[Vegan MoFo] being vegan on a budget

Welcome fellow vegan mofo-ers as well as regular readers! This is my second year of participating this exciting, sometimes overwhelming, vegan blogging event, though it'd be the first from this blog. I wanted to do last year also but I was heavily pregnant back then and didn't have much energy left to keep up blogging every day. I'm happy to say that this year I'm joining in the fun with the cutest boy in the world (I know every parent says that. Bear with me), and the cutest cat named Mochi :)

this was when he was about 4 months old
(no. he didn't start solid yet. it's a Japanese custom of "pretend eating"
to wish for the abundance of food for the rest of his life)

With the cost that associated with pregnancy and the new expenses, we've decided it's time to tighten our wallet and be strict with our budget. We'd love to give him the best education possible (as well as the deepest love from us) after all, and for that we don't mind giving up one day of dining out or a few (or many).

According to the budgeting website the Fun, Cheap or Free Queen, 100 dollars per month per person for groceries is their benchmark for budgeting, so that's what we've been aiming at, which comes to 75 dollars per week for three of us and a cat. The grocery budget includes, not only food, but anything and everything else that you buy from a grocery store.

I don't know how 75 dollars per week for groceries sounds to you, but I know that this is not enough to frequent Whole Foods and buy vegan goodies often.

Not that we have Whole Foods or Trader Joe's in our vicinity anyways :(

I do purchase vegan specialty items once in a while though, using the money set aside for other uses like craft supplies, entertainment etc. After all, food can be an entertainment, right? :)

So this is what I'm going to write about for this year's vegan MoFo: everyday vegan meals on a budget. We'll see what vegan meals I can come up with within this budget, including baby food (although I'd like him to be, he's not a vegan baby however. sorry). The meals I'll be making won't be grand and scrumptious as most of the vegan recipe bloggers make. My hope is, however, to show that vegan meals don't have to be "special". Vegan meals can be accessible to anybody (vegan or otherwise), quick to make and tasty. I'm not even a great cook.

OK. This post won't end without a picture of food. hehe.

This is vegan chili with black beans topped with avocado. The baby had black bean spread and avocado on rice. yum!

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy my vegan mofo posts (and beyond!)