Day 33 - Pantry Raid

After a month following a vegan diet, I gathered up my grocery bills and added them all up, curious to know how much I'd spent per week on food.  In my previous life, I usually spent about $100 a week, mostly on take-out, drive-thru and grocery store deli.  On any given day, I could have breakfast at my favorite family restaurant, a deli sandwich for lunch, dinner from the drive-thru, and a late-night snack from the gas station.

My new vegan total was well above $100 a week, but then, I'd spent quite a bit building a proper vegan pantry.  The wonderful thing about vegan eating is that without meat and dairy, food spoilage is barely a factor.  Meat is usually good for 3 or 4 days at the most.  Dairy will last 10 days, give or take.  But dried, canned and frozen legumes, grains, fruits and veggies last months.  Fresh fruits and veggies will outlast dairy in the fridge.  When properly wrapped they can go at least 2 weeks, sometimes more.

But besides canned, dried and frozen whole foods, I'd invested a good deal in things I could add to my dishes to make them more flavorful.  These are some of the odd items I have in my pantry.  Please note that these are for a fat-free vegan diet, so you won't find oils or tahini or anything that's an added fat.

a wide variety of spices and dried herbs
a variety of vinagers including rice, red wine, balsamic, apple cider
bottled lemon juice
vegetable and mushroom broth in boxes
Better Than Bouillon (vegetable)
Powdered bouilion
a variety of fat-free stir-fry sauces
Miso Paste
Ginger Paste
Capers
Soy Sauce (regular and reduced sodium)
Tamari Sauce (regular and reduced sodium)
Cooking sherry
Tabasco or hot sauce
Liquid Smoke
Red Chili Paste
Vegan Worcestershire Sauce
Coconut extract
Cornstarch
Potato starch
Red curry paste
Yellow curry paste
Nutritional yeast
Molasses
Maple Syrup
Agave nectar and other sugar substitutes
Small lunchbox size of natural applesauce (for baking)
Egg substitute
Dijon mustard
Catsup
Garlic (fresh and pre-chopped)
non-stick spray
sea salt
peppercorns (with pepper grinder)

And finally -- parchment baking paper.  It's not a food item, but I use it so much for roasting veggies, it's something I keep well stocked.  Once I had a well-stocked pantry, it was almost simple to choose something to cook for dinner.   I could browse recipes and almost always have the ingredients I needed to make the dish.  It was the best investment I could have made!