Grocery Budget for Vegetarians

Also, sites like this are great for ideas: http://budgetbytes.blogspot.ca/

Not always the healthiest but you can make adjustments if you know what's generally good for ya

I probably spend about $50 a week, maybe more, on groceries each week. I've been vegetarian since January. I did used to spend more, but once I started meal planning, that pretty much locked me into a cheaper monthly amount. If you can plan your meals for the week around the same general ingredients, you won't need to spend as much on different assortments of food.

For example, I love lentils. And I love that I can make the whole bag and use it over the course of my work week. This past week, my meals were set up like this:

MONDAY
Lentils with poached eggs

TUESDAY
Lentil spaghetti with mushrooms

WEDNESDAY
Burrito - Black beans, mushroom, avocado (half)

THURSDAY
Lentil spaghetti with mushrooms

FRIDAY
Scrambled eggs with lentils and tomatoes

I'm also pretty in love with oatmeal, so I generally eat oatmeal every morning for breakfast. Sometimes I shake it up with huevos avocado or avocado toast (yum) but it depends on the week and how many avocados I'm going to need!

I'd highly recommend meal planning and organizing around a staple ingredient or two. That should help you plan your budget and keep costs down.

Hey y'all

I feel like the majority of my money goes to the grocery stores. I cook all my own meals and I always bring a lunch to work. Trader Joes, Whole Foods and Hannaford are all within a block of each other and circle my office. I'm spending about $100 on groceries a week and I'm just one single vegetarian lady!

I REFUSE to eat processed crap just because I'm broke but produce is very expensive. For example; I go through 2 bags of baby spinach, a bunch of bananas, 3 avocadoes (they're over $1 a piece here), tomatoes, 3 oranges and lemons and 2 sweet potatoes a work week...every week. This is about $25-$30 depending on the store before I even get staples like bread, eggs and yogurt.

I'm trying to cut corners with my finances to pay off credit card debt from travelling...so I can travel more.

My questions for fellow vegetarians:
Does this seem incredibly excessive to spend this much?
How much do you spend on groceries a week?
How do you spend less?
Any recipes that freeze well and can be used for a few days at a time?

Thanks!

I spend $90 a week for five people, 4 who eat a standard American diet and then me who eats a mostly whole foods, plant based with a bit of non-whole foods in moderation. So yeah, what you're spending is a bit mind boggling to me

You can take a peek at my profile for a link to my food diary but I eat a green smoothie every day and that usually has fresh spinach, kale, chia seeds, a banana, frozen blueberries that I picked at a U Pick farm this summer ($1.25lb!), and then another fruit. I recently discovered that Dollar Tree has added frozen foods and I can get bags of frozen fruit, with nothing added, for $1 each and one bag breaks down into two smoothies. So far I've gotten strawberries, mango, mixed berries and peaches.

For off season growing months (like now) I get the spinach and kale at Meijer, which is a midwest chain. A huge bunch of organic kale is $2 or $1.50 for non-organic. Spinach is $1.50 for a large bunch. I usually buy two bunches of each week (go back to the store halfway through the week to get the second bunches). The chia seeds I get at a local health store and a container costs around $8 and lasts me a couple months (at a tbsp a day, per smoothie).

Then everyday I usually have a large, dinner plate sized salad-veggies and then either warmed up organic refried beans on top with hot sauce, black olives and ground flax seed for a 'taco' type salad, or one with veggies, croutons and regular ranch dressing (I like mild pepper rings on this one). I get veggies are that on sale and also hit up the reduced produce rack-I get most of my bananas from there, for .19lb. During growing season I get produce really cheap or even free through the farmers market, hobby farmers, u pick farms and relative's gardens. The beans I get are canned and cost $1.09 and it has 2-3 salads worth in each can.

I've been pairing up the salads with large sweet potatoes lately since those are in season yet here-I top them with a cinnamon sugar mixture (nothing else).

And then a grain-usually brown rice with veggies and mushrooms mixed in or oatmeal with lots of different add ins (the possibilities are endless-this week I tried a pumpkin banana almond combo and it was amazing!).

I don't eat eggs and dairy is limited to when we go out to eat usually, then I'll have a bit of cheese. I don't usually eat bread type things, except for an occasional whole wheat English muffin that I get for $1.09 a package at the bread outlet, and then I do a lot of baking and will have homemade muffins that I make with wheat that I grind myself and usually has fresh fruit or things like grated carrots in.

For me alone, I spend around $30 a week on groceries.

Maybe shop around a bit more in your community. I loved living in Vegas because the Hispanic markets were always dirt cheap! My mouth drops open at the mark up Whole Foods does...too expensive for my blood.

Realistically, I probably spend about $70-$75 on groceries a week. All I know is every time I go to grocery store, I don't get out of there for less than $35. The other $25 goes towards household stuff like cleaning stuff.

I buy my lentils, rice, beans and spices from the bulk sections. I make a lentil soup in my mini crock pot almost every week.

I make everything from scratch. I don't love leftovers so I make enough for me to have for dinner and lunch the next day.

I think I need to be less of a "foodie" and eat some blander meals... I'm going broke trying to eat tasty, healthy foods!

I was vegetarian a few years ago. Here are the cheap foods I ate more of:

Carrots
Potatoes
Eggs
Fresh string beans
Bananas
Dried lentils

I spent like 40-50 a week. My food bill actually went down when I went vegetarian. Beans are $1 a pound and you don't need to go to whole foods or anything stupid expensive. I just shopped at heb.