Store-bought vegan cheese isn’t all that great, so you’re not missing out on much. Tofutti is very delicious, but it’s the only exception. I actually prefer making my own ‘cheese’ from scratch, rather than buying that plastic-tasting, sodium-filled crap.

It’s so difficult for me to budget when I love to cook and organic produce and vegan baking items are so expensive! I wish I had some advice, but I think I’m in need of some too!

shop from the bulk bins for spices and staples. it’s less than half price! and, seems to be fresher and taste better anyways. i buy all of my spices, flours, pastas, grains, nooch, whatever i can, in bulk.

i agree with suzie, home made uncheese is way way better than the storebought varieties!

Can you post the recipe for the un-cheese. I would really try to make it.

Homemade cheeze is definately the way to go. I didn’t try storebought until a year after I went vegan, and even to this day I’ve only had it once. It wasn’t my thing. I live by a no package philosophy. If I can make it at home, and don’t have to buy it packaged, I do. It saves waste, and money!

I agree, sometimes the cheese isn’t all that great.

When i shop, if i see something so cheap, i buy as much as i can afford at that time, because later when i need it. it will be at full price. Big bags of lentils in ethnic stores are great. Hugggge bag 6 bucks. Bulk baby!

How do you make vegan cheese?

Find out when your local supermarket marks down produce. Where I am, the supermarkets (used to) close every Sunday, so Saturday afternoon they marked down everything fresh–bread, fruit and veg, and meat (ack!). Now Sunday trading is legal, but still, after 7 pm the bread is marked down. Scout around and see if you can take advantage of something like that.

Also, dried beans are a bit more hassle, but SO MUCH cheaper than tinned. If you can splurge on a pressure cooker it will make things easier.

Our lifestyles sound similar–if it can’t be bought second-hand, or made at home, we often won’t buy it!

1000 spam messages??????? You’ve got to be kidding! You do such a good job of filtering them out, I would have never known.

Guess what? I’ve never bought veggie pate either! And I’ve bought vegan cheese (other than vegan cream cheese) exactly three times in the last 4 years. I totally agree with you, making things yourself feels like such an accomplishment. I’ve never bough seitan- when gluten costs pennies, paying huge prices for the inferior store-bought stuff sounds crazy.

My tip, like Joni, is to buy in bulk. We buy all our spices and herbs (and flours and coffee and sugar and beans) in bulk. The spices are organic, much higher quality, and WAY cheaper than the crap sold in bottles.

I don’t do it regularly yet, but I want to become better about preserving, freezing, pickling, and canning. This morning I had some raspberries that I had frozen this summer… and it felt so good. If I bought raspberries from the store right now, they’d be from 1000′s of miles away, have chemical pesticides on them, and cost way too much.

wow so much spam, im sorry you have that much!

making things yourself feels like such an accomplishment!!

Hejsan!

Schysst sida du har! Jag lånade ditt broccoliresept till min nystartade matblogg. Har länkat till dig, bara så att du vet, hoppas att det är ok!

/Jo

I don’t have vegan cheese too, they are too ex and hard to find here :S so I haven’t been having pizza for several years too.. :0 but that’s fine there are other wonderful food ard!

I too have never purchased vegan cheese. It is so expensive that I can’t justify it. I’ve made vegan cheese before that I’ve been very happy with. Like your sister, my mom and dad didn’t care for it too much either. I might have had a different opinion of it before becoming vegan as well but now I happily gobble it all up.

Not letting things go to waste is such a wonderful reminder. I just made soup yesterday that used up some celery and carrots that were pretty wilty. I already had a lot of food in my fridge so soup was unecessary and we put it in the freezer for a rainy (literally) day.

You reminded me that Ihave a bag of potatoes in the pantry. I’m going to make some baked fries today for lunch. Yumm!

my dear, you are not missing anything not buying store-bought vegan cheese- the only one that I find tolerable for eating is Sheese smoked cheddar, but I never eat that much of it. I need to learn to make my own cheeze- less packaging, much more environmentally friendly…Sheese is made in Scotland. The cool thing is that it is all their employees are vegan!

I like a dinner of soup & bread from time to time as well!

In america they have “ethnic” aisles in the supermarket. I can get a packet of spice for .50-.99 cents as opposed to 5-6.00 in the spice aisle. I guess less people buy it cause it has a spanish name, but it’s the same spice!

yep, never tried store-bought vegan cheese (and I’ve heard from all corners that I’m not missing anything). Cheezy sauce maybe, but nutritional yeast is cheapish if you shop around.

I guess my best advice is shop around like crazy – I’m probably just a grocery store fiend, but sometimes I’ll turn up my nose at a price deemed too high and go check out 6 other likely places to find the same thing at a better price (if it’s something I go through pretty fast, like dates or corn).

lentil dal + homemade chapati = dinner! = 50 cents maybe?

Really good and really interesting post. I expect (and other readers maybe ) new useful posts from you!
Good luck and successes in blogging!

My only advice for eating cheap is to shop locally and shop by season…all of which, I am sure, you already know about. It’s easy to see that anything that requires a lot of travel time will end up with a big price tag and definitely not so fresh. I commend you for making as much food from scratch as possible. Fresh foods are much more visually appealing to me than anything else– they taste better too. Also, speaking of fresh foods, store bough vegan cheese has a lot of grease and artificial ingredients, I agree…they all have a slight cardboard box taste to them.

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