Day 10!

Well, I was planning on going to yoga tonight, but a most unexpected thing happened: SNOW! Now, I’m from Michigan so it’s not as shocking to me. But everyone here in North Carolina is just freaking. 2-6 inches? OMG close schools. My work was even making a “snow emergency”  plan. Geez. But it is cool and unusual to see here. Exciting news here, all the little kids in my apartments are out screeching and playing in the snow right now. In order to beat the snow (and the crazy inexperienced southern drivers), I rushed home and postponed yoga until Sunday.

Today, I drank a mango Bolthouse smoothie. Yum. For breakfast I had a PB and J on my homemade bread. The bread, on try 3, was much better than the other two tries. I know my fourth try will be the winner! Like I’ve said a million times before, I am not a baker. Don’t know why. Also, I don’t have a green thumb. Kill every plant I have. A baker and gardener I am not.

I brought some Annies bunnys grahams to work to snack on, as well as a granola bar. I woofed those down by 10, but wasn’t really hungry until around 6 when I made a small veggie sandwich. When I got home (through the blizzard, lol) I made this.

Falafel Sammie

It was amazing.

I’ll describe.

Leftover falafel I made my boyfriend a few days ago. A heady add-water mix that was amazing. Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, on some pita bread. Not the amazing pita bread I made the other night, just a store-bought kind. Sorry to have not shared more info on it, but it was amazing. When I make it again (prob in the next few days) I’ll post a recipe and pictures. Then the incredible avocado sauce.

Let me tell you about this sauce. I invented it last year trying to use up avocados that I had abundance of. Its amazing, healthy, and works great as a dip, sandwich spread or a salad dressing. It’s a great salad dressing because there’s no added fat and its a great flavor.

Easy Avocado Cream Sauce

• 1 Avocado
• 1/2 cup almond (or whatever type) milk
• 1/4 cucumber, peels and seeds and all, cut in chunks
• 1/4 onion, cut in chunks
• Generous amount of dill to taste
• Salf and Peppa

Blend until smooth and slightly liquidy, pourable. Freaking enjoy this incredibleness.

So I drizzled the top of my falafel sammie with this sauce. It was like a better,vegan version of tzatizki. YUM!

I must hit the hay, but wanted to throw these two pics in. One of me, in the maze gardens in Colonial Williamsburg last month. And one of me and my BF from about a month ago too. Cute couple eh?

Much love to all!!!

The(Still not so much)FrugalVegan

Things got a little crazy…

Things have gotten suddenly crazy in my life. I’ve been impressed that I’ve maintained my veganism for 9 days, and have resisted the urge to smoke even though stress is my main trigger.

I’ve been kind of slacking on my budget- for many reason.

1) Laziness. I have bought a Bolthouse Juice for the past three days (around 3.50 each bottle) because I love getting my fruit fix but haven’t had had time to buy and make smoothies. That automatically blows my budget.

2) My failed bread experiements. Not extremely pricey, only a few bucks down the drain. I’ve learned from my mistakes (I hope) and I think a successful loaf is baking as we speak.

3) My determination to resist non-vegan temptations which prompted me to buy more expensive food to placate myself. Example: Walnuts, a vegan chocolate bar, vegan chocolate granola bar, and potstickers from Whole Foods in a moment of weakness and hunger.

So for now, I think I’m going to take a slight break from my budget. Don’t fear, just until I get myself more settled into veganism. I still will blog about my journey and explorations into my new food choices. I also have found it really cathartic to write about my life intermingled in with my posts about food (which I’m obsessed with). Its been helping me to deal with the new changes I’ve had going on.

At any rate.

I’m planning on starting yoga tomorrow. I’m so excited. If not tomorrow for some reason, if I had to work late, then on Sunday. I can finally breathe and report that my cold is 97% over. The extra lingering 3% is my stuffy and runny nose. But I’ve been hypothesizing lately that it could be a form of detoxing by expelling extra mucus from my body. Or I’m just running the course of a virus.

I’ll write more later, but just wanted to check in 🙂

The(Not so much as of late)FrugalVegan

Day 6, Week 1

I can’t believe I’ve almost made it a week. As I told my friend yesterday, its so much easier than I thought it would be.

I will tell you I’m definitely feeling withdrawal symptoms from dairy. Perhaps  Maybe I’m not drinking enough water or the fact that I’ve forgotten to take my vitamins for the past three days may contribute to that. I just took my battery of vitamins and will make an effort to drink at least 120 oz of water today. I’ve already drank 20. So just 100 more.

