Cookies for Breakfast!?
Apple Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Cheap Vegan is back from a brief hiatus and what better way to start the day than with a sweet, cheap, and relatively fast breakfast recipe? These cookies are healthy like a granola bar, but sweet  and chewy like a warm oatmeal cookie. They are low sugar, high fiber, and you probably already have all the ingredients at home! 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup blended apples (I used 1.5 small Honey Crisp apples)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup flour (I used 1/2 Bulgar Wheat and 1/2 white)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup oats
• 1 tbsp peanut butter
• handful of raisins
• 1 tsp Cinnamon (more or less depending on personal preference)
• pinch salt

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 
2. Core and peel apple and blend with a splash of water until there are no chunks. You’re trying to create an apple sauce consistency.
3. Mix brown sugar and apple together.
4. Add flour and baking powder.
5. Add Oats.
6. Add Natural peanut butter, raisins, and salt.
7. Taste cookie mix to make sure you have a good ratio, adjust to your preference, then plop 3x3 inch cookies onto a greased pan.
8. Bake for 10 minutes and enjoy!

Total time: 20 minutes

Tofu Redemption
Now in my last article I know I hated on tofu a little, but like it or not, tofu is a great source of iron and protein. My philosophy as a vegan is to force myself to learn to like everything (healthy) I can eat. Following a vegan diet means that you cut yourself off to a lot of “normal” foods, so it’s harder for people to be as tolerant of a picky vegan. Plus, it’s harder on yourself to be picky. There are less opportunities to get the proper nutrients and gives you even less options when you go out to eat.

While tofu isn’t my favorite food, it can actually be pretty fun to experiment with in the kitchen. Tofu’s unique lack of almost any flavor makes it kind of gross on its own, but also makes it a really easy incorporate into almost any recipe.

You can add tofu to almost anything, savory or sweet. One of my favorites is the ever popular tofu scramble.

The Cheap Vegan Southwest Tofu Scramble
(3-4 servings)

In 1st pan:

• 1 14oz cube tofu
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp tumeric (mostly for yellow color)
• salt and pepper to taste

In 2nd pan:

• 1 onion
• 2 chopped green peppers
• 5 small red potatoes
• 3 chopped plum tomatoes
• 1/2 cup black beans
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 3/4 tsp thyme
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
• sprinkle of chilli powder

In 1st pan:

1. Pinch off bite size pieces of tofu and put on medium heat. Allow water to evaporate off.
2. Once the water is mostly gone mix in the nutritional yeast, garlic, salt, pepper, and tumeric.
3. Leave on low heat stirring occasionally while the other pan is cooking.

In 2nd pan:

1. Bake, microwave or pan fry potatoes until they are soft, cut in quarters and set aside.
2. Dice onion and put into pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil. I try to use as little olive oil as possible but enough to get my onions clear.
3. Once onions have cleared add the green pepper and potatoes.
4. Once the potatoes and peppers have been evenly coated with the rest of the mixture add tomatoes, black beans, garlic, thyme, cumin, crushed red pepper, and chilli powder.
5. Combine Pan 1 and 2. Add salt to taste.
6. Serve in a bowl as a skillet, on bread as a sandwich, or in a burrito. I suggest serving with avocado and salsa on the side.

This recipe incorporates 3 items from our list of iron and protein foods as well nutritional yeast which is a great source of vitamin B12.

Gluten-free Quinoa Oatmeal Replacer

feeds 2-3

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 chopped bananas
• 1 diced red apple
• 3 tbsp Raisins
• 2 handful walnuts
• Brown sugar optional
• cinnamon to taste

1. Soak quinoa for 5 minutes. Then mix quinoa in a bowl of 1 and 1/2 cups water. Bring to a boil and seal with tight lid for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let it steam until no longer hard.
Add splash of non-dairy milk if you want a creamier texture.
2. Once everything is cooked add the rest of your ingredients and eat!

Sticky Peach French Toast Recipe
I don’t usually post unhealthy food, but sometimes you gotta let yourself have some sugary peach flavored fun!…

Anyway, here’s the recipe. It is super cheap but there isn’t much else redeeming about it. If you want to make a healthier version alternative ingredients are posted next to the ones I used in parenthesis.

