Frugal Vegetarian/Vegan Nutrition Part Two

[JulieAnne]

Hello all!

I know there is already an old thread about eating healthy on a small budget-but, I am sure there is a lot of new people (or perhaps members that missed the old post) that can give the rest of us some advice.

Personally, I am a college student who really wants to be healthy-but, is super low on funds (I live in an apt., pay my car bills, my tuition, ect.)

Cheap meal ideas, grocery lists, tips, ect. are welcome!

Thanks! :lovesign:

[Elena99]

I can give a few tips:

- The more packaging something has, the more expensive. Instead of buying packages, by the base ingredients and make it yourself. Don't buy salad bags, buy lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, and whatever else you put in a salad. Don't buy dressings, learn to make your own. Being able to cook instead of buying prepackaged saves you money.

- Buy fruits and vegetables in season. Look up online if you're not sure what's in season when, or ask your local grocer. Go to Farmer's Markets.

- Keep a store of dried beans, legumes and chick peas.

- Look for bulk food stores that sell dry foods in bins, so you can pick exactly how much you want, and not have to pay for lots of packaging.

- Learn to love water, and drink it more than other drinks.

- Take time out of a day or two in the week to cook something big, and then store it in the fridge/freezer to have throughout the week. I used to do this for work food, I'd make something big on Sunday, put it in the freezer, and have it in portions for lunches at work.

- Don't buy or eat too many meat analogues; they tend to be pricy, and not always good for you. (By this, I mean veggie hotdogs or faux gardenburger ribs. Tofu, tempeh and seiten are fine.)

[JulieAnne]

Thx for the tips! btw-do you have a good recipe for salad dressing?

[4EverGrounded]

If tofu's not out of your price range, make tofu ranch dressing. Otherwise, squeeze a bit of lemon overtop your salad and drizzle a bit of olive oil on afterwards. Viola! Quick and easy vinaigarette! :D Or, if you want to get "fancy", do a bit of olive oil a bit of red wine or white wine vinaigre (about a 50/50 blend) some italian type seasonings and there you are. :)

If you have a freezer then make the most of it. Rice can be made into a laaarge batch so you can seperate it down into smaller servings for freezing (pretty much all grains can be done this way). It reheats beautifully and quickly. Frozen veggies are quick, nutritious, cheap and don't need a lot of space to store. Dried beans can also be made up and broken down into smaller batches for freezing (they reheat well, too). When I'm too pressed to cook, I know I can heat up a bit of beans, a bit of rice, toss in some veg and I've got quick nutrition ready to go. It's fast food that's healthier than fast food. :yes:

Spices are your friends. With a few key spices, you can season anything in any way you want. My personal favs are ceyanne pepper, lemon pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, curry powder, chili powder, cumin and tumeric. Blends like Chinese 5 spice or Herbes De Provence are nice, too but I've found them pricey at times. Extra frugal tip: if your store has a Mexican foods section, explore their spices instead of the bottled ones. They're usually much cheaper and every bit as good as the more expensive stuff.

Canned beans are sometimes pricy but every now and again, they go on special. When they do, stock up! The same goes for canned tomatoes. I've found that as long as you keep diced in its own juice on hand, there's no real need to have stewed, pureed or any other type of canned tomato around. Extra bonus: when fresh tomatoes are too $$ to buy, canned works just as nicely in cold dishes.

Tomato paste is good to have on hand, too, and plain is much better than flavoured, IMO.

Shelf-stable plant milk tends to be cheaper than their cold-case cousins and they store well, too. When the plant milk you like goes on special - stock up!

Olive oil or extra olive oil is much cheaper than vegan margerine and can be used for many more things.

Corn tortillas are better than bread in that 1) most brands are vegan (the ones I've come across anyway) and 2) a 90, 50 or even a 36 pack is cheaper than a loaf of 24 (maybe) slice sliced bread.

[JulieAnne]

Good Advice! Thanks.
hmmm...how do you make the tofu ranch dressing?

[Azalea]

Good Advice! Thanks.
hmmm...how do you make the tofu ranch dressing?