But my foggy headedness, headaches, lack of energy (or random bursts of it, and then highs and lows), body aches, lack of concentration/motivation have been occurring the whole week, and a fresh round of breakouts on my face. I’d been experiencing low energy and body aches since before going vegan from being sick and stopping smoking but I was expecting these to be the first things that changed.

I really hope this time next week I’m typing about how fantastic I feel. I’m sure my body is just ridding a bunch of crap from it and getting used to all the good foods I’m giving it.

Anyway, I’m almost off to work to work the late shift and was just catching up on my blog from yesterday. Decided to type a half entry for the day and then update tomorrow.

This morning I slept in late, and woke up all foggy and slightly headachy. I chugged a cup of coffee, and a glass of water and hastily made a smoothie containing all the fruit I have left in the house. A banana, grapefruit, orange, flax oil, almond milk and a scotch of agave nectar. I gave 1/3 to my BF so I’d say I ate about ($1.00)‘s worth. I ate a bowl of Kashi with almond milk ($.40) and a small salad with spring mix and a splash of vinaigrette ($.50). 

I had two vegan Italian sausages left in my fridge from a few weeks ago, and kinda cracked and decided to eat one. I had some leftover buns in my freezer, and enjoyed a sausage on a organic flour bun with a squirt of ketchup ($1.30). I’d been avoiding them because while they aren’t super processed, and weren’t super expensive ($3.00 for 4 big ones) they are just chock full of soy. But it was delicious, and my boyfriend liked the bite of mine he had so much that I made him the second one and he gobbled it up.

I had a nice afternoon of computer, quality BF time and food, but its time for me to head off to bring home the vegan bacon substitute. Hardy har-har-har.

Will edit this later!

EDIT: Wow, tough day at work. I left the house in such a hurry that I forgot to bring anything to eat. Dammit. I put the thought off in my mind until about 10 when I realized I was just starving. I ate a banana we had there. Still starving. So I made a veggie sandwich with onions, tomatoes and lettuce and ketchup and mustard. Sounds weird, but I swear, there’s very little to work with that’s vegan there. I wasn’t excited about eating white flour, but let me tell you, it did the trick. Until about 1:30. And I lost control. Someone brought a cake for my bosses last day. It had been staring at me all night. Without thinking really, I decided to just have a smidge. I couldn’t tell you exactly how much, or honestly if there was any, dairy in it. I didn’t feel better or worse, I didn’t feel too guilty or disappointed. I just ate a piece, enjoyed it and that was that. It really was tiny, just like three bites. Anyway, so technically today I probably strayed from veganism. But it was a hard, crazy day. And i didn’t get out of work until 6am. 13 hour day.

So I thought if I should add the food from work into my totals. I did technically consume food that costs money to someone (not me though). Its a fringe benefit from working in a restaurant, free food. I debated this against true accuracy for the experiment, which is skewed from my inclusion of free food. Ultimately, I have decided not to include it, since I really don’t eat too much of it. And its all so cheap, and in such small portions, its probably won’t skew the totals too much.

TOTAL FOR TODAY: $3.20

Have a healthy and happy day!

TheFrugalVegan

Day 5, Week 1

Yesterday was a crazy day.

First, I could barely get out of bed I was so tired in the morning. Drastic change from the day before. I ate some Kashi cereal and almond milk ($.40), a slice of my homemade bread and Earth Balance ($.30) and a banana ($.25). I’ve never been a breakfast person before veganism, but I’m trying to eat as much and as hearty of a breakfast before work. This is day two without a smoothie, and I realize I really miss them and so does my does my body. I’ll get to the store for more fruit soon.

Anyway, so I brought one of my bargain organic granola bars to work ($.25), along with an orange (which i didn’t eat again, I don’t really know why I always forget about it weighing down my bag and stuff). I’m really going to have to go check out Big Lots and see if they still have some bars because they are healthy, tasty and cheap.

Anyway, work went well physically and energy-wise. But two important things happened today.

