feed a family of 4, almost vegan, on a rather small budget! Old Style!

missymoo81

Hi,

I hope you lovely people can help. My husband is on the verge of being made redundant again!!!! I spent hours last night working out where every penny of my tiny pay check will be going. We can just survive on my wages but only have £135 per month for food!!!! That's for 2 adults and a 3 and a 4 year old. I am vegan the rest of the family eat meat occasionally but still have dairy. But I'd like us to all have the same meal in the evening more often than not, so that really needs to be vegan and cheap!!!! Sandwich fillers that are vegan would be wonderful too.... We eat an awful lot of hummus already!

I've recently turned vegan for health reasons, I was feeling really poorly and have been for a while, eradicating any meat and dairy from my diet has worked absolute wonders. But I've only been vegan for 2 weeks, so need all the help I can get for evening meal ideas, if you could point me in the right direction of other threads or if you have a meal idea yourself, I'd be super grateful.

Thanks a million

Missy

ETA I've changed the title to £153 which is my current budget.
[purplesignup][/purplesignup]

Islandmaid

Hi,

I am not vegan or even a veggie, but didn,t want to 'read and run'.

I believe Jack Monroe is now vegan, and her recipes are very cost aware, have a look here

https://cookingonabootstrap.com

Can I also suggest that you seek advice from the vegan society, or even GP, when my older sister went vegan from veggie 20 years ago, she ended up in hospital due to lack of dietry knowledge and was very iron deficient. I know things have moved on a lot, but still worth making sure you all get the correct nutritional balance.

I am sure there will be some 'first hand' advice soon.

Nicki

How carefully have you researched the effect of a vegan diet on young children? It isn't impossible to feed children of this age on a vegan diet without compromising their health, but I am not sure that this is consistent with your need for the diet to be cheap too.

This a fairly balanced article on the subject, which describes the deficits which you need to look out for. Some supplementation for the kids may be required which will obviously add to your costs too.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/20/veganism-safe-children

missymoo81

Thank you islandmaid and Nicki. Sorry I probably didn't explain myself too well. I don't mind the children having dairy, and a small amount of meat. But the evening meals will predominantly be vegan. The children will be still having milk and yogurt for calcium and Roo who is 4 will be going to school September so will be eating what he likes for school lunches as they're free for the first two years. But I'm struggling with evening meal ideas, apart from the usual quorn spaghetti and shepherds pie etc.

I'll look at jack Monroe, thank you.

missymoo81

I've done a lot of research into food and follow a lot of vegan YouTube channels, veganfitnesstv and naturallystefanie, Niomi Smart and sweetsugarcrumble are really helpful. But I need more help!

DomRavioli

There's a huge sticky at the top of the board with more recipes than you can shake a stick at. There's plenty of veggie/vegan ones in there (just in case you missed it!).

I'm not veggie/vegan but my best mate is so I've adapted normal food to her needs. She loves my "sausage" casserole (quorn sausages, baked beans, tinned tomatoes - can use fresh, lentils and chickpeas. Throw it in a pan, cook until it tastes nice.

I'd also suggest going to either Lidl or Aldi, or both for veggies. Aldi do have a veggie range (their own version of quorn mince) and its pretty cheap.

Valli

missymoo81 wrote: »

Thank you islandmaid and Nicki. Sorry I probably didn't explain myself too well. I don't mind the children having dairy, and a small amount of meat. But the evening meals will predominantly be vegan. The children will be still having milk and yogurt for calcium and Roo who is 4 will be going to school September so will be eating what he likes for school lunches as they're free for the first two years. But I'm struggling with evening meal ideas, apart from the usual quorn spaghetti and shepherds pie etc.

I'll look at jack Monroe, thank you.

re school meals - you can apply for free school meals (even if your children are on universal free school meals because they're in KS1); this will increase the school's budget (Pupil premium) and your children will also be entitled to free school milk, a carton a day, if your income is below the threshold. Check with your council website and/or the school's own website.

I was also going to suggest you look at Jack Monroe's recipes, too.

MandM90

Hi missy,

I'd forget about quorn completely. Go to your local Asian grocer, or World Food aisles and look out for the big packs of lentils and beans.

Here are some of my Budget Recipes including lentil spaghetti, lentil shepherds pie, bean and rice bake, falafels, paupers pasties. Most are veggie/vegan.

I'm going to try and dig out the archived Cheap Family Recipes webpage - it has a whole vegan mealplan which should be really helpful to you.

Found it: https://web.archive.org/web/20130821121137/http://cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/planners.html

Do have a look at your local supermarket before closing - I've always found bread products for around 10-20p. They freeze beautifully. I know it's not the healthiest staple, but it fills a hole whilst you're getting over this tricky time.

Other ideas:

Mixed bean chilli (dried beans are cheapest)
Lentil/bean curry
Reduced Veg soup (literally any yellow sticker veg you buy, an onion, stock and whizz up - accompany with yellow sticker bread)

Also, never forget beans on toast - an oldie but a goodie!

bossymoo

Not all quorn products are vegan, some have egg white in them.

Worth checking on the ingredients lists.

missymoo81

Hey,
domravioli, I knew it was there be didn't realise it included vegan food! I will take a good look!!! Thank you!! And I didn't know about Aldi's version of quorn! Will definitely look!
Valli I didn't know about the carton of milk, I have applied for the free school meal thing. It's all very complicated, as dh redundancy (if it comes, which is likely!) will be slightly later in the year but he will have earned too much this tax year for us to get help. I don't know if that counts for the milk too.
Mandm90, thank you so much for the links!!!!! I will check them out in a minute, so kind of you!!!
Just watching eat well for less, the first one has veggie meals!!!

Thanks again for posting lovelies, I have my notepad here and am writing down recipes as we speak!

missymoo81

Thanks bossy!!!! I realised that the other day when I bought some Sausages!!!!! Got them home and they have egg in them, doh!