Hmmm, what was that about being less tardy with this post? Oh well.
Our order for June:
* Light tahini — Essential, three 340g jars for £1.50 each. I have developed quite a taste for tahini, especially on my morning toast with Marmite and sliced tomatoes. Anyone have a good recipe for tahini salad dressing?
* Egg-free mayonnaise — Plamil, three 315g jars for £1.43 each. GranoVita does a vegan mayo as well, in both glass and plastic, but Essential Trading only carries the plastic version.
* Low-salt vegetable bouillon — Marigold, 1kg tin for £7.73. The only reason I buy the low-salt version is that the regular one isn’t vegan and the organic one (which is vegan) doesn’t taste as nice. This is going to last quite awhile.
* Organic almonds — Essential, 2kg for £13.34. I’m quite disappointed with these. There are some spoiled ones in the batch; some taste VERY bitter; and some are shrivelled and hard. I have written to Essential about this.
* Organic soda, dandelion & burdock and root beer — Free Natural, six 250ml bottles for 72p each. We don’t drink much soda, but wanted to have a few on hand for summer. This is nice-tasting soda, though not as flavoursome as Fentimans, IMO.
* Organic peach juice — Organic Village, three 1-litre bottles for £2.66 each. Unlike some fruit juices that use only a small percentage of the “featured” juice and bulk it out with cheaper apple juice, Organic Village juices cotnain 100% of the featured juice. Yummmy!
There’s another item in the photo above which wasn’t bought at the co-op, but which I thought I would include here.
* Organic white grape juice — Vila Vella, 12 1-litre bottles for £4.17 each. I had to buy this at retail price because Essential doesn’t sell any white grape juice in glass bottles. Yes, this stuff is expensive, and no we won’t be drinking it straight! It’s for homemade white wine, when red grape juice isn’t suitable. Despite its steep price, adds only 70p to each bottle of homemade wine, as one 1-litre bottle is all that’s needed for an entire one-gallon (4.5 litre) batch of homemade wine. I bought it from Viva! Wine Club, a wine shop affiliated with the vegan organisation Viva!
I’ll be ordering more vegan goodies next week, with order pickup at the end of the month.
Hi! I’ve recently come across your blog a few times via google when looking for recipes. I am not a vegan, but as a fellow thrifty person, I try to make as many vegan meals as possible because they tend to be a lot cheaper. I look forward to looking around your blog and seeing what else I could learn from you. (I’m already really looking forward to trying a seitan turkey wrapped in yuba.)
Do you get whole grain tahini? I recently discovered it and its got so much more nutrition in it than regular tahini!
My favorite way of making tahini dressing is thinning it with water and lemon juice, then adding salt and garlic powder.
I especially like this dressing on sauted greens like swiss chard.
Hi PP — I’ve never seen anything labelled whole grain tahini, though I know there’s “dark” tahini, which I believe is made from unhulled sesame seeds. Thanks for the tips on tahini dressing, I especially like the idea of serving it on sauteed greens, yumm.
I am crazy for tahini! I LOVE the stuff. It’s a crucial part of my vegan “eggs” for breakfast recipe, and my favorite salad dressing has a tahini base–I eat it all the time with kale. YUM. I don’t have the recipe because it’s “Annie’s Goddess” and I buy it pre-made. I bet you could easily de-construct it though.. . Let me know if you do!
Dark tahini is what I meant. (I don’t live in an English speaking country, so I probably translated it wrongly.)
Dark tahini has such an awesome taste- almost peanut buttery when plain, but when thinned out, it tastes pretty much like the regular dressing.
Oh, I also love putting tahini in my waffles and pancakes. It gives it a delicious taste!
CM — ya, tahini ROCKS 😉
PP — I’ll have to give it a try; sounds awesome.