Last week, my dad was saying he’d like to stop eating tuna if he could only find something better to put in his sandwiches, so I found this recipe for a Vegan “Tuna” Sandwich made with chickpeas. We both tried the recipe the same day, and we both loved it. I haven’t had a tuna sandwich in at least 20 years, and I remember not particularly liking the experience. This chickpea salad, however, was delicious.

Fishy, yet not.

I’ll definitely be making this recipe again, since it was so simple and so satisfying. Who’d have thought you could substitute chickpeas for tuna? Good to know.

The recipe made five sandwiches, so my calculator says I spent less than $1 per serving. Instead of paying $25 for five tuna sandwiches in a New York deli, which I would never do, I spent $5 to eat the same number of awesome sandwiches at home instead. So that’s $20 more for the June tally!

Does spicy food cause hiccups? I didn’t know that, being so heat-averse for so many years. Last week I made Vegetarian Tortilla Soup, and even though I substituted canned chipotles for the jalapeños, I was still a bit overwhelmed. The soup tastes good, but it’s hard to eat while hiccuping.

Hot.

It’s not particularly filling, but a large portion made a good lunch. Also worth noting is that it was still enjoyable cold, which came in handy during the hot weather last week.

Rather than dealing with leftover ingredients (half a can of beans? No, thanks), I made a double batch, which left me with five large servings of soup for a total cost of less than $5. Since a large soup of this caliber is often $6 in the city, I reckon I saved $25 by making it myself. Not a bad start to June….

A few nights ago, I dreamed about my grandmother—the one who used to make me vegetarian dishes at family dinners and send me recipes for egg- and dairy-free desserts before I ever started experimenting with vegan baking. Then while I was looking for a dish to make this week, I found this old bookmark for War Cake. My grandmother clipped this article for me ten years ago, and it was one of the first desserts I ever made by myself.

Accidentally vegan.

I still don’t understand how this cake is so successful with only two teaspoons of shortening, but (even though I undercooked it a bit this time) it sure is delicious. Thanks again, Grammy!

It’s cheap, too—less than $4 for 16 squares or 24 little slices. If each slice costs $1 at a store or bake sale, I’ve made a profit of over $20, which means the final total for May is $68.

I’ve already decided to give the money to Vegfam—an organization that helps fund sustainable food projects and provide drinking water as well as emergency relief without harming animals or the environment—mostly because I realized I never sent in my check from my very first blog entry back in October, but also because it’s a worthy organization that depends 100% on donations. Next stop, June!

I wanted to make something easy this week, so I remembered this recipe for Pasta with Edamame Pesto. Well, it was not easy, nor was it fast or delicious, but I’m not convinced the recipe was entirely at fault.

As delicious as it looks.

I’m told that mistakes are how you learn—so what did I learn this week? First of all, a blender is not a food processor. That is to say, everything gummed up the blender, and even with my handheld model, the edamame did not blend. Which brings me to the second thing I learned: frozen edamame are not necessarily cooked. Or if they are…they’re still frozen. So the sauce was not saucelike in the least. And I learned one more thing this week: there’s something wrong with my garlic powder. It’s got to be super-concentrated or something, because the pasta left my refrigerator smelling like garlic, and you can imagine how the it tasted.

In conclusion, after the first serving I added a little Classico to the mix, which improved things greatly.

On the bright side (?), this recipe made a giant bowl of food, at least five days worth, and it only cost a little over $5. Following the New York deli pasta convention of about $6 per serving, I saved at least $25 this week. That brings May’s total to $48. So the good news is that I just doubled my money in a week!

I found myself with a lot of potatoes this week, so for some reason I thought to make potato salad. This recipe was the first one I found, so I ran with it, despite the fact that I had not quite enough mayonnaise left. So it turned out kind of yellow…maybe I should have used less mustard.

It probably could be less colorful.

Anyway, I’ve been enjoying it, though a better mayonnaise-mustard ratio would improve matters. Then there’s the old “salt and pepper to taste” business again, but it seems like that doesn’t make much of a difference for a salad. The important thing with this recipe is that it makes a whole ton of food, like maybe six good-sized servings.

My best guess is that this amount of potato salad would cost, like, $12 at Whole Foods (I figure this is a fair comparison, since I used organic potatoes), and I spent less than $3 on ingredients, so I’ve saved more than $9 on this side dish. The total for May is now $23! Kind of low, if you ask me.

I wanted to try something a little different this time, so I found this recipe for Fettuccine with Eggplant and Peppers alla Norma. Some of the ingredients amounts seemed off (for example, I used less pasta than recommended and it still seemed like a lot), and I was perplexed by the instruction to “simmer, partially covered, until the liquid has almost evaporated” because there was no liquid to speak of. But even though something obviously went wrong, it was still a decent meal.

