Of course, in the winter months, I buy more at the grocery store. Yep, organic stuff from the grocery is very expensive and I will buy regular produce at times.

There are no proven benefits at all, and the “organic” produce is invariably brutally overpriced and starting to rot. Falling for marketing isn’t going to do anything useful, but “here, look, carefully selected fruits and vegetables taste wonderful” is something with life-long value…

A lot of our produce comes from farmgate stands — we live in a rural area — but none of the farmers I deal with could care less about “organic” labelling, and certainly they’re feeding their own families on the non-”organic.” “Organic” still permits the use of a range of plant-derived pesticides that I don’t think anybody would care to eat plain…

Try to avoid pre-made stuff such as microwaveable dinners etc because they are more expensive. You are just paying for the convenience of the meal being prepared for you so it’s more expensive. One exception are fruits and veggies etc in cans because they are usually packed or frozen only hours if not minutes after harvest so they are sometimes better than fresh which have already traveled for days on trucks. They also keep for a long time without spoilage. It helps thta you make a weekly menu so you have a definite list when you go to the store and not be susceptible to impulse buying which can add dollars to your budget.

Basically, use common sense. And never go shopping when yo are hungry.

Get some curry and some other spices like tumeric and such to season them up.

Also get some beans. You can eat fat mexican food with beans for pretty cheap.

I like to get the small tortillas and the big taco shells and I put the vegan sour cream and dry rub taco seasoning (old el paso) on the tortilla and the beans in the shell and stick it together.

I would suggest that you try to buy vegetables and fruits that are in season. They will be much cheaper, and riper as well. Shop at your local farmers market if you can, and you can even think about growing your own food.

Make smoothies using a frozen banana (peeled and sliced before going in the freezer), whatever other fruits you want, and usually water or unsweetened nondairy milk (or regular milk, if you must). Adding a whole frozen banana usually makes them much more filling, and often times they can be used as an entire breakfast.

bananas, oranges, apples, grapes are cheaper fruit compared to like rasberries
if you want they have like bags of frozen veggies u steam in a bag but if not lettuce, brocholi, tomatoes, celery, carrots are good whatever you like to eat for veggies