This one looks good:


http://vegweb.com/recipes/misc/4989.shtml


:)

[4EverGrounded]

This one's also good (if you don't have soymilk or vegan mayo on hand):

http://vegweb.com/recipes/misc/4922.shtml

[bstutzma]

Rice and beans. Try getting a good caribbean recipe (like the one I use!) VERY cheap to make, and delicious! Eat with baked plantains, which are also pretty cheap! :-)

Soups are great money savers, because they go a long way. Make sure your soups have lots of protein through use of beans and lentils, and rice or small pasta shapes. Learn to cook with spices. You can use the same ingredients and get totally different meals based on what spices you use.

Buy when things are on sale. Canned beans cannot be matched for convenience - wait for a sale and stock up! Learn how much vegetables cost - wander down the produce isles even when you don't need to get something. Only buy when the prices are low (be sure to check quality on fruit, though - sometimes they drop the price when they need to clear it before it spoils.)

Don't buy food if you aren't going to eat it before it spoils. Throwing away food is throwing away money.

Make meals that can be frozen and re-heated, so you can make a lot and save both time and money. It makes convenient dinners or lunches later on, and when you have a convenient meal on hand, you are less likely to splurge and buy that overpriced veggie sandwich for lunch at work.

[Coney]

I tried to create a revolving 3 week menu, where I'd buy something for Monday's meal, then Tuesday, I'd use up the left over cilantro, or lettuce, or whatever, in that day's meal, so I didn't waste anything. After a couple weeks, though, it just wasn't working out, so I quit.

Good idea, though to always try to use up left overs. Waste of money otherwise.

Get a good stock of spices, that's my advice. Penzey's Spices has some great mixes to make for great baked tofu. http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/shophome.html

Big things you can make are pots of soups/stews, trays of lasagne, batches of burritos. You can freeze all that stuff in single serving bags/containers. It's easy to eat cheap and healthy, just takes some practice.

[bstutzma]

Cheap college eats(since you asked for examples!): Veggie Chili over tator tots, steamed broccoli on the side. Tacos (lasts for days usually so makes up its initial cost.) Lentil vegetable stew. Grilled vegetable pasta (get cheap seasonal veggies and grill them, throw them in pasta sauce, with some pasta, and there you go!) Veggie tofu stir fry over rice - buy the frozen mixed veggies for convenience, and also, since they dont spoil, they end up being somewhat cost effective because you dont end up throwing them away. I add to the stir fry any fresh veggies I also have on hand. make the stir fries taste different by using different sauces. Burritos. Stuffed peppers (again, cost a lot initially, especially if peppers are not in season - but make a bunch and eat them all week and it evens out.)

[JulieAnne]

Veggie Chilii over tator tots sounds interesting, but really good! Are tator tots really fattening? Is there a certain brand that is better... or is the cheap store brand ok?

[delicious]

This one looks good:


http://vegweb.com/recipes/misc/4989.shtml


:)

I made that recipe and I actually prefer a little vegenaise, soymilk, onion and garlic power mixed up. No need to measure, really.

[zoebird]

here are a few of easy salad dressings:

olive oil and sea salt

olive oil, rice wine vinegar, salt, and pepper

orange/lime/lemon/grapefruit juice, wet mustard, rice wine or apple cider vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper

[delicious]

olive oil and salt can be fantastic depending on the brand of olive oil. What brand do you use zoebird? :)

[bstutzma]

Some tator tots are more fattening than others, but still, the meal itself is pretty healthy because veggie chili is so low in fat and calories (usually). I use an organic brand but I'm sure any should be fine. Check the ingredients, as always. Anything in moderation is ok :-)

Oh I forgot for cheap eats, the infamous pizza bagel or pizza english muffin. You can get that small jar of pizza sauce, put on a couple spoonfuls, and then just throw a ton of veggies on it (the more the better!!) Pizza bagels were a staple of cheap college eats for me, at least! Get bagels that are high in protein - they freeze better and of course are better for you!