Fancy name, simple meal.

The combination of tomatoes and eggplant and basil, though classic, is not one I’d ever used before, and I’m glad I finally did, because it tastes really good.

There’s a deli near my old office that sells pasta kind of like this, and the price per serving is about $6. This recipe made three servings, and it cost around $4 total. Guess I just saved $14 by making this pasta myself instead of buying it at a deli.

And now it’s time to start wondering where May’s donation will go.

Cookies are the best…especially cookies with peanut butter and chocolate. Thus, these Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows are basically a dream come true. I actually made these as soon as the recipe was posted last year, and they turned out a little weird. (Now I’m thinking it was because I used unsalted peanut butter.) Fortunately, I decided to give these a second chance, and they were amazing…like big puffy peanut butter cups. Unfortunately, all 24 of them were gone before I thought to take a picture, so we’ll have to settle with a photo of what was left of last year’s batch.

Classic "before" picture (referring to both baking and photography skills).

Last week’s batch looked just like the picture in the recipe, I swear. And it made exactly 24, since I split up both doughs into 24 pieces. It’s hard to calculate what the ingredients cost, but I’d estimate that it was around $6 total. At a bake sale or a neighborhood bakery, cookies this fancy might sell for $2 each, so I hypothetically saved $42 by not buying two dozen fresh-baked gourmet cookies elsewhere.

That bumps April’s savings up to $88—not bad at all. Perhaps spurred by recent events (they say the oil spill is nearly the size of Jamaica), I’ve decided to send the money to…

http://www.oceana.org/

Besides countering pollution, Oceana also protects marine wildlife and works against habitat destruction and climate change. These are all really bad things that you can read about on their website (except marine wildlife, which is a good thing), and I think they deserve a lot more than $88 to continue this work.

I got a little sidetracked last week because of the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale, which I don’t think is an appropriate focus for the blog, though it actually fits the theme quite well, seeing as how I did help raise $44 for Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary over the weekend…but that’s not what this entry is about. Here’s the real star of the show: Chorizo Seitan Sausages.

And unlike the baked goods, I don't have to share these.

As soon as I got my copy of Terry Hope Romero’s new book, Viva Vegan!, I compiled a mental list of must-make recipes, and these were at the top of the list. They are pretty awesome. I’ve made seitan sausages before, so I know it’s actually not that hard. They’re also customizable and fun and really cheap to make. I spent probably less than $3 to make six sausages—about two pounds worth—and a similar amount of storebought vegan sausages would cost about $13 (I checked). That means the April tally has reached $46!

For anyone who’s inspired to try this at home, here’s a good recipe for Spicy Pinto Sausages.

Do you have kids? I don’t. But that didn’t stop me from making Kids Choice Yummy Peanut Noodles over the weekend. I was drawn to the recipe because it looked simple and versatile and I had most of the ingredients already (everything except some whole wheat linguini I bought for the occasion). As I was choosing which vegetables to add, I realized how similar this dish is to a peanut noodle salad I used to prepare when I worked in a cafe, so I garnished it just like we used to. It brought back memories.

Just like college.

The bed of lettuce is the same, but unlike in college, I added some sliced red peppers and sesame seeds (perfectly complementary) and mixed in some edamame (not pictured, and not worth it). This recipe has got to be one of my favorites so far. It’s fast and easy to make with whatever’s on hand, plus kids love it—at least that’s what I hear.

Moreover, the entire recipe (about four servings for me) cost around $3, which is way beyond worth it. And a quick web search shows that the peanut noodle dish I used to enjoy costs $5 per serving, so I paid $17 less than I would have in a restaurant for four perfectly delicious lunches.

April’s total now stands at $36!

Last week I was looking up the address for a health food store and found that they have recipes on their website, so I picked one to try for this week’s attempt: Tofu a la King. After all, I had a block of tofu in the freezer just waiting for a recipe like this to come along, and I’m familiar with the general idea from TV dinners I ate as a child. The recipe is relatively healthy and different from other stuff I’ve tried lately, and it can be made easily and cheaply. The thawed tofu added a hearty, stewlike texture, and the sauce was creamy and intriguingly flavored (though I’ll add the maximum amount of liquid next time).

Rice not pictured.

In all, I spent less than $5 on the whole recipe, which made about four deli-sized servings. If a deli lunch like this would normally cost $6, that means I’ve saved $19 this week. Not bad!

This experiment has lasted six months now, and I’ve decided to simplify and donate to one organization per month. April’s charity will be announced in approximately three weeks, and until then, this month’s tally stands at $19 so far. What would you do with the money?