Meal Preps & shout out to Moon @Things2Eat

Hey Folks,

I know it has been a long hiatus and those on Instagram can vouch that I have in fact been eating however I have not been cooking. Some may know I got a new job working for Via Rail, which means most of my days are spent on a long haul train, the rest in a hotel in montreal and occasionally a few days back home in bed. As such, since my move to Dartmouth cooking has fallen by the wayside and honestly that bums me and my stomach out.

Sure we've had some tasty food here and there but for the most part, it has been sparse. I still follow all kinds of you lovely folks online with your cooking adventures from the side lines but as fortune has it I have a whopping 4 days home; I've been following alone the lovely Moon's @Things2Eat blog project where she crafts menu plans from blogs around the vegan-sphere. So please, please, please check out her mailing list and meal plans.

@Things2Eat

**Menu Plan Sept 3-9 Original post+recipes**

So yesterdays big adventure was getting groceries which I haven't done in months, I mean MONTHS. With my schedule more often then not things when bad, and there just wasn't time which also meant there wasn't fresh food and so you can see why some of my recent grams were a bit bland.

Meal Preps in action, carnage from multiple recipes on going.

One thing I think I would like to start doing is keeping a better photo record of receipts and food prices here, because it seems they can be somewhat steep or maybe I can work harder on spending less. Let me know if you folks would be interested in seeing more grocery hauls & cost stuff, or if I should leave it to Instagram posts.

As you can see yesterday's adventure amounted to around 100$ but this included non-meal plan items, snacks for board games and a few non-vegan things Adam got. 100$ a week is steep for my usual costs but seems on par with what folks are spending for families (What do you roughly spend on groceries a week?). Some of this will also last longer then a week and many items needed for the menu plan Moon set up I already had so I spent 39.49$ CAD on this meal plan (few things were on sale, plus I subbed red onions/leeks for white onions, used jarred lime juice I already had, skipped all fresh herbs because they are 2-3$ a pop here).


For me the most expensive ingredients were Vegan Ranch @5.49$, 1.79$ avocado, and red peppers 4.06$. I also realized during cooking I didn't buy good bread for the cassoulet so I am gonna go back out and I imagine it will be around 5$. But enough about food costs & my frugal cost cutting.




I didn't follow Moon's directions exactly and I have left a few meals to make later, part way through prepping the bowls, the cassoulet, the lentils, the salad and soaking the chickpeas I realized I might be going on the train Wed and to make a full pot of soup in addition to all these things was potentially Too much food even if I pack leftovers for MTRL & on Board. Since my freezer is still busting, I can't do my usual freeze half for later tactic. But since the corn was on sale, I would like to use it before it goes bad and the coconut milk can is open so I believe I will prep the corn and freeze it in the coconut milk with the red pepper. As the onions/garlic/potatoes are both cheap to buy and should keep until I am home.

Sheet pan full of vegetables for Minimalist Bakers Buddah Bowls. #mealprep

 I also realized I had forgotten to get bread, so what I wound up doing was prepping the cassoulet sans bread and my plan will be to get some after the meeting tomorrow take the dutch oven out of the fridge and bake it for dinner tomorrow so it all works out. I also think maybe the original author of the recipe used a much larger dutch oven or a more shallow one as my tomatoes/beans were incredibly liquid so I kept cooking to reduce it a bit more and thicken the sauce.

Anna Jone's Tomato Coconut Cassoulet (a bit bastardized by me & being cheap). I am going to chill it like this and resume the baking when I have bread

  Not sure why coconut is in the title with only 4tbs that don't seem to add a whole lot but I imagine it increases the richness. I also added dried basil to simmer a bit, not the same as fresh by any means but it will hopefully get me closer to the authors initial creation. I have also learned I need to take some time when I am laid off to inventory my pantry because many of the staples I sore I had in spades are low or exhausted but that is a project for another day.

The Garden Grazer's Lentil Black Bean Cumin and Lime Salad. This will be great train/lunch food and keeps super well. I imagine I will be coming back to this & maybe spending the extra $ for parsley

There is just something satisfying about beans soaking in the fridge over night and prep/chopping a ton of veggies as you stew/roast and mix various things. I miss the kitchen juggling act, with timers beeping at different times when you need to toss the sweet potatoes or reduce the lentils or simmer the sauces. I hope this long winded post finds you all happy and still cooking.

xoxoxox

B.A.D.

