My Vegan Dinner for Under $2 per Serving.
I figured I should start sharing with my fellow Steemians when I make super affordable vegan meals.
The main reason I hear that holds people who are interested in veganism back is the cost. I am super poor and vegan and have been a super poor vegan for about 15 years. So, I have some experience scraping by on the vegan lifestyle. If you guys like seeing my cheap vegan meals I will try to do them once or twice a week to give you more dinner ideas.
Szechuan Snap Pea Stir Fry with Brown Rice, Quinoa, and Tofu.
Costs of items used:
- Szechuan sauce: About $4
- Soy Sauce: $1.50
- Brown Rice and quinoa cups: $2 for two cups
- Frozen Stir fry: $1.75
- Tofu: About $3
I like to put the cost of each item even though we won't use all of it in the recipe because we still have to buy it all, right? I only used a little of the sauce, one of the brown rice and quinoa cups, and about 2/3rds of the stiry fry bag and 2/3rds of the tofu in order to make about 2.5 of the servings pictures above. Which makes it..... tries to calculate ...really heckin' cheap! Oh and I used a bit of olive oil. I get huge bottles for cheap. If you have Aldi near you check there!
Normally, I would prefer to make my own brown rice and quinoa just based on packaging but ran out and my roommate gets many of these cups. So, I used a cup. I do like that it is portion controlled and you just pop it in the microwave for one minute. I separately friend the tofu in a non-stick pan with oil and soy sauce. For the stir-fry I put it in a large wok and fried it for a bit with oil and the Szechuan sauce and then added the rice.
I really should be cutting tofu out of my diet but for now I need the protein. Soon I will be replacing it with other proteins like hemp heart, nutritional yeast, seeds, nuts, and legumes as soy is an IC trigger but until I learn to get all my protein elsewhere I need to stay alive, eh?
So, as you can see. It is possible to be a dirt poor vegan like me.
DISCLAIMER: I do not subscribe to an all organic, GMO free diet. You won't get that on my blog.
Looks pretty tasty to me and I'm a carnivore.
You're probably more of an omnivore. ;) I cook for all my meat eating friends and they love my food. Don't have to be vegan to enjoy a plant-based meal now and again.
Thank you for this one. People just need to realise - veganism is the opposite of expansive!
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Well it is bite-sized dinner :P
It's like $1.50 for this amount, could double it and still be spending like $3. I ate two bowls. ;) You could also bulk it up with more rice. I was just using cups. I need to lose weight so no need to bulk it up for me.
I just wanted it to look nice for the pic. I honestly didn't do the full math on individual serving cost but it's really cheap. :)
It looks great and tasty. Even tofu looks like fish :P
I got pretty good at cooking tofu but it took years. I let this get a smidge burnt but ah well. hehe
Looks yummy!
Have you ever made any of the recipes from the Isa Does It cookbook? Totally helped me when I was transitioning from vegetarian to vegan (now I'm somewhere in the middle...). She has a lot of videos on YouTube as well. (Her vegan banana bread is sooooooOoo good!)
I haven't. :O I will check it out. Pretty soon I will have to radically change my diet and cut SO MANY things out due to auto immune diseases but I should be able to still bake every now and again. ;) I would love banana nut bread. :O
Oh no! Is it soy that you'll need to cut out?
A lot of Isa's recipes don't contain any, which is nice for protein variety.
No I have to cut out way more than just soy......haha. The list of things I can eat is smaller than what I can't. Like any fruits are out. I'm supposed to avoid gluten cause of PCOS also.... All process foods are out. Anything spicy. No tomatoes. XD It's a really long list. O_O
I'm a vegetarian and close to being vegan but I like to have raw honey for health reasons.
I can understand that. Raw honey does have some great health benefits. :)
It has helped so much with seasonal allergies and I really don't have it anymore. There is no harm to the bees either and they are going to make honey anyway.
That actually isn't exactly true. I only know because I wanted to use honey and looked into it a lot. A ton of commercial bee keepers will actually kill their hive during off seasons and buy new ones when they start up again. :<
I don't know how to find out which ones do and do not. But I am glad your allergies are gone. :)
Oh I didn't know they did that. Why would they do that? Just set them free.
I am not sure why but you can look it up. :'( Seems totally stupid to me but often times when people are using animals for products they view them as just that...products. I know there are also bee keepers that love their bees. Just hard knowing how to find out for each honey.
This looks delicious ♥♥♥ I can imagine that some nutritional yeast would be great with this :) Thanks for showing the world that vegan doesn't have to be super expensive!
nooch is good on EVERYTHING. hahaha :D I plan to buy 10lbs of it which seems insane but it's a complete protein and has B12 so if I have to cut soybeans out and can only eat limited beans cause of IBS it's good to add it to everything.
From what I know it doesn't contain B12 - at least not naturally. But maybe your product is enriched with B12, which would be cool ;)
Generally yes, it is fortified. For some reason B12 supplements make people with interstitial cystitis (like me) have HORRIBLE flares but for some reason we can handle the kind they add to nooch? I don't know why but for me it's a valuable thing. :)
Fortified is the word, thanks :D (I'm not an English native)
Oh really? Can't explain either, but I'm glad you found a good alternative ♥
I knew what you meant, no worries. You have great English for a non-native speaker and you've got a whole language on me so way to go! What is your native language? :)
Your so kind, thanks a lot! I used to teach English, so I'm glad to hear that :)
My native language is German but I'm writing my posts in English here in order to reach more people with my message. But the German community is growing as well :p
All this needs is some crumbled apple wood bacon.
You can do what you want with it if you make it but I will be keeping it vegan. :)
That looks so yummy!!
Thanks. :D it was!
Are these ingredients all ORGANIC ??
No I don't eat all organic for many reasons that I won't get into so I won't be sharing organic recipes. Sometimes some things happen to be organic but my blog isn't the place to look for that.