Firstly, after lunch a man who I didn’t know sauntered into work and everyone’s behavior totally shifted and the energy got really tense. Someone whispered to me that it was a super head honcho in the restaurant. I played along, was very vigilant that I was doing everything perfectly and to policy. And then my boss tapped me on the shoulder and said Head Honcho wanted to talk to me. I asked him if its good or bad, and he said he just liked to meet all the new managers. We talked briefly, he was really cool, he just wanted to see how it was going with me at the restaurant  He said he’d been hearing good things about me, ect.

On a side note, the company I work for is opening like 20 new restaurants a year in the region. They are going crazy in Virginia right now. When they open new restaurants  they try to pull people from other established restaurants there for a month or so to get it open and running smoothly. I want to help open restaurants. I want to travel around, I’m a good teacher, and I love the idea of staying in hotel rooms for free. I’m just such a sucker for a hotel room. Anyway, that’s my short-term career goal.

Head Honcho puttered around for a bit more, and then left. I went back to talk to my boss all self-absorbedly about what Head Honcho and I talked about, and found out that essentially my boss had gotten demoted. He was told he was going to get transferred to another restaurant, and that tomorrow was his last day here and we were getting a new general manager. Super bummer, not only did I really like my boss, he is a great leader and I was learning so much from him. Sad news. He was putting on a brave face, but I could tell he was really bumming. I am too, as is everyone at work. This will be a big morale hit for the staff, and the new GM is going to have really big shoes to fill.

So after my long day, I went home and was pretty hungry. I’ll admit, I was munching on some oreos we had at work today. I think I had low blood sugar for a bit, because they sure perked me back up. But when I got home, I made some tacos with leftover beans and japonica rice, on two corn tortilla with a bit of salsa and chopped onions ($.60). I was still munchy, so I ate the other half of my pita chips ($.50). I was still muchy so I made popcorn. YUM. Best idea I’ve had in a while. I used coconut oil, earth balance and sprinkled garlic salt and nutritional yeast on it ($.30). Satisfied, I went to sleep. Actually, I passed out halfway through my popcorn bowl watching 30 Rock. Then I woke up an hour later, finished my popcorn and then crawled into bed.

TOTAL FOR TODAY: $2.60 —-definitely didn’t eat as much as I usually do today. Good total though.

Day 4, Week 1

This will be quick, because I just want to curl up with a book and relax. I just had one of those days, messed up something with money and just made a huge debacle for myself. Also, I spilled coffee all over my desk. Ruined so many things. I almost cried out of frustration.

Anyway, I sure was in good spirits this morning and last night. I thought I was pooped last night, but around 11 o’clock got a second wind and decided to try to make some bread. I had visions of peanut butter and jelly sammies for lunch, and bread with my new earth balance spread. I had all the ingredients for this recipe which I discovered (also a great website!). So I threw it in my roomies breadmaker, hit start and then went to sleep.

Now, I’m no baker, and I defiantly did something wrong. My two hypotheses are old flour, and old yeast, and the fact that I didn’t have plain salt (only garlic salt) and omitted it. Not that it wasn’t good, it is, it was just really heavy and dense. Its so healthy though, its all whole wheat, with flax seeds, oatmeal, and some steel-cut oats which I had soaking for my breakfast. I’ll play around with the recipes, the comment section of the bread recipe I followed it full of helpful tips and people offering troubleshooting for common problems.

Anyway, I estimated the total cost of the bread loaf to be around 2 bucks. Its about 12 slices so we’ll just say around 20 cents a slice. I woofed down one for breakfast ($.20) with a smear of butter and peanut butter ($.20). I also soaked some steel-cut oats and made those with a banana, agave nectar, and almond milk ($.75). No smoothie today, just hearty goodness. I made a pb and j ($.75) to take to work. I ended up spilling coffee all over it and not even getting to eat it but it still counts.

My steel-coat oats, and my piece of toast, yum 🙂

My bread attempt, still good but very dense!

I finished some leftovers tonight ($1.25) and a granola bar ($.25). My roomie gave me a scoop of some taboulleh salad she got at whole foods and I threw it over some baby greens ($.50). I’m thinking popcorn to munch on later, perhaps?

TOTAL FOR TODAY: $4.40

I wanted to throw in that I woke up at 5am, before my alarm went off and felt pretty good. I ate breakfast, pittered around the house and was feeling pretty good for the first part of the morning but then I started to crash. I got more congested, my brain got fuzzy and my body got achy. Hence why I’m in bed with a book.

I hope I kick this crud soon.

Have a healthy and happy day!