What you need

• Baguette (whole wheat)
• 1 Can of Peaches (Fresh Peaches)
• 1 or 2 tsp Egg Replacer or Corn Starch or if desperate, flour
• soy milk
• cinnamon
• sugar (agave nectar)

1. Slice baguette at an extreme angle so the crust is about 1 ½ inches thick and the soft inside of the bread is very wide. (see photo)
2. Mix soy milk with egg replacer until the mixture is about as thick as egg yolks. 
3. In a separate bowl, pour some of the juice from the can of peaches in to a bowl. Add sugar to peach juice until it can not dissolve anymore. Set aside.
4. Pour “egg” mixture on to a plate and dip both sides of the bread, place bread on hot greased pan over low-med heat. Flip until brown on both sides.
5. Turn the heat on high. Pour about 2 tsp of peach water mixture on to pan, the water will instantly start to evaporate, after about 2 seconds flip the french toast. Once peach water has mostly or totally evaporated/soaked, reduce heat and repeat with the rest of your bread.
6. Top with sliced peaches from the can. No syrup necessary.

Bubble and Squeakless Brunch Recipe

While the British aren’t well known for their culinary contributions, they do know how to make some cheap food, and this one is actually pretty good. In the photo above you can see our brunch from today: bubble and squeak with homemade baked beans and a tomato/onion salsa. (the coke in the background is definitely not mine…)
Typically you fry the cabbage and potato cakes in a pan of oil, this makes bubbling and squeaking sounds (where the name comes from), I chose to bake rather than fry for my version of this recipe hence where the cheap vegan name comes from.
This recipe was also traditionally made using the leftovers from a big roast the night before. Feel free to throw in some left overs you have in the fridge. Bubble and Squeak also commonly has peas, carrots, or brussel sprouts in them.

What you need:
Cabbage - $1 a head
Red Potatoes - $2 for bag of about 10
Tomatoes - $1.50 for 4 tomatoes
Red onions - $2 for a bag of about 8
Vegetable Bouillon - $3 for 8 large cubes (optional, you can use salt)
BBQ Sauce - about $2 depending on brand
(cheap trick, as for BBQ sauce at take away restaurants instead of buying your own)
**these prices are an estimated conversion from Euros
The ingredients used in this meal for 2 people only costs about $2 total!

Bubble and Squeakless
for 2 people
4 Red Potatoes (small/medium sized)
1/2 head of cabbage
1/4 large vegetable bouillon cube
1/4 onion (diced)
Splash of oil

1. Bake potatoes in oven until soft (you can also boil but this leeches nutrients out of the potato)
2. Chop 1/2 head lettuce into thin slices, be sure to wash off all the dirt. Put a small splash of oil in a frying pan and add onion and cabbage.
   (If you’re like me and only have 1 smaller sized pan just cabbage slowly, it will cook down)
3. Check on potatoes, when soft, mash and let cool.
4. When cabbage is a little bit softer and coated with a little oil and water from cooking, add 1/4 of bouillon cube, depending on the brand of bouillon you will either need to add water to melt cube or you can just crumble it on top.
5. Mix cabbage and potatoes together, once cool enough to touch, form in to multiple small cakes or 1 large cake about 1 inch thick and put them on greased baking sheet. Bake until brown.

Baked Beans

This isn’t your typical Bush’s baked beans (though you can just use a can if you prefer)

1. Once you have soaked and cooked your beans, just add a little BBQ sauce, a splash of pureed tomato (about 1/2 tomato), and some thyme if you have it, and bake in the oven. Include a some of the bean water for a nice creamy sauce.

Tomato/onion salsa

1. Dice 2 tomatoes and 1/4 of an onion and add them together. Add salt to taste.

—-

This is a great warm comforting food to make when you’re stuck in the house all day. It’s also made almost entirely whole food ingredients, making this a healthier choice for a big brunch.

Oatmeal is gross, until you add delicious to it.

One of the best unexpected benefits of going vegan is learning to like new food. One of the foods it took me longest to warm up to was hot cereal, specifically: oatmeal.
For me, oatmeal was one of those foods I always wanted to get along with but simply didn’t. Oatmeal is healthy, filling, and super cheap. So I hoped that one day, when I tasted oatmeal, it would be like a new awakening. But it never was. It wasn’t until last year that I really started liking oat meal and there are a few reasons for why.

