How to survive in this economy??? Food Edition

Proving to you that plant based food is the cheapest diet if you have time or is into cooking. The most time consuming thing you will do will be chopping vegetables. But there are a few things to consider with this theory of mine, although i will not be diving into the politics of it, there are personal gains to this.

Firstly, vegetables nowadays are being used as luxury items if you go to fancy groceries stores. Which is a terrible sin and makes me think humanity has lost its mind but anyway. You can still find cheap vegetables or usable ones from small vendors or street fairs. They are often the same and even if they seem dirty, just washing them is fine. These vegetables are generally the ones planted in family gardens or discarded as not profitable from bigger companies. It isn’t that they are bad or rotten, just that they can’t put a higher price tag on it due to size or appearance or being out of schedule. So instead of donating or selling it anyway they’d rather throw it away so sometimes the employees take them home or sell it. With that said, the price on them is extremely cheap when compared to the companies that sell them, and vegetables are real food. Versatile at cooking, can be stored in multiple ways, helps keep you healthier and fuller than nutrient capsules or doritos. Fruits fall here as well.

Beans and grains often fall on the same category, but they are often planted by these families, generally organic due to the cost of toxins to kill parasites used in bigger companies. And lets say it, home grown food is far more tasteful than any factory processed one. Fruits tastes sweeter, the vegetables are fuller, juicer, crispier. Etc. If you know you know. In that sense, some of these vegetables, such as leafs or small roots or even seasoning and teas can be grown at home even in urban environments. It’s expensive at first but once you get grip of it, its an enormous cost cutter. And its nice to grow things.

Notice how I said about nutrient density but greens and grains and beans often do have protein so if you prepare them to eat it’s not only cost effective but also helps with your workouts, the carbs grant you energy for the day and so on. Now the cooking. As I said, time management is crucial here, not often we have time in daily life or work schedules to cook so it’s reasonable to ask out or go out or eat shitty food just to not starve. Understandable, we’ve all been there. There are also food restrictions you have to be fully aware of, they are generally not related to veggie based diets but there are some, but you ll be fine to adapt as long as you know them.

Then lets go the basics: chop, cook, salt and seasoning, then fry or stir or boil, then eat. These are the basic steps for daily cooking. You can make soup, fried vegetables, cook beans in a pressure based pan which is ready in roughly 10 minutes as long as you keep them in water the day before. And eat. With the beans and grains which are the most important to always have due to being the most time consuming to prepare, I suggest making large quantities then keeping it frozen until the day you consume them, you can leave the vegetables already chopped in closed conteiners, not necessarily cooked, so each time you eat, you merely have to throw all of this into a pan or airfry. Next the fruits, you can eat them raw which is good, make juices or even sweets, the secret is just to fry them with small doses of water so you can get the sweets out and make caramel. Or you can fry the airfry chopped in small slices and have sweet chips.

You could be more elaborate you have wheat, oats, flours, etc, an oven or even improvise using an airfry for less time consumption, making pizzas, cakes, bread, all with less ingredients than you’d have in a normal recipe yet retaining taste and nutrients. For example, you could exchange butter for oils or anything with enough fat, eggs with vinegar to smooth it, adjust the water to the amount of flour you but, use sugar or even sugary dried fruits mashed into dirt, use any type of plant milk, not necessarily the expensive one’s from stores, you can make them by putting soy beans or oats or sunflower seeds or almonds or nuts in a blender with water then squeezing the liquid inside some tiny cloth into a jar, then that’s it, milk. You can even reuse the left overs from inside the cloth to make some salty snacks if you fry them with oil and seasonings, like protein balls if they were from soy beans.

The thing is, and I say that from experience from having survived the whole pandemic doing this, you gotta be creative, organized AND open minded. We are often annoyed by recipes outside what we commonly know or eat, but in times of necessity, it’s better to try and have something to eat that will actually sustain you and not give you more medical bills then nothing.