Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [52]
3. Watch produce prices carefully. Locally grown fruits and vegetables sometimes cost less than imported produce, while at other times imported produce saves you a lot—just be on the lookout for the best deals. (And be mindful of the carbon footprint—how far your food had to travel to you and therefore how much fuel was required to get it there.)
4. Shop at farmers’ markets at the end of the day. Farmers’ markets are a great place to find fresh, in-season, and locally grown produce for cheap—especially if you shop at the end of the market day, when growers may be willing to sell their produce at a discount, rather than have to pack it up and take it back home with them.
5. Don’t be afraid to buy frozen vegetables. Frozen veggies (especially store brands) are often cheaper than fresh ones, and they can actually be more nutritious, because the veggies are frozen right after they’re picked, preserving vitamins that are lost in transporting fresh veggies from the farm to the store. And of course, keep an eye out for sales and stock up your freezer with veggies that can be tossed into soups, stews, stir-fries, pasta, and many other dishes.
6. Consider the value of your time. For most of us, time is just as valuable as money. We tend to think that eating fast food is less time-consuming—an illusion reinforced by a steady stream of fast-food company advertising. But in reality, the time that you spend driving to a fast-food restaurant and then idling in a drive-through could just as easily be spent at home with your family, cooking a simple meal. All it takes is a small initial time investment in learning to cook a few new meals. Even simpler, you can just convert the meals that you already eat into ones that fit your new lifestyle.
Most families rotate the same menu of dishes every week, for ease of preparation and to simplify grocery shopping. Once you’ve got that set menu of favorite vegan meals, prep time is quick.
7. Veganize the meals you already eat. When my friends Robbie and Colleen made the decision to eat vegan meals, they worried about how they’d feed their family while remaining in their budget. One of the first things that Robbie and Colleen did was to consider how they could take the meat and dairy out of the meals that they already served without spending any extra money.
For example, tacos with ground beef became tacos with seasoned black beans, which worked out to be less expensive, even when they used canned beans, and far healthier than using a package of ground beef. Instead of sour cream and cheese, Robbie and Colleen made a delicious substitution of homemade guacamole—this before they discovered vegan versions of sour cream and cheese. To replace their usual chicken breasts at dinner, they substituted grilled tofu or seitan “steaks,” which are cheaper than a package of boneless chicken breasts. Their kids loved the seitan (made from the protein in wheat) especially, and it quickly became part of the regular rotation.
Spaghetti and meatballs, a longtime favorite of the whole family, became spaghetti with meatless marinara sauce, made either with fresh tomatoes (which can be bought inexpensively at many farmers’ markets) or a delicious sauce made with diced, canned tomatoes (often on sale in their local supermarket) mixed up with crumbled tofu; when the tofu was mixed in, it seemed like the classic Bolognese sauce. Sometimes they used vegetarian meatballs instead, and it was as hearty and delicious as anything they’d had before.
Again, removing the meat from the meal made it no more expensive than if they’d added the fatty, unhealthy meat—with its attendant costly, long-term health problems. For those occasions when they would be pressed for time, Robbie and Colleen took to the Internet to look for some quick, on-the-go vegan options. They found