TheFrugalVegan

Day 3, Week 1

I remember the last time I went 100% vegan (lasted about 2 months), the first thing I noticed was my huge jump in energy. I was working a lot then, but the same hours every day so none of this erraticness I work now. I was having trouble getting up in the morning before going vegan, but the most marked change was that after a few days vegan I would just jump right out of bed, ready to go. And I was going to sleep at like 1 in the morning because I had so much energy and getting up at 6. I felt amazing.

I know its only been 3 days, but I haven’t really felt any changes yet. Except my wonderful poos. I’m not complaining, I’m sure my weakened immune system is to blame for it. Just noting my observations.

Also, prompted by a comment on reddit which made me research the average food stamp allowance, I have decided to drop my weekly amount from $50 to $30 dollars a week. I was a bit mistaken, I confused what I had received when I had been on food stamps a few years ago to be the average. I was allotted the full $200, which is believe is the maximum amount given in most states. After doing some research, I have found the average to be about $4/day. I am editing my earlier mission statement and feeling super challenged now, as I was beginning to think that $50 was quite a bit more than necessary.

Anyway, today is my day off. I started out the day with some coffee and coconut milk ($.25) and a smoothie. I have almost used up all my fresh and frozen fruit, so today’s smoothie was just an orange, about 1 1/3 cup pineapples, 2/3 cup coconut milk and 1 tsp flax oil and bee pollen ($1.20).

I headed out to do laundry, and popped into Big Lots while it was washing. That store is always surprising. I scored some whole wheat pita chips for a buck, 5 organic vegan granola bars for $1.25 and Kashi granola for $1.50! Amazing. I was pumped, but the whole outing wore me out.

I wanted to note really quick that my sickness is still dragging on. I’m not coughing my “tuberculosis” cough (as my boss coined it) anymore, but my nose is so stuffed up. It’s like a thick snot too, so its hard to blow out of there. I’ve been breathing through my mouth for 5 days. My lips are chapped, my mouth is dry, I just feel uncomfortable. I really want to start my bikram yoga classes but am waiting until I can breathe fully to begin. Then I will be going 3-4x a week. I’m really excited.

While I don’t need to go grocery shopping yet, my roommate talked me into heading to Walmart with her after I got back. We popped by, I ended up getting a netti pot and some other staples. I got almond milk this time, ingredients to make homemade bread and a few odds and ends. I wanted to save the real shopping for Whole Foods later this week.

And after this outing, I was really pooped. I decided to try my netti pot-AWESOME- and then started on dinner. Black beans($.25), kale ($.25), onions ($.25) and japonica rice ($.35) stuffed and baked in a green pepper (2 for $.65/each). I also threw a dash of some spices in it, and a few pinches of nutritional yeast for extra flavor. The beans needed to cook a while, and the rice needed an hour to cook, so I decided to multitask and run a bath.

This time I added baking soda along with my epsom salt. I soaked until the rice was done, mixed my rice and beans with the other veggies and threw them in the oven to bake. I realized that I couldn’t really smell (side effect of the netti pot or maybe I haven’t been able to smell all day? I’m unsure.), so dinner was a bit hard. I could barely taste anything. I only ate half my pepper and saved the rest for tomorrow. I gave the other pepper to my roommate. She loved it. The whole meal cost $2.40, but there was leftover filling to do something with (I’m thinking an awesome burrito to take to work tomorrow!). I gave the other pepper to my bestie, so I’m saying today I just consumed about ($.50) worth of the goodness. I ate half the bag of pita chips earlier ($.50) and a V8 veg and fruit juice ($.70) I got at Big Lots when I felt my energy plummeting. If I wouldn’t have gotten the juice, my day’s total would be a lot better. I need to be better prepared about eating- bringing snacks, eating before I go somewhere, ect. I also munched on a small portion of leftover curry ($.40) earlier. Which brings the days grand total to…….

TOTAL FOOD EATEN TODAY: $3.55 – within my new goal!

I’m tired, I work early, and my body just needs rest. Have a blessed and healthy day!!

TheFrugalVegan

This is Vegan style

Saw this on a like-minded souls blog, thought it was hilarious. Also, couldn’t get the song out of my head all day. Enjoy.

Veg*nuary

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Day 2, Week 1

Good morning!

I have to work the night shift tonight so I wanted to post a bit, and then edit it tomorrow to account for everything I ate later at night.

