Any suggestions?
Ok, here the situation...
I go grocery shopping once a week to get the fixings for what I plan to cook for the whole coming week (dinner-wise and the leftovers usually serve as lunch)... I also get what seem to be staples in this house, that are good to have around (this usually includes rice milk, a couple boxes of cereal, and flourless sprouted grain bread)...
I buy everything organic whenever possible, which it usually is possible 99.9% of the time because I shop between my local Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's (discount/wholesale) market.
I've been trying to not focus main dishes with the 'base' of the dishes being processed grains (i.e. pastas and other floury things)... And I've also noticed milk and cereal are the most steeply priced organic things for my household compared to how fast they are gone through, so we've been trying to eat more oatmeal and such that is whole grain and you can buy in bulk for cheap instead of processed cereals where there's not as much per dollar you spend and/or its not as filling.
Anyway my question is...
If any of you have suggestions for a recipe site or community that is dedicated strictly to frugal vegan shopping and cooking... only not just "frugal" but HEALTHY... because a lot of time "frugal" seems to get associated to living off of pasta, breads, potatoes, and beans... All of which not only gets a bit boring to me taste-wise after a while, but it also "gums up the works" so to speak and is not good for one's digestion and balanced nutrition.
None of the cookbooks I have seem to fully fit the bill. And while I'm a member of the great vegancooking LJ community here and yes, I know vegweb.com has good stuff on it, they're not specifically tailored to "healthy vegans, strictly organic, but on a budget"... While they do have plenty of good recipes that would fit the bill it isn't the prime way of organizing for the sites, and I don't always want to spend hours on end browsing through things just to find a couple recipes most helpful to my parameters of searching.
I'm creative enough in the kitchen that I can use recipes for "guidelines" to spark some creativity and then make it more to my liking and more healthy from there as needed... but sometimes I'm not in the mood to brainstorm and I just want to fix something quick. Well for the past few months I've kept ending up nearly doubling my weekly grocery budget. It doesn't help the fact that the stores started raising their prices on rice milk and some other little things like that etc... (to which i just responded in buying less of it because i can't afford to buy so much at the raised price and still get everything else I need necessarily.)
I know how food co-ops and farmers markets and local farmers and so forth can be good sources for getting organic produce for cheaper... but there isn't any good and/or reliable source for those kinds of things around where I live it seems, so I'm pretty much stuck using grocery stores in that case. Trader Joe's is cheapest, but they have limited selections, and some of their selections (especially in produce) are constantly changing around so you can never be to sure they'll have what you need and are looking for. Whole foods, believe it or not, is the next cheapest... because even though the "common" grocery stores around here have nice organic/health-food sections they're the most overpriced!
Do any of you shop strictly organic, and if so how much does it usually run you?
Do any of you shop on a budget, cooking just for 2 vegans, and if so how much does that usually run you?
Any help or thoughts anyone has will be appreciated.
Thanks
:}
~e.
;]
I go grocery shopping once a week to get the fixings for what I plan to cook for the whole coming week (dinner-wise and the leftovers usually serve as lunch)... I also get what seem to be staples in this house, that are good to have around (this usually includes rice milk, a couple boxes of cereal, and flourless sprouted grain bread)...
I buy everything organic whenever possible, which it usually is possible 99.9% of the time because I shop between my local Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's (discount/wholesale) market.
I've been trying to not focus main dishes with the 'base' of the dishes being processed grains (i.e. pastas and other floury things)... And I've also noticed milk and cereal are the most steeply priced organic things for my household compared to how fast they are gone through, so we've been trying to eat more oatmeal and such that is whole grain and you can buy in bulk for cheap instead of processed cereals where there's not as much per dollar you spend and/or its not as filling.
Anyway my question is...
If any of you have suggestions for a recipe site or community that is dedicated strictly to frugal vegan shopping and cooking... only not just "frugal" but HEALTHY... because a lot of time "frugal" seems to get associated to living off of pasta, breads, potatoes, and beans... All of which not only gets a bit boring to me taste-wise after a while, but it also "gums up the works" so to speak and is not good for one's digestion and balanced nutrition.
None of the cookbooks I have seem to fully fit the bill. And while I'm a member of the great vegancooking LJ community here and yes, I know vegweb.com has good stuff on it, they're not specifically tailored to "healthy vegans, strictly organic, but on a budget"... While they do have plenty of good recipes that would fit the bill it isn't the prime way of organizing for the sites, and I don't always want to spend hours on end browsing through things just to find a couple recipes most helpful to my parameters of searching.
I'm creative enough in the kitchen that I can use recipes for "guidelines" to spark some creativity and then make it more to my liking and more healthy from there as needed... but sometimes I'm not in the mood to brainstorm and I just want to fix something quick. Well for the past few months I've kept ending up nearly doubling my weekly grocery budget. It doesn't help the fact that the stores started raising their prices on rice milk and some other little things like that etc... (to which i just responded in buying less of it because i can't afford to buy so much at the raised price and still get everything else I need necessarily.)
I know how food co-ops and farmers markets and local farmers and so forth can be good sources for getting organic produce for cheaper... but there isn't any good and/or reliable source for those kinds of things around where I live it seems, so I'm pretty much stuck using grocery stores in that case. Trader Joe's is cheapest, but they have limited selections, and some of their selections (especially in produce) are constantly changing around so you can never be to sure they'll have what you need and are looking for. Whole foods, believe it or not, is the next cheapest... because even though the "common" grocery stores around here have nice organic/health-food sections they're the most overpriced!
Do any of you shop strictly organic, and if so how much does it usually run you?
Do any of you shop on a budget, cooking just for 2 vegans, and if so how much does that usually run you?
Any help or thoughts anyone has will be appreciated.
Thanks
:}
~e.
;]