365 Everyday Value Sea Salt Rippled Potato Chips

This is another vegan non-GMO snack from Whole Foods. These have a nice crunch.

Home-made Raw Salad With Hemp Oil And Kick'n Chicken Seasoning

I used mixed greens as the base of this salad. I then topped it with a fresh Roma tomato, chunks of orange bell pepper, a chopped red onion ring, and a tiny bit of cabbage. To give this amazing flavor I drizzled hemp oil on top and sprinkled black pepper and Weber's Kick'n Chicken seasoning on top. The salad was fantastic!

Vegan Macaroni And Cheese, Peas And Carrots, And Potatoes And Onions

365 Everyday Value Organic Ranchero Beans With Rice

The Covid-19 pandemic currently seems to be creating hard times for many of us. Poverty food is now more popular because of the economic slow-down and the fear of another Great Depression. Try beans and rice. This meal is cheap, healthy, and vegan. This is real food that tastes great. Try it with hot sauce or pickled peppers.

A Vegan Salad At Publix

I bought this Green Leaf Salad in the produce department of a Publix supermarket. I added La Choy Chow Mein Noodles and Daiya Homestyle Ranch Dressing. Those onions were so good!

Steamed Brussels Sprouts

This is the contents of a microwavable steam bag of Brussels sprouts with a little bit of Earth Balance vegan buttery spread melted on top.

Koyo Asian Vegetable Ramen

Finding a vegan ramen is still a challenge in the southeastern United States. Here's one I found in a specialty grocery store. It wasn't as cheap as the others, but the ingredients list is more appealing to those who choose to eat higher quality foods. This is not only vegan, it's also non-GMO and contains no MSG.

Jackfruit Street Tacos Meal With Mac & Cheese From Hippea Camper In Huntsville AL

The Hippea Camper in Huntsville AL has more new menu items I needed to try. This was my first time trying the Jackfruit and the Mac & Cheese. Both were completely satisfying!

This is another excellent choice for anyone who has a mouth and likes to please it. The jackfruit tacos had all the expected characteristics of a good barbecue street taco, except this was made with plant material. Everything at Hippea Camper is vegan. The slaw was crisp, tangy, and creamy. The thick barbecue sauce was rich in flavor and tickled my tongue. The jackfruit had a soft shredded texture. Somewhere in there I tasted a hint of celery. The crisp pickle slices made it perfect. This menu item was alive with flavor. Carnivores, please try this. You'll love it!

The Mac & Cheese had a slightly smokey flavor like Grandma's country style mac & cheese. The sauce was thick and creamy, and the noodles were perfectly softened. Because this had a flavor unlike my usual mac and cheese choices, my mouth was confused at first. After the first one or two bites I got into the groove of this mac & cheese and it was very good. I'll get this again if it stays on the menu.

The Jackfruit comes in two forms. They can also make a Jackfruit sandwich with a potato bun. Also, it comes with chips, but I upgraded to Mac & Cheese instead. This meal was $12 plus a good tip.

Click here to see the Hippea Camper website

Home-made Vegan Taco Salad with Vegan Ranch Dressing

I used Romain and Hydroponic Butter Lettuce as a base. I topped that with organic pinto beans, organic tomato chunks, avocado chunks, Daiya Homestyle Ranch Dressing, and black pepper. I stuck organic non-GMO corn tortilla chips around the outer rim.

Earth Grown Meat Free Chickenless Patties

I found these at Aldi. This almost tasted like a chicken patty, but meat eaters would know something is going on with this. I liked it though.

I had an opened jar of chunky marinara sauce in the refrigerator, so I just put some of that on my freshly microwaved chickenless patty. It was great!

A Classic Poverty Payday Dinner, Vegan Style

Let's take a break from this privileged lifestyle to remember some classic foods of poverty. This is a dinner of the overworked underpaid people in the 1980s, but this is not just a regular dinner. It's a payday dinner! This is dinner after going to the check cashing guy at the liquor store and getting groceries at the Piggly Wiggly or Circle C.

Being payday, there's no need to shamefully tear out several of those food stamps while everyone in line watches and criticizes what we're buying with their tax money. We have cash in our pockets. The car will not get repossessed this month. The rent will get paid. The electricity will stay on. We may even have enough money to get cable TV this month. It's time to celebrate!

1. Beanee Weenees (made vegan style)

Being payday, we don't want to settle for just any tasteless can of beans. We can enjoy our meal with Van Camp's Beanee Weenee which includes real hotdog slices and sweet baked beans. It's chunky and flavorful like real food. And it has meat in it, so we don't feel poor.

To make this vegan I used 365 Everyday Value Organic Traditional Baked Beans and Lightlife Jumbo Smart Dogs with a tiny bit of maple syrup


2. Macaroni and Cheese (made vegan style)

No celebratory meal is complete without Velveeta Shells and Cheese. It's payday, so we can skip the cheap powdery stuff and go straight to the premium choices that have the creamy flavorful cheese package inside the box. This heavenly food makes everyone feel wealthy.

To make this vegan I chose Daiya Cheddar Style Deluxe Cheezy Mac and added salt.

3. Sweet Tea

The standard drink of choice in the south is sweet tea. It's usually home-brewed using tea bags, Dixie Crystals, and cloudy polluted tap water. The sugar is probably added to cut the bitter metallic taste of the lead pipes. Then it's chilled in the refrigerator, unless the electricity has been cut because of nonpayment. It's served cold in previously acquired peanut butter or jelly jars or old Mason jars.

The tea pictured here is Milo's Sweet Tea. I'm an uppity snob now, and I can afford to have other people make my tea for me. The jar was intentionally left unfilled in remembrance of the days when having something good to drink was a luxury.

Engine 2 Tuscan Kale White Bean Plant Burger

This tasted as good as it looks in the photograph. This was an excellent plant-based meal!

Home-made Peppered Green Beans With Potatoes And Hemp Oil

Cinco De Mayo 2020

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic I was forced to create my own Mexican food for Cinco De Mayo. My only restaurant choices included carry-out orders, and the lines were really long. Getting take-out food is never a good choice for vegans anyway. There's no good way to inspect the food and return it if it's made incorrectly. Mexican food orders often go wrong. Vegans must avoid lard in the beans and chips, chicken fat and butter in the rice, cheese that gets melted into the food, and of course chunks of meat that may accidentally get buried in the layers of food. Here's my home-made vegan Cinco De Mayo dinner.

This meal included:

1. Quesadillas made with Mission flour tortillas, Daiya vegan cheddar, Boca Crumbles seasoned with chili powder, and diced onion

2. Refried Beans made from canned La Preferida vegetarian refried beans and seasoned with cumin

3. Mexican Rice seasoned with chili peppers, chili powder, and Abobo seasoning.

Pik-Nik Potoato Sticks

These are crunchy little potato sticks. They taste good, they're cheap, and they're vegan.  I imagine they'd be good on a salad or in a casserole.