I made my highly controversial smoothie ($1.55) with bee pollen this morning. ( CONTROVERSY HERE) Also I made a delicious espresso (my BF gave me an espresso maker for Christmas) with steamed coconut milk ($.50). Its a slight chilly morning here, but I heard that on Friday it will get up to almost 70 degrees! Wowza, the weather in NC is crazy.

Anyway, I’ve spent all morning/afternoon putting around my house, catching up on e-mails, interwebbing, and cleaning. My boyfriend left this morning for three days to go to Memphis for work. It will be weird to sleep by myself, but absence makes the heart grow fonder. (HA I misspelled absence and the first spell check option was abstinence! That makes my heart grow fonder too!) I love having the “house to myself” though, and since this may be my last year as a non-married childless woman these days may become few and far between.

I’ll delve off subject to input one thing. My boyfriend and I have talked about having kids and getting married (definitely more about my thoughts on marriage later) for the last two years, and have slowly been working towards that goal. We’ve been saving money, preparing ourselves mentally and strengthening our relationship. Everything’s been going great, but preparing my body and his is next. I wanted to detox for at least a year before getting pregnant, and then have the most nutritious  stress-free, healthy pregnancy possible. So this is the year before, and this is me detoxing and getting healthy. I.cant.wait.to.be.a.mother. But more about that later.

Anyway, I made a bowl of steel-cut oats with coconut milk, agave nectar and bananas, with a dash of cinnamon ($1.00/made two servings). Yummy. I had forgotten how much I loved oatmeal until I read this recipe for apple pie oatmeal perusing blogs last night. Also a great blog!

I’m still doing good on cleaning my fridge and cabinets out, but am compiling a list of groceries that is added onto every time I see an amazing recipe or get a craving.

Projects for the future:

• BAKING! I need to overcome my fear of baking, esp. vegan baking. I think its my experimental side, and my disdain for exact measurements that cause so many baking disasters in my kitchen. But inspired by my roommates awesome breadmaker sitting in the closet and a plethora of great recipes I’ve found, I think I will conquer this fear. I would love to make my own bread on the regular, if I can hone my skills at this. And also I’d love to make some healthy muffins to snack on at work and delve into special occasion/dessert baking after I’ve mastered the basics. I’ve always wanted to be a woman who always had someone fresh-baked and healthy on hand. Also, as the heady whole wheat bread I buy costs about 4 bucks I think that baking it myself will be more economical.
• Chia seeds! A handful of my co-workers religiously drink Kamboucha teas with chia seeds in them everyday. I’m not going to say much on this subject, but they like to think this makes them the healthiest people in the world even though they eat junk the rest of the day. Anyway, I’d never heard of chia seeds until then. I saw some at Whole Foods the other day but was definitely deterred by the $10 for like 12oz price-tag. I remembered one of my co-workers mentioning he’d found some at a Mexican grocery store for a bargain; I might check that out. Easy Chia seed pudding recipe I found, also from a blogger with similar goals and challenges as I.
• Veg broth and then amazing soup- still searching for the right soup recipe (preferably a crockpot one) to use my homemade broth with but preferably has tons of beans, some sort of ancient grain, and tons of veggies. Yum.
• Vegan burgers of some sort, I’m a sucker for a patty with ample amounts of veggies piled on and maybe some homemade ranch sauce? Or if baking is going well, on homemade buns? Anyway, I’m looking into recipes for this.

So I’m going to pack up some pita wedges and hummus to take to work again ($1.00), and take my orange from yesterday ($.30) didn’t eat it again, but blended it up in the morning in my smoothie. 

Oh, and I also started soaking some black beans last night and cooked them for about a half hour today and put them back in the fridge. I have visions of black bean and black japonica rice stuffed green peppers to eat tomorrow. Never had black Japonica rice before? Its pretty amazing, its nutty and really flavorful. I got it from a health food store a while back under recommendation from the owner was raving about how it has more antioxidants than blueberries.

Wish me fun times at work!

TOTAL FOOD COST FOR TODAY: $4.30 $4.00

Have a blessed, healthy, and positive day!

TheFrugalVegan

Day 1, Week 1

Bueno!

