and couscous are cheap and very diversifying.

 

fyi..i'm so ready for soup season, keep those soup recipies coming i'm lining my

recipies up for the season