Happy New Year’s! 2015 is going to be epic. I can feel it in my bones. It is going to be the year of the VEGAN! So, I just did my shopping for our New Year’s Eve party tonight. It is just going to be a family affair. Most of what we are making will last us tonight and tomorrow, but I am just going to cost it out as one party. It is going to be so much FUN. We are doing finger foods and playing games. When the games are done, we are doing an 80’s movie night marathon! I’m so excited (just in case all my exclamation points didn’t suggest that).

Here is the menu:

A veggie platter with celery, carrots, cucumber, radishes.
Vegan Caesar dip.
A olive and pickle tray with black and green olives and pickles.
Homemade chips and a sour cream dip.
Homemade chips with salsa.
Baked homemade fries.
Virgin bloody Mary’s.

But Heather, you say, that sounds a little rich for my blood. Trust me. I got enough food to feed 10 people, but it will be our party food and probably some leftover stuff for tomorrow. The grand total is $35.00. Yep. That is correct. $35.00. That makes it $7/per person including drinks. The best part is that is it will carry over to tomorrow. Yeah! Let’s ring that New Year’s bell with an inexpensive, cruelty free treat.

I am a member of many vegan facebook groups. One of the recurrent themes is about cost and grocery bills. After my daughter’s 16th birthday and Christmas, our own food budget was feeling a pinch. I have been feeding our family of 5 and sometimes 6 on about $10 a day . . . add in some staples and we are talking $100 a week. We are eating delicious foods. For the start of 2015, I am going to post at least one of our meals a day with a per portion cost. I will do portions because then you can see how many people it feeds. For example, if it is 4 portions, that means I made it for 4 people. Sometimes there are leftovers, and I will note that as well. Then I am going to do a What I eat in a day video once per week with the cost break down. I’m going to do that for all of January. I’ll start with a teaser meal from today. Today we had a delicious lunch that consisted of a salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, green onion, radishes) with Quick 6 salad dressing (homemade), two tacos with corn tortilla shells, refried beans, sweet potato, tomatoes, hot sauce. It was $1.11 per portion for 3 portions.

  You should totally eat this because it is delicious. And until tomorrow. . . Live, eat, and be well.

P.S. Here is a link to the dressing. In our family, we use orange juice and half the miso.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0GrSr63wt8