I ended up feeling better last night. I took this amazing Epsom salt bath, which I swear drew the sickness right out of me. It was a great hour. I scrubbed my whole body really well, and I’m not going to lie, the water got pretty gross. I had no idea that my skin was so dirty, or perhaps it was residue from my soap or from my lotion.  I got out, made a bomb smoothie and chugged a few glasses of water and I feel 90% better. And my skin is so soft! I will try to do a soak/scrub at least once a week from now on.

During my fantastic soak, I watched “Vegucated” on Netflix. It was mildly informative, but I felt like the host was far more concerned about animal rights than health benefits. Which is okay, but she barely took note of how great her experiment participants looked at the end of their 6 week vegan trial.  Being vegan must have taken 10 years off the older woman, and completely cleared up the college aged girls acne and made her positively glowing. I’d recommend it for a light watch, perhaps a background view while surfing the interwebz or reddit or something.

After the fantastic bath, I got to concocting a delicious meal. I wasn’t feeling up to a grocery store run, so I assessed my stock at home and created a pretty great dish.

I’ve told my friend before that we should collaborate and make a recipe book one day. Not only is she my food-soulmate and likes everything I do, she talks and write like I do. When we share recipes with each other in our own words, this is how they are. We don’t usually use standard measurement forms, but for my readers sake and for cost analysis I’m going to start recording my recipes in cups, tablespoons, ect. And in bold next to all the ingredients I’ve added a estimate for about how much it cost.

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Cheap Curry with Veggies and Chickpeas

• Ingredients:
• 1 cup of dried chickpeas (more about the preparation below) $.30
• 4 Yukon gold potatoes, washed and diced into 1 inch pieces  $.50
• 2 spoonfuls of coconut oil $.25…or something like that
• 1 red onion, a quarter of it diced finely for the sauce, and the rest sliced into uh, strips? like you’d slice it for fajitas $.50
• a few splashes of white wine (optional, I just had it lying around)
• 1/8 cup of curry powder $.40….I’d say all these spices were about this much total
• 1 tbsp. of turmeric
• 1 tsp, or a few shakes of cinnamon (to taste)
• 1 tsp garlic powder (would have used fresh garlic but I am out)
• Unsweetened coconut milk, like about 2 cups of it $1.00
• About 20 green beans, with the ends snipped off $.50
• 1/4 of an eggplant, diced in about 1 inch pieces (not necessary to this dish, just had it lying around and wanted to use it up) $.30
• 1/2 cup yellow raisins (again, not necessary to this dish, but have them in my cupboard) $.25
• 4 leaves of kale, rinsed and torn into pieces without the stem $.30
• 2 cups couscous $1.25

1.  Dried beans rock. Not only are they way more cost efficient then canned beans, you can season them just how you like. I soaked about a cup of dried garbanzos for about 18 hours, then rinsed them and boiled them for about 20 minutes. I kept them in my fridge for about a day until making this dish. I decided to boil both the potatoes and chickpeas (which were at this point tender, but still not quite done enough) for about 20 minutes. I put in saucepan with water to cover plus about 2 inches more. I added a shake of turmeric and a shake of garlic powder, which was amazing because it really went a long way in pre-seasoning the potatoes and chickpeas. So which this was boiling I started on the sauce. Oh don’t forget to stir and all that.
2. Okay, sauce. First I melted a spoonful of coconut oil (if you don’t use coconut oil yet, buy some, its amazing) over like medium heat and then added my diced onions. I let them brown slightly before adding just a splash of wine to them to sort of caramelize them. Then I added all my powders to toast for a few minutes. If you haven’t done this before, this is a great way to really enhance the flavors of your spices. Make sure you stir around to keep them from burning. You’ll notice them getting really fragrant. Then add about a cup of coconut milk. I used a carton of “SO Delicious Unsweetened Coconut Milk”. I use this stuff in my coffee and as a milk substitute of all sorts, usually I have this and a sweetened carton of coconut milk in my fridge at all times. So stir, bring to a slight boil, and then add the rest of the milk. I left this simmering on a low temperature while I started with my veggies.                                                                                                                                                  
3. Big stir-fry pan, started heating another dollop of coconut oil on med-high heat. Added green beans and eggplant to fry first, then after a few minutes added onion. This is where I take the potatoes and chickpeas off the heat, drain BUT reserve the water from boiling in a separate bowl. Then I add the chickpeas and potatoes to the veggies, stir around, and start to add spoonfuls of the sauce one at a time to the mix. It absorbs quickly and I don’t want anything to burn so I make sure there’s adequate sauce and I’m stirring everything around enough. After I’ve spooned in almost all the sauce, I added the raisins and kale. Cooked for a few more minutes, added the rest of the sauce and then switched on a super low heat.
4. Couscous is my favorite grain. “The food so nice they named it twice”, as I always giggle while I’m cooking it. It’s easy to make, quick and delish. So I took 1 cup of water and then 1 cup of the reserved chickpea and potato broth and boiled it, then added 2 cups of dried couscous, flipped off the heat and covered. 5 minutes later, I flipped off my veggie heat, ladled into my bowl and enjoyed a tidbit of my tasty vittles. Topped with nutritional yeast, (which again if you don’t use, check it out) it was amazing.

