How to shop for and prep a work week’s worth of delicious, plant-based meals — for less than $10 a day.

There’s a common misconception that being vegan is inherently expensive. People tend to believe that adopting a plant-based diet is only realistic for households that make a certain income. I’m here to tell you, as a broke freelance writer, that it’s absolutely not the case.

One of the main reasons people think veganism is expensive is because they’re comparing the prices of meat and dairy to the popular vegan substitutes — and those do add up! I can easily spend an extra $30 a week buying substitute cheese, fish, and ground beef. However, these are extras that are absolutely not necessary to have a satisfying and affordable vegan menu for the week.

I wanted to create a challenge where I could show ways that you can affordably create easy meals using mostly whole foods. Meal prepping doesn’t have to be boring, repetitive, or expensive. Shopping on a budget allows you to be more creative with the dishes you create because you now have a limited inventory of food to choose from. Most people actually have enough food in their pantries to cook for the week and don’t even realize it!

So here it goes…

The Challenge: Spend $50 or less for the work week (five days) on breakfast, lunch, and dinner for one person.

The Contender: Stephanie Hernandez. Food blogger by day, and also by night.

The goal for this challenge is to educate others who are considering veganism on how affordable it can be, or to help with some frugal tips for those vegan veterans who have been spending way too much money on those non-dairy Ben & Jerry’s pints. I am not taking into account any spices you may have in the cabinet, but a well-stocked pantry will be your best friend when meal prepping.

If you try to shop this way every week, there will be some weeks you will have to spend a little bit of extra money to replenish products you ran out of (sugar, salt, garlic powder, nutritional yeast), but those will be balanced out by other weeks you can be way under-budget.

For some people, it’s really easy to eat the same thing every single day, but I get bored pretty easily. This will actually be a real challenge for me, but I’m excited to show you ways you can be vegan on a budget without sacrificing taste. For this challenge, I will not be sharing any specific recipes every time — most of the time, I just throw random things together in the kitchen and hope for the best.

On the Menu:

Breakfast: Peanut Butter Overnight Oats

Lunch: Buddha Bowl

Dinner: Rice, Black Beans, and Roasted Potatoes & Carrots; Sweet Potato & Black Bean Quesadilla

The lunches and dinners will be modified slightly throughout the week to change things up.

Grocery List:

• Peanut Butter
• Quick Oats
• Vanilla Almond Milk
• Chickpeas, canned (2)
• Sweet Potatoes (4)
• Kale & Spinach bag
• Lemon
• Black Beans, canned (2)
• Brown Rice
• Carrots, a bunch
• Tortillas, for burritos/quesadillas
• Tofu
• Maple Syrup

Total price: 37.76 (including the maple syrup I forgot to buy originally)

Tips When Shopping

When you’re on a serious budget, one of my biggest tips when shopping is to visit multiple stores near you. For example, I know I can get a can of beans for 87 cents at one store or 60 cents at another. Comparing the prices at different stores will help you save money. Sure, it’s a pain to drive around to different stores, but it’s worth it if they’re close by.

Find deals. Sometimes you’ll find something for sale that wasn’t on your list, but can inspire a completely different dish and lower your weekly budget.

However, always go to the store with an idea of what you want for the week ready to go. Don’t ever buy groceries without a list of things you need. I make that mistake very often, then end up spending $30-$50 more on random things I didn’t actually need but thought would be a good idea. When you’re on a budget, it’s important to stay focused. Sometimes, if you find great deals, you’ll have money leftover to buy yourself a little treat on the side!

Freeze as much as you can. Food goes bad quickly, especially whole foods. If you find blueberries are buy one get one free this week, freeze half of the blueberries and save them for the next week. We usually get two loaves of bread when they’re BOGO and freeze the second loaf for the second week. It’s a great way to save money for the next week’s trip.

Breakfast

For breakfast this week, I made the same thing every day. For some reason it’s really easy for me to eat the same breakfast during the work week, and this is one of my go-to recipes. You can see my recipe here to make it yourself. To make these oats, you need peanut butter, quick oats, vanilla almond milk, and maple syrup.

I prepare these overnight and usually do them one at a time as the days go, but highly recommend making all of the overnight oats for the week if you have the space in the fridge. I personally love to put them in mason jars because they’re so much easier to take on the go, but these work just as well in regular Tupperware if that’s what you have.

Lunch

This week I went with my favorite way to eat lunch: buddha bowls! If you don’t know, buddha bowls are usually a bowl made up of grains, veggies, some type of bean or legume, and a dressing on top. These are my favorite because they’re completely versatile. You can change up the grains, beans, veggies, and even the dressing as you see fit. For this week I started out with a buddha bowl consisting of:

• Chickpeas
• Brown rice
• Roasted sweet potato
• Sautéed kale & spinach
• Homemade peanut butter dressing

I cooked the rice in my rice cooker and did nothing fancy to it. The canned chickpeas are fine to eat straight from the can so you can just add them right to the bowl. However, feel free to sauté them with the kale & spinach mixture. I roasted the sweet potatoes (diced into small cubes) in the oven at 375ºF for 25–30 minutes. You can add whatever spices your heart desires on any of this or leave them plain to enjoy the true taste of veggies.

