Wednesday Round-up

I made my weekly trip to the Dollar Tree last night, and wanted to share some new finds! Depending on your local store, they might either be old finds or unavailable.

1. Low Fat Strawberry Pop Tarts...don't judge.
2. Unsweetened apple sauce (normally the only varieties I can find are sweetened and cinnamon)
3. Tri-color Rotini (colored with tomato and spinach)
4. Large bags of unshelled peanuts (Normally I buy the five packs of shelled peanuts and gulp them down as an afternoon snack. I eat far fewer when I have to work for it. These are going to be perfect for movie night!)

What did you find at your local dollar store this week?

$10 Off at VitaCost

Most of the grocery stores that carry vegan-friendly treats are on the other side of town in an area where traffic is atrocious. I don't venture into the fray that often, so I'm always on the lookout for ways to get cheap vegan goodness on my side of town. As I mentioned previously, I am blessed with a plethora of grocery stores, as well as a well-stocked Dollar Tree. However, there are times when I just need some salad dressing that is not a vinaigrette, dammit!

One way to get those nommy treats to my door is by ordering online. There are a number of great sites that cater to the lazy vegan, and VitaCost is one of them. The thing I like about VitaCost is that their prices are comparable to what I'd find at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, and their shipping is reasonable. I just ordered from there, and shipping only cost $4.99. I see it as paying someone to go across town for me while I sit on the couch. If you order more than $49 worth of products, shipping is free! 

They carry a variety of food items (my most recent cart contained nutritional yeast, vegan mayonnaise, flaxseed, nori, other baking sundries, and, of course, salad dressing), as well as supplements and other goodies.

If you feel like giving them a shot, here's a link for $10 off your first order (of $30 or more). It'll give you a feel for the site and show you what they have to offer. 

Shopping Fancy at the Ghetto Kroger

I live in a working class neighborhood. The houses are modest. The cars are practical, and most pools you see are inflatable. I absolutely love it: lots of families grilling out, lots of neighbors waving, lots of dogs being walked. It's a fantastic community.

Another wonderful thing about my neighborhood is there are four grocery stores within a 3 mile radius. There's the international grocery store; the bargain basement/questionable produce/don't buy the meat store; the fancier upscale store; and the ghetto Kroger. I spend time at all of them, but the ghetto Kroger is my favorite for being a vegan on a budget.

The ghetto Kroger is massive, but its health food section is not. In other parts of the city, you'll find sprawling displays of gluten free, vegan, or dairy free food. You'll find prepared meals and frozen veggie burritos. The ghetto Kroger has one small cooler with veggie burgers and soy milk and not much else. Not a lot of vegans shop there, I don't imagine. (The meat coolers, however, go on for miles.) At first I was frustrated by this. I thought I'd have to travel across town to Whole Foods or Trader Joes to find food for me. Oh man, was I wrong.

Here's the thing I love about the ghetto Kroger: fancy overpriced vegetables! Why? Because no one buys them. It's not the kind of neighborhood that $7 portabello mushroom caps are gonna fly off the shelves. I certainly wouldn't buy them, and I don't blame others for not touching them either. This situation makes for an abundance of Manager's Special clearance stickers.

On a recent trip, I found pre-seasoned brussels sprouts for $1.99, sliced portabellos for $2.49, and organic spring mix for 89 cents! The regular bulk produce is rarely on clearance (except for mushy bananas, woot!), but I always check the display cases where premium produce is kept. Pre-diced onions, celery, and carrots are always on sale. Last week, I found baby carrots and sugar snap peas on sale for a dollar. Items that weren't in my budget before are now prize dinner items.

I always check the health food shelves also. Ground flaxseed is almost always on clearance, as well as quinoa. So, that's today's advice, kids. Go to the grocery store in a meat-and-potatoes neighborhood to scan the fancy shelves with one pinkie up and one eye out for those Manager's Special stickers.

Do the Berry Mash! (Even though it's not a graveyard smash.)

Not everything I eat is served in a microwavable bowl or a pie crust. One of the main reasons I became vegan was to eat healthier. Does that mean I go broke doing it on a completely organic diet sprinkled with ancient grains and vegan-targeted brands? Nope. I do it on a budget using what I can find.