The end result, yum 🙂

Cost analysis: $5.55

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This dish made about 5 portions. I’m sharing with my roommate and my boyfriend so I’ll update how much of it I will factor into my weekly calculations as it goes. I have to note that this is a great use-all-the-leftover-veggies-in-the-fridge recipe, the curry sauce goes great with anything. And I pretty much always have the sauce ingredients on hand, as I’m sure a lot of vegan households do too.

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Breakfast Smoothie

• About 8 whole frozen strawberries $.35
• About uh, 2/3 of a cup of frozen pineapple tidbits from Trader Joes $.35
• 2/3 cup sweetened coconut milk $.35
• 1/2 grapefruit, peeled and torn up into about 4 chunks $.25
• A tsp. of flax oil $.15
• A tsp. of bee pollen

Cost analysis $1.55

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I made this smoothie along with my morning coffee and packed both up into to-go containers to take to work. I also brought along an orange ($.30, never ate it, brought it home)and pita bread quarters with some awesome garlic hummus I picked up at Whole Foods the other day ($1.00) . I added some tomatoes and onions from my work to eat them as little sammies, and snacked while I counted money. I brought a to-go container of curry, but didn’t ever really get a chance to eat it. My smoothie had me pretty revved up all morning, and I stayed busy until the end of my shift where I ate a late lunch of pita bread and hummus.

When I got home, I heated up some of my curry and devoured it, then heated up some more. I added some Tapatio for a kick this time, along with nutritional yeast. Yummy. I ate about 2 portions, about $2 worth.

I feel pretty darned good. My cold is about 90% better, I coughed and blew my nose considerably less than I did yesterday. My energy levels have been great today, and I never felt a crash. I came home from work not feeling exhausted which rarely happens.

I wanted to post this early, but I might add some food later, as I’m trying to stay up as late as I can tonight (I work 5pm-4am tomorrow night). Super messed up sleep schedule. I’ll add it in as an edit if I end up late night snacking.

Also, I probably might forgo getting new food for the next few days and try to use up my food stock at home. I like getting creative with what I got. I love going grocery shopping, so the longer I wait the more excited I’ll be. Fridge and pantry (and my body :p) clean-out week.

But anyway, I think I might like this vegan thing. 🙂

TOTAL FOOD COST FOR TODAY: $4.55  after late night snacks $6.05

EDIT: I did eat about one more portion of my curry ($1.00) and a Kashi pumpkin flax granola bar ($.50) because I was really craving something sweet. I knew I would get late night munchies.

Have a blessed and healthy day 🙂

TheFrugalVegal

I’m ready, Freddy!

Hola, homies.

The past few days have really been very good motivation for my project.  I mentioned before that I’ve been chronically sick since I started my job, for the past month now. I had the flu, and then had a nasty cough, and now I have an even nastier cough and a horrible head cold. Like mucus is draining out everywhere. YUCK.

Tomorrow, I’m starting my 100% vegan diet. I have to work long shifts the next two days, so I have to be very thoughtful of cooking in advance and taking stuff to work. I am so active at my job that I get hungry often and need lots of constant energy. I’m hoping to get one hearty portable meal and some snacks to bring everyday.

I’m going to attempt to prepare meals and snacks for the next two days, and make sure I have everything I need until Wednesday, my next day off. I say “attempt” because I’m really feeling terrible, I’m in bed with hot tea and Netflix at the moment.

So to combat my illness, and pump myself immune system up, I’m going to make myself a good fruit smoothie tomorrow, and snack on lots of fresh fruit. I’ll make some hearty veg dish, and drink lots of chamomile tea.

Have a blessed and healthy day, will post tomorrow!

TheFrugalVegan