Being Vegetarian Is Exciting!

I went Ovo-lacto vegetarian on September and restarted WW the same day.  WW had a 50% off deal that made the cost much better.

What I found out about the cost of being vegetarian:

1.  It can be very economical.  (Not this month!  I made some big boo boos.)
2.  I love shopping at ALDI for staples.
3. Hy-Vee has most of what I need. Much of it is less expensive at ALDI.
4. Good quality knives and blender are essential.  (I need to replace both.)
5. I need to be realistic about what I cook based on my income.
6. Brown rice, quinoa, and dried beans are very important to your budget.

I also changed the recipe/menu planner that I use.  I had found Food Planner and its premise is very good .  It is very quirky, takes a lot to set up and doesn't import recipes from the web very well.  Another plus is that its free.  So I went in search of a different app and found Plan to Eat.  It isn't free but isn't expensive at $40/year or $4.95/month.  And there's a 30 day free trial.  It does an excellent job of importing recipes from the web and I love the freezer and queue options.  Check it out!

I plan to try at least one new recipe a week at dinner.  Breakfast and lunch are a work in progress.  Most of the time breakfast is 1 cup of steel cut oatmeal and a half cup of fruit. Lunch is 1 cup of some kind of beans over a cup of brown rice with a serving of green veggies or a sandwich and brown rice and serving of veggies.

For me, having a rice cooker has been a tremendous help.  I make my brown rice, steel cut oats, and quinoa in it.  Simple and it lets me do other things while it cooks.  I can also steam veggies in it. I use it several times a week. I cook dried beans in my slow cooker.

I learned that I can't make all of the recipes that I want with fresh veggies so I'll be using frozen one to replace a lot of the fresh ones.  Another good reason to use frozen veggies is that they keep longer. Thank goodness that I have an upright freezer in the basement.

On the first of every month I'l be making a trip to ALDI for staples: This will be $30 -
$50.  A trip to Hy-Vee to fill in what I can't get at ALDI and a trip to Whole Foods for things like tofu, seitan, tempeh, vegan cheese and margarine.....

I should be able to eat very well for $150 or less a month.  

In my next post I will list the staples I keep and the small appliances and kitchen tools I think are essential.

Back on Track, Again.....

It's obviously been a long time since I posted but here's what's happening in my life:

In December I bought a 2 bedroom duplex with a loft and full basement in Lenexa, KS.  It needs some minor repairs and updating inside.  I'm so happy to have the basement for storage, no more storage unit fees and everything is here when I need it. And a garage, OMG!  I can load/unload the SUV when it's raining or snowing.

I've decided to go vegan or almost vegan for my diet and am going back to WW.  I found the Vegan Weight Watchers site and it's great.  It's written by a WW employee but the views are expressly her own.  It has lots of tasty recipes with the Points Plus already calculated.  To help me with meal planning I found Food Planner.  It's a great app for saving recipes and planning meals.  It takes a while to set it up (I'm still doing that) but will be worth it.  There's a Chrome extension for importing recipes that's a great time save.  You can save your meal plans to use again and they're editable.