What to Eat?
The best money saving tip we can offer is to get in the kitchen and cook! Without a doubt, preparing your own food is cost effective as well as healthy and fun. Below we will list a few go-tos for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We encourage you, however, to make these dishes your own. Play around wtih ingridients, use the internet to get inspired, and call your friends to share their favorite recipes or organize a vegan potluck!
Perhaps when first getting started it may be a good idea to stick to a weekly meal plan. This way your trip to the store will be streamlined and you won’t feel overwhelmed. Once you get a hang of cooking and discovered some of your favorites, there will be more room for variation.
Breakfast
- Whole Grain Cereals: While Oatmealis always a great, cheap breakfast. There are a variety of grains (barley, rye, wheat) you can cook, add fresh, frozen, or dried fruit, and turn into a hearty, fast breakfast.
- Breakfast Scramble: Scrambled tofu is a protein packed breakfast, similar in texture to scrambled eggs, that can be adapted to suit your morning craving. Feel lilke a mexican spin? Add salsa to your scramble!
- Veganize your favorites!: We are lucky that there are vegan versions of everything! Like a bagel and shmear with your coffee in the AM? There are several affordable vegan cream cheese options. Prefer pancakes? There a vareity of egg replacers you can substitue with your average pancake mix.
Lunch
- Fall in love with salads! Green salads are a great way to eat a variety of veggies without breaking the bank. Jazz up the protein power by adding some canned beans such as chickpeas or black beans.
- Hummus: A vegan dream food. Hummus is a great base for sandwiches and wraps. Add onions, lettuce, tomotoes and you have an inexpensive, easy to prepare lunch. Or of course, it is a great dip with pita or veggies!
- Tofu the wonder food: Tofu “egg” salad or “chicken” salad, are a great alternative to the animal foods most of us grew up with. Veganaise is a delicous mayo substitue that can help transform tofu into a great topping for a salad or sandwich. Make a whole brick of tofu salad of your choice and easily turn that into 2 or 3 lunches.
Dinner
- Stir Fry your heart out!: Stir frying vegetables over rice is a great way to throw together a nutritious dinner in minutes. We like this tempeh-broccoli recipe from Eat Vegan on $4 a Day.
- Pasta, Pasta!: Hearty, whole wheat pastas are a great start to any meal. Whether you toss with olive oil, tomatoes and brocoli, or try a thai inspired peanut sauce. Pasta is a cheap, delicious, easy go to meal staple.
- Soup and Chili: Soups and chilis are a fantastic way to warm up on a cold winter’s night while also using up veggies about to go bad. Here are recipes for a potoato leek soup and a classic winter chili.
So now you are energized and anxious to make some changes. Great! To jumpstart your vegan on a budget meal planning, we at A Well-Fed World would like to share some of our go-to, cheap, healthy and delicous meals.
Jaime’s Go-To’s:
- Breakfast: oatmeal with raisins and frozen fruit, topped with agave and cinammon
- Lunch: bean burrito with diced tomatoes and whatever greens I have on hand (spinach, perhaps?).
- Dinner: Vegan pizza (can find premade doughs for less than a dollar) topped with nutritonal yeast (cheesy B-12 infused goodness), canned pineapple, and whatever veggies you have in the fridge (I like brocoli and mushrooms).
Other Great Resources:
Books
Websites