Veganmofo: Day 7: Homtown food/ Grocery Haul Halifax

Since I cheated and already posted a #VeganDonair and the Donair is what Halifax, NS is likely most famoous for in terms of dishes I figured I would use this post to show you folks my recent food hauls and talk a bit about food prices in Nova Scotia.

Halifax and Nova Scotia have some of our countries worst food prices, which makes eating and eating well in this province a struggle for many families. I am fortune enough to get by most weeks and longer at under 100$ or more by shopping of flyers and spending time doing my homework on what's on sale where.

The biggest budget tip would be to check your flyers, stick with whole foods, try and keep a stock of staples and check the discount produce rack. Through getting cheap frozen vegetables when they are on sale and buying produce stores are trying to clean then freezing it myself I get by.

As you can see this is a pretty decent haul that will last me over 1 week. Total cost: 59.28$

So anyway here is my grocery haul! I lucked out hitting super store on barrington street because they had all kinds of Asian Vegetables marked way down.

Everything pictured here came out to a total of 59.28$ including a few splurge purchases like Vegan Cheese (4.99$ it was 1$ off the usual 5.99$) and both Vegan Pepperoni( 4.49 which was reduced from 5$) and Vegan Ground Round, again reduced to 3.79$ where the more expensive purchase followed by the giant cereal bag which was 9.49$. I know cereal is crazy expensive.
 

Because I found baby bok choy on sale for 1.99$ each plus one bag was reduced by another 50% off , Daikon raddish for 1.38$ and Nappa Cabage for  1.75$ I figured I would load up on ingredients for noodle bowls and dumplings. As I have some dumpling wrappers in the freezer I added some hot peppers, thick rice noodles, cucumber, ginger, and green onions to the cart along with some soft tofu (1.99$ each) which is the best price I've seen on tofu in ages.
 
I was also able to score some broccoli, cauliflower, orange, bag of apples, and yellow peppers all on the reduce rack taking typically 5$ range veggies down to under 2$ each. I splurged on the cereal because it's one of the few foods A will eat and having a quick breakfast option for a week never hurts.

Because I had company over on the weekend I splurged on both Mock Meats to make a giant pot of spaghetti sauce, a tradition with my guest and the ingredients to make a vegan pepperoni pizza because it's cheaper then ordering out. I also got hotdog buns 50% off for A, as he has leftover hot dogs from his grocery run and I think I have some veggie dogs in the freezer. If not I'll have to try out the carrot dog recipe as I have 2 kl of carrots in the fridge.


The sales on vegetables and the 50% rack really paid off this trip because I was able to get fruit that wasn't bananas (apples 1.49$) and fresh vegetables including a selection of heartier greens that will do well in the freezer or cold room.

I also got mushrooms on special for 2.50$ and loaded up on self stable vegan milk as we'd been running out. I got more bananas, green ones as I had 3-4 from last shopping trip. I also got some vegan instant ramen that can be bulked up with the vegetables and tofu + broad rice noodles for hot pot.

This food will likely last me over a week and I'll show some bulk preps for freezing things before they go bad and hopefully have some further posts coming up on how I used everything pictured below plus a super fun haul form the Asian Grocery Store too.

This shop could have been done for a bit less without the splurge items, but considering how many luxury items I purchased and the volume of food gotten for under 60$ I think I did ok. This will easily last 2+ weeks combined with foods I have at home in my pantry and freezer.

In fact, I could have gotten away with just the fresh produce order as I do have some rice noodles and other pastas at home. But given our house guests I wanted to be a bit fancier. Making your own seitan mock meats or using the TVP I have stored up would give you an equally tasty meal with less $$ and just a bit of prep work. Same with making your own cheese.

It is also possible I could have further reduced this cost by getting some vegetables at Giant Tiger or No Thrills through shopping around, but for a one stop shop I am pretty happy with the totals.


Full breakdown of cost in the photos above! Hot Dog Buns and a Can of Campbells soup were for A as he won't eat homemade food and hadn't gone shopping in a while.