Before I get to my berry mash, I want to give big ups to my CSA provider: Green Door Gourmet in Nashville. They make being a summer vegan in Tennessee a walk in the park. Every week there is a wide variety of produce, the cost is only $20, and they also have a farm store stocked with extras. Just thinking about those late summer apples and tomatoes makes my tummy rumble. I am truly dreading the winter months ahead because I won't have them in my life...I told myself I wasn't going to cry...

On to breakfast! I have to be at work at 8 am, so most of my breakfasts are on the go. My local Dollar Tree gets Nature's Own bread products, which gives me lots of vegan bread options. I often have a bagel or hamburger bun with berry mash. All you need to make it is a bag of frozen fruit and sugar. I got strawberries and evaporated cane juice at my local DT.

This works with any number of frozen fruits (blueberries, mango, and mixed berries are also at DT). I set the strawberries in the fridge overnight to thaw, then drained off some of the liquid. 

**PRO TIP: Cut a tiny corner off of the bag and drain this way. No risk of mess, and you're still able to retain a little of the liquid, which you need for the mash.**

Then just put the berries in a bowl, add as much sugar as you like (I use about 2 tablespoons for a 13oz bag). Mash with a potato masher, and voila! you have all natural "jam." 

It's much cheaper than store bought jam, and you control the calories. It'll last in the fridge for about a week. I eat it on bagels, waffles, pancakes, all my breakfast breads, really. 

This morning I sprinkled some flax seed all up on there and called it a morning. Who's a healthy princess?

Lunch on the Cheap

I was in the Dollar Tree the other day and found a vegan frozen entree. Yippee! Lunch I don't have to cook! I'm talking about the teriyaki noodle bowl by Sapphire. It's small, so it probably wouldn't make a filling meal on its own. I paired it with a salad from home and an applesauce cup (also found at the Dollar Tree--4 to a pack), so lunch came in at about $2.25. I really can't argue with that.

The bowl itself was about what I expected. Frozen noodles, sweet teriyaki sauce, and tiny slivers of vegetables. While I was eating it, I kept thinking "Man, this has a tangy sweetness that I do not find altogether pleasant." I got to the bottom of the bowl, and what I had thought was a mushy yellow pepper turned out to be a pineapple chunk. I obviously responded with "What the crap is this crap?!?" as I do not much care for pineapple chunks in savory food. It was, however, a welcome change to my usual cold salad lunch, so I'll probably be buying it again.

I have $3 and 20 minutes. Give me a pie!

I guess since this is the inaugural post, I should come clean about something. I hate cooking. I've never really grasped some of the most basic techniques, and I'm totally fine with that. I take shortcuts. I leave ingredients out of recipes rather than go back to the store. I cut corners. And if you ask me to cut batonnets or chiffonade something, my knee-jerk reaction would be to punch you. My adventures in veganism are slowly changing that, but I just wanted to give you fair warning that none of my "recipes" will ever grace the covers of Food and Wine. This first post is a fine example of that.

I went to a birthday celebration last night at a local brewery, Yazoo. They're a vegan-friendly brewery, and to be honest, until yesterday, I had no idea not all beer was vegan. So much to learn. I slurped down some Hops Project and then started drooling over the catering spread. Buttercream birthday cake,  cookies, little bags of donuts to go. My sweet tooth was about to jump out of my face.

I held it together til I got home, then began tearing through the cabinets for a birthday cake substitute. I asked my sweet tooth if it would, perhaps, enjoy a nice organic peach. In a shower of expletives, it told me where I could put that peach and demanded pie. Fortunately, I had picked up the simplest of pie ingredients at the Dollar Tree, so I was ready for just such an emergency.

1 Bama 9-inch graham cracker pie crust
1 Can Musselman's apple pie filling
3 Greenbrier Farms graham crackers (These do contain honey, so Teddy Bears cookies would be a fine substitute.)

I filled the pie crust with filling, then crumbled graham crackers on top...kind of. (My crumbles were a little big because, as I'm sure you'll soon discover, I don't always cook sober.) I popped it in an oven preheated to 350 degrees. 20 minutes later was noshing on pie. It was a little crumbly, so I had to scoop it out with a spoon. So just think of it as a vegan apple crumble rather than a pie. For $3, I refuse to argue semantics.

I topped the pie off with a scoop of coconut milk ice cream. Ice Cream Magic
 has a personal ice cream shaker that makes about 1/4 cup of ice cream at a time. All you need is coconut milk, sugar, salt, ice, and flavoring. I got mine at a clearance sale for $3, and it has paid for itself a hundred times over.