She’s super creative with instant mashed potato’s and using them makes:
Potato patties
Black bean burgers
Shepard’s pie
I actually made some black bean burgers using the recipe and they came out great!
Fucking depressing.
I mean I thought the use of instant mashed potatoes were pretty interesting! I made the black bean patties and they came out good, but I put them on a home made bun so it wasn’t such a small meal. and I’ll probably try the pie but with more veggies!
You need like 14000 kcal for a whole week, there’s no way that’s enough
Let’s do some math then!
The box of mashed potatoes has 2,720 calories dry lentils 1430 2 cans black beans 770 1 can mixed veggies 100 1 can tomatoes 100
… yeah you’re right, you’re gonna lose some weight that week, but the high fiber beans/lentils may keep yourself from feeling it. The mashed potato’s are yummy, but take up way too much of the budget for the calories.
Instead of the box of mashed potato flakes you could buy a 10lb bag of potatoes. Mashed potatoes are really easy to make in an instant pot! You don’t even need to peel the potatoes, just wash and chop. The peels provide extra nutrients.
I had to tune out when she there aren’t many vegetables because it pushes the cost up. Like am I not supposed to eat veggies?
Unfortunately while being vegan is cheaper, fresh greens are still expensive. It’s much harder to mass farm most vegetables to the same scale as grains and pulses.
My parents were in a Community-Supported Agriculture and they paid roughly 100€ per month for vegetables (100€ / 30.5d ≈ 3.28€/d) for 3 to 4 people year round. Having to process vegetables also changes the nutritionary behaviour to a more healthier way as a side effect too.
It’s totally possible, but not accessible to everyone, unfortunately. I think the community garden way is the best way to make vegetables affordable for everyone, in exchange for a bit of labour. Wish more municipalities supported such initiatives.
Unfortunately while being vegan is cheaper
This is the wrong comparison, there’s no need to make it about being vegan.
Fresh greens are required for every human every day and every place.
Try to avoid making such tangential comparisons since you’re implying, by accident, that a non-vegan diet magically has those nutrients from greens, while a vegan diet is expensive because of leafy greens. Then we end up with ignorant dieters who eat 800 kcal/day and become silly ex-vegans.
A lot of people conflate “going vegan” with “eating vegetables”, and that’s simply wrong and a bad approach to eating a vegan diet.
You’ve got a point there. I sometimes forget omnis also sometimes eat vegetables.
I mean… if you’re on a super tight budget, like $1 a day, you will be getting most of your calories from:
Beans
Wheat
Rice
Potatoes
Oils
Then a couple cents a meal for flavor.
So yeah, on a super tight budget if your only source of food is that $1, probably not. Instead of getting that dinky little can of veggies I would probably go for split peas personally, since they are pretty cheap and calorie dense. But mostly sharing cause I thought they were interesting vegan recipe bases that can be added too. The patties tasted good to me and the pie will be good with more veggies I think!
Hopefully anyone who is on such a low budget will have access to a food pantry or some other resources to assist though.
When I was broke AF I’d get free day old baguettes and fill them with roasted sweet potatoes