For the dressing, I made a random mixture of peanut butter, maple syrup and lemon juice. I didn’t actually measure this out, so I would just put a little bit into a small bowl, mix it all up, and adjust the taste accordingly until I liked how it tasted. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you have extra money in your budget for the week to splurge on tahini and make some tasty tahini dressings.

Around the middle of the week I switched the buddha bowl around a bit by adding tofu to it for some extra protein and just a little variety. For the tofu, I pressed some of the liquid out and roasted in the oven with a few different spices (again, your choice what you’d like to use on it) at 380ºF for 30 minutes.

Dinner

For the first half of the week I went with a simple staple in our household. I haven’t actually come up with a fancy name for this dish so it’s just what it is: rice with black beans, roasted sweet potato and carrots. If you come up with a fancier name for this dish, let me know!

Dinner is the most important meal for me, mentally, to change up. If I get bored too quickly, I’ll revert back to my old ways and start ordering pizza by Wednesday. Because of this, I wanted to make this one the most versatile. I also personally prefer to cook dinners at night, but any of these can be done on Sunday and prepped for the entire week so you don’t have to cook.

So for the beginning of the week I cooked brown rice like normal, made some black beans (there is actually an amazing recipe for black beans on the back of the Goya cans. Highly recommend you try this recipe, it will change your life. Trust me.) and roasted a sheet pan of sweet potatoes and carrots together.

For dinners the next couple of days, I roasted the carrots and sweet potato in maple syrup to give it a sweet glaze which immediately changed the taste of the dinner for me.

For Thursday, I decided to roll it all up into a burrito, add some tofu, and it was like I was eating something completely different.

Friday was the hardest day for me — for whatever reason, the word Friday triggers me to order pizza and eat an entire large pie in one sitting until I feel sick. It was really important for me to make something that felt a little bit junk-y without costing me extra money and making me feel like my stomach was going to explode.

I decided to make a black bean and sweet potato quesadilla. Obviously, this didn’t have cheese, and usually I would have splurged on some vegan cheese to make these, but it was still delicious. I actually boiled the sweet potato for this and mashed it into oblivion. Then you can add whatever spices you’d like; I added nutritional yeast (because I had some, otherwise it’s around $6 for a jar so plan accordingly if you’re going to buy it), garlic powder, salt, and onion powder. I spread it on half the tortilla, added the black beans, and cooked on a large frying pan over medium heat until the tortilla got crispy.

There are some people that meal prep for all seven days of the week, but I personally don’t feel like I need to. Being able to save money during the week by buying whole foods and not ordering take out has allowed me the extra funds to enjoy my weekend with a little bit of splurging.

A few takeaways for the week

Obviously I did this for one person, but that doesn’t mean that buying for two would double your budget. In fact, it may even be cheaper to buy bigger quantities of food that will last you longer than buying smaller containers. This means that some weeks you’ll spend $60 on groceries because you’re buying a large item, or replenishing pantry staples, but the next week you’ll spend $30 because you still have leftover food. In the end, it will balance out.

If you are buying for more than one person, I would focus more on bulk pantry items such as rice, oats, and pasta. It’ll be pricey at first, but will even out by the end of the month.

Invest in meal prep containers if you want to batch cook for the entire week. You don’t have to batch cook to meal prep, but for some people it’s incredible helpful. If you work long hours, it’s hard to find the motivation to start cooking at night, and having dinner ready to be reheated could be a money saver.

I especially recommend making a big batch of rice for the week and reheating it each day. Pro tip: put a damp/wet paper towel on top of your bowl of rice before reheating in the microwave. This will make the rice stay soft and fluffy instead of drying out.

You can save even more money by buying dried beans and cooking them at home. However, for my lifestyle, it’s easier for me to buy canned beans to have them easily accessible if I forget to soak them the night before. This all depends on your personal preference.

Every week will be different. Sometimes I can budget ingredients to make pumpkin bread for breakfast, and sometimes I can make a tofu scramble. Like any diet, being vegan can be as cheap or as expensive as you make it out to be.

My goal is to show you really simple recipes you can create using whole foods, still have delicious meals for the week, and actually stay within your budget.

You can absolutely eat a healthy, whole foods, vegan diet on a budget. You may even find yourself spending less money now than when you were buying tons of dairy, meat, and eggs. You’ll save your wallet as well as the animals — it’s a win-win!