Vegan Pantry is a clever recipe book, offering 100 delicious healthy recipes, all based around 10 staple ingredients (including canned tomatoes and citrus fruits). This helps to save money and avoid food waste, and all you need to add are mostly fruits and vegetables, and a few other kitchen staples. Enjoy year-round recipes using easy-to-find cupboard staples, using common kitchen tools and easy affordable ingredients.
Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets.
This could become your effortless go-to book for everyday recipes like:
- Cinnamon and hazelnut granola
- Garlic mushroom sausages with creamy mash
- Creamy chickpea, sage and kale soup
- Cacio e Pepe-style butterbeans
- Cauliflower mac and cheese
- Fennel & grapefruit salad
- Date, chickpea & lemon tagine
- Pistachio, mango and coconut kulfi
Katy Beskow is a former physiotherapy student who learned to cook, while studying in London. Now back living in her native Yorkshire, she is the author of several best-selling cookbooks and often presents cooking videos for supermarkets online. She is a member of the Guild of Food Writers.
Consider shopping at fruit and vegetable markets, for good prices on seasonal produce. Overheads are less than supermarket chains, so savings can be passed onto the consumer. Be cautious of coupons and vouchers, and purchase only what you will actually use, no matter what the discount.
Tonnes of cooked rice are wasted due to overestimating volumes of uncooked rice (90g of uncooked rice will serve one person – chill unused rice in the fridge for up to 24 hours and thoroughly reheat before serving).
The Rising Price of Everyday Foods
Food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe recently launched her own Vimes Index, saying that supermarkets had used inflation as a cover to raise the prices of everyday goods (like apples) but kept existing prices for luxury goods (like champagne).
Jack was recently contacted by an elderly gentleman who had eaten a teaspoon of toothpaste for his dinner, to fool himself into thinking he had eaten something.
Tesco responded by saying their own prices are affected by rising energy prices. But this is because big supermarkets use oil from lorries (bringing foods from central distribution houses miles away (that are heated by oil) and many foods are made from factory-farmed animals (powered by fossil fuels) and palm oil (lots of oil to fly them to England from Indonesia). That’s why walkable shops that sell seasonal foods is a good idea.
The Vimes Boots Index is a warning shot to retailers who keep their £7.50 ready meals and £6 bottles of wine at the same price for a decade, while quadrupling the price of basic stock cubes and broken irregular grains of white rice. This issue isn’t going anywhere, and neither am I. Jack Monroe