How to like Oatmeal:

1. Keep trying. One of the hardest things about learning to like new food is that you don’t like it. But there are hundreds of ways to prepare foods. You can’t give up on a food just because it wasn’t prepared the way you like the first few times you tried it. So…
2. Experiment. Oatmeal changes a lot depending on how you cook it. I think this is the main reason I thought I could never like oatmeal. My mom usually cooks oatmeal by adding the oats and water in at the same time so that it becomes creamier. Since this is how my mom does it, this was my first introduction to oatmeal. Probably to most people, this is the best way since it is creamy and smooth. But I learned (accidentally) that I liked oatmeal best after the water boiled and only lightly cooked. Apparently I don’t like that nice creamy texture.
   On the other hand, if you usually add oatmeal once the water boils, you can try it my mom’s way and see how it goes.
3. Oatmeal loves company. Oatmeal is okay on it’s own, but much better with tasty friends. Remember, nuts/nut butters, fruits, and spices/extracts.
   Also remember that cooking your ingredients into your oatmeal will give you a totally different flavor than adding them later. Even pouring hot oatmeal on top of your fruit can change the taste, so pack to step 2 (experiment!)
   Some of my favorite oatmeal combos below*
4. Add Granola. Granola is just oatmeal that hasn’t gone soft. Sprinkle granola on top for a different texture. The sweetness of the granola can also help you from overloading on brown sugar. You can even boil granola to make oatmeal if you’re low on oats (although it is usually a little too sweet for me).
   Some of my favorite flavors of granola for oatmeal are cinnamon raisin, vanilla, pumpkin, and banana.

**Easy oatmeal combos:

1. Peanut butter, apple, cinnamon - One of my favorite culinary discoveries was peanut butter and oatmeal. It changed my breakfast forever.
   Choice of apple is important, green apples are usually not very good in oatmeal, they get sour. I like to use honeycrisp apples (the super sweet queen of the apple kingdom).
   In addition to the obvious ingredients, I sprinkle granola on top, usually cinnamon raisin.
2. Crunchy banana - Walnuts or pecans, fresh banana, and vanilla/banana granola. Feel free to use cinnamon liberally. And go ahead, add some peanut butter.
3. Pumpkin granola - This is my favorite granola for the fall. Mix 2 or 3 spoons of fresh or canned pumpkin in to your oatmeal as you cook. Add raisins and pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, ginger, clove) So super good!

It has been proven in over 40 studies that oatmeal helps lower cholesterol. It is the perfect choice for those of us who have (or are at risk for) heart problems. Oats also boost your immune system, help stabilize blood sugar, and are high in fiber that may actually help prevent certain cancers. All that, and oatmeal is really quick and cheap. And now, you know how to make oatmeal really delicious.

Cheap and Simple Peanut Butter & Banana Breakfast Taco

Here’s a tasty and super Cheap Vegan breakfast idea that can make good use of the last slice.

The directions and ingredients are simple.

• 1 slice of (Ezekiel) bread
• (Natural) Peanut Butter 
• Banana

That’s it. Spread the peanut butter on the bread, put the banana in the middle, fold bread over banana. Grilling is optional, but highly recommended.
This only costs about 75 cents to make at most and takes about 1 minute to make.
I survived off of these sandwiches for a month when I was extra low on cash & living without a kitchen while interning in LA.
The banana only cost about 15 cents, a loaf of bread is $3-$4, and peanut butter is about $3. This is a very good Cheap Vegan survival food and will make as many sandwiches as you have slices. Plus, it’s easy to carry and eat while you walk.

Bananas help lower blood pressure due to their ultra high potassium levels, 2 Tbsp of peanut butter has 8 grams of protein, and if you eat Ezekiel bread there are added benefits.
Ezekiel bread is made of sprouted wheat. Allowing the wheat to begin the sprouting process unleashes enzymes. The bread is actually made of living sprouts making it more rich in nutrients. It’s easier to digest and only 60 - 80 calories depending on the type. Ezekiel bread has a very rich nutty flavor, I highly recommend trying it. (But be sure to check the frozen food isle, sometimes this bread is kept frozen in supermarkets.)

Here are a few ways to spice up this already awesome meal.

• Sprinkle cinnamon on top - Even the smell of cinnamon is good for you! Catching whiffs of cinnamon stimulates brain function.
• Add: Raisins, thin cut apple slices, strawberries, or dark chocolate chips
• Put some granola on top of the peanut butter, gives you an added sweet crunch.
• Dip in Apple Sauce. I think this is the best tip, dipping this ‘taco’ in some apple sauce is 100% perfection.