Vegan MoFo: budget-friendly recipes

I've mentioned a few times that the bf and I are on a pretty tight budget this year. So I've been making efforts to cut our food costs...we're both foodies and if given free reign in the grocery store our bill would be astronomical. Yet we don't want to eat a can of beans for dinner every night. If you surf the internet you will find tons of sites that share some food budgeting tips...and they're all fairly similar: buy dried beans and cook/freeze them, buy frozen veggies rather than fresh, buy in bulk when you can, etc. And these tips do work, but I thought for today, as I have no food to MoFo about, I would share with you some of my favourite cheap(er) recipes.

East Indian food is a budget staple for us. Thankfully we both adore it. I'll usually make a curry of some sort and serve with basmati rice. If I have extra time I will whip up some naan, but that doesn't always happen. Some of our favourites are this recipe for dhal, the red lentil curry from Veganomicon, bean curry, and naan. I also make chana masala a lot but I have yet to find the one perfect recipe.

Mexican food is another great genre of cuisine. I adore Mexican food, the bf is only so-so on it, so this doesn't get made quite as often. I will make up a giant batch of enchiladas and freeze the leftovers. You can vary the filling based on what is in your pantry...beans, seitan, peppers, corn, whatever. Tortilla stew is another recipe that is really versatile, put whatever random things you have in your kitchen in there (within reason)! It also freezes quite well.

Seitan - you don't need to buy fancy, expensive mock meats. In fact, most of that stuff is overly processed and full of additives. Learn to make seitan. You'll probably have to experiment to find out what you really like. I prefer baked seitan, but lots of people boil it. Some great seitan fake-meat type things to try are vegan deliciousness: seitan Vegan Dad's chickenless wings and Susan V's seitan ribz. Even meat eaters love these recipes.