[zoebird]

delicious:

i'm willing to spend a lot on food overall. a large portion of our monthly budget goes to it. I tend to buy as expensive an olive oil as i can afford. Currently, we buy BioNaturae's biodynamic olive oil.

for a less expensive alternative, i recommend finding an italian market and buying unrefined (with olive pulp), extra virgin olive oil. It should be green-golden.

a friend of ours pays $200/bottle of olive oil (he's a guy who has $12,000,000). We're going to do an olive oil taste test at his place this summer. We're bringing our bottle, i've ordered (he's paid) for some of the best oils from: greece, crete, cyprus, italy, eqypt, morroco, jordan, syria, and spain. Prices range from $20 to $400 per bottle of extra virgin olive oil. I ordered both refined and unrefined oil (again unrefined is with pulp).

I'm practically a connessuer of this stuff. others do wine tasting--this is my deal! whenever i go to philly's italian market, i taste every olive oil available to me! :) The shop keepers know me "oh! olive oil! olive oil! here, try this! 1000 yr old trees from northern italy! try this one from sicily! try this one from the southern part!" it's really fun. :)

[delicious]

I just started a thread about how good BioNaturae's ww pasta is. :) I will have to try their oo! Thanks.

[colorful]

Costco is a lifesaver for my family.

Silk at 12 quarts for $10.55 is unbeatable. Too bad it's vanilla - I prefer plain or unsweetened, but oh well.

Bulk canned beans and canned fruit are good. Bulk nuts are a HUGE help. Huge bags of frozen veggies are wonderful, and contain so much less sodium than the canned version. Also, their huge bags of frozen berries are great for morning smoothies.

I also buy Olive Oil at Costco because we use it so much. It's not the best-tasting in the world, but it still has that olive oil flavor if you make sure to buy the extra-virgin.

[angelene17]

I don't know if you have a Trader Joe's near where you live... they carry some vegan items, and it isn't too terribly expensive. Their produce isn't the best in the world, but they have good deals on other items. Lots of meat-free frozen items, meat substitutes, and fake cheese. I know that stuff isn't the best for you, but it's good to keep in the house if you're pressed for time. Also, Whole Foods (if you have one nearby) sometimes has good deals, but it can be a pain trying to keep up with what's on sale every week. Things tend to be a little bit expensive there.

I highly recommend getting a crockpot and using that as much as possible. Vegweb has some yummy crockpot recipes, and they're great if you have a busy schedule. Just put all the ingredients in it in the morning before school/work, and you have dinner when you get home. Whatever you don't eat, you can freeze.

[JulieAnne]

Angel-I actually just got a crock pot! Do you have a favorite crock pot recipe you use?

[angelene17]

actually, http://www.crockpot.com/ has some vegetarian recipes.. any dairy items in those recipes can be easily replaced with soy products. My favorite is the squash, and stuffed artichokes (w/out cheese) yummm.. also, if you go to vegweb and type in "crockpot" in the search form, a bunch of recipes will pop up. I've made lentil stew in my crockpot in the past, but I don't have a recipe for it.. I just kinda wing it and throw stuff in there and let it cook all day :)

[JulieAnne]

Thanks! I shall check out those web sites!

[JulieAnne]

OMG-I was at Safeway yesterday getting a father's day card...and I noticed they (Safeway) have their own brand of soymilk and of veggie burgers! Actually-they had two kinds of veggie burgers-and one was vegan!

I was browsing some more and saw cans of beans for 50 cents and pasta for about the same. They even had tabouli for cheap.

So this leads me to question... should I start shopping at the regular grocery store instead of my beloved Trader Joe's to save money.....????

[GTChick01]

OMG-I was at Safeway yesterday getting a father's day card...and I noticed they (Safeway) have their own brand of soymilk and of veggie burgers! Actually-they had two kinds of veggie burgers-and one was vegan!

I was browsing some more and saw cans of beans for 50 cents and pasta for about the same. They even had tabouli for cheap.

So this leads me to question... should I start shopping at the regular grocery store instead of my beloved Trader Joe's to save money.....????

If you can get what you need at the regular store, why not? I love Whole Foods (we don't have TJ's) but they are pretty expensive so I try to only get what I can't get at Kroger.

BTW - Safeway doesn't test on animals. :yes:

[zoebird]

just go for the best value. we used to go to three or four different places to get what we needed at the best value. of course, we would go when we were near to that place. so it was monday, this store. tuesday, that store. saturday, that store. you know?

if it's closer, if things cost less, if you get a better deal, then why not?