Back in 2000 I entered an Orthodox Christian monastery. At the time I was homeless, jobless, and broke. I wasn't religiously inclined, but I'd had a spiritual experience and I was compelled to explore, so I tried it. I spent almost three years there, and it was quite a learning experience, some good, some not so good. It was a generally peaceful place, which I needed. After about three months, I decided that if I was to expect a decent meal, I'd have to learn to cook it myself, which meant volunteering for kitchen duty. One week on, one week off, and the hours were horrible, but eventually I came to love it. I was a 50 year old male, had no real cooking experience, but they had a nice library of cookbooks, and I love to read and follow instructions. My Dad, bless his soul, used to hand me instructions so they would be done correctly. What I learned from that period about cooking has been invaluable to me, gaining me entrance into other beneficial situations and being the largest cost-saving event I've ever experienced.
Vegetables are cheap, and you can grow them yourself for almost free. Beans and grains are cheap, and you can grow them or buy them for very little cost. I'll offer some simple recipes later of the things I've lived on the past few years, when money was quite tight, two to three hundred bucks a month after I left the monasteries, and I ate very well throughout that four year period by using an almost entirely vegetarian diet.
Sufficient protein can be a problem, but the solution is simple, beans and grains like rice or any other grain provide the full complement of necessary proteins. You might be concerned about vitamins, but whole grains and vegetables do the trick. There is also the benefit of lots of fiber and other nutrients.
When I do go into town once a week, I normally visit the dollar store. They have beans and rice that are cheap, and other foods that can be had inexpensively. Their prices are generally lower than Wal-Mart, which I only visit for a timely major purchase. I also go by the grocery to pick up a few things I don't grow or some more nutritious foods. My bill is seldom more than ten or twenty dollars, but I live alone and have changed to a more lacto-vegetarian diet. I have more income now. In the times I was so broke, I often only went to the stores every two weeks, and only to pick up what I had to have. During this period I was also supporting my two bad habits, drinking and smoking a pipe, so I could have made it on even less money.
If you wish to explore the vegan-vegetarian lifestyle, I would first suggest some good cookbooks. The four I use most often are "The Fannie Farmer Cookbook" by Marion Cunningham, which is an old-time cookbook updated for more modern times, and not strictly vegetarian, The "Moosewood Cookbook" by Mollie Katzen (new or old version, I learned on the old version), the "Horn of the Moon" cookbook by Ginny Callan, and the last is the "bible" of the vegan cookbooks, entitled "Simply heavenly, The Monastery Vegetarian Cookbook," by Abbot George Burke (whom, coincidentally, I may have met when I was but a child). Last I checked, this is a rare book and has been out of print for years (estate problems, I suspect). I paid over 100 dollars for my copy, used, in 2004. If you can get the old version, published by the monastery in the mid-90's rather than the newer version published by McMillan do it, although they're not terribly different. The monastery version I learned on had a few more recipes and insights into monastery life.
I promised a few simple and cheap recipes, so here goes.
A food I depend on, especially in the summer. "Refried" beans with brown rice and veggies, modified from a "Simply Heavenly" recipe.
Cook up a nice pot of beans, a crock-pot does well for this. Throw in a a chopped onion just before cooking, it helps soften and flavor the beans. I normally use 2 and 1/2 cups of dried beans, but I have a small crock-pot. Drain the beans. I save the juice to add to my dog's dry food. She enjoys it. About the same amount of cooked brown rice (best done in the oven in a covered pot at 350 for an hour or so, a bit more for brown rice [thanks for that version to an unremembered Dkos poster who suggested it]), I use a cup and a half of dry rice following package directions. After these cook, saute up some onions, garlic, and if you like some peppers. I use three or four home-grown jalapenos. I grow them in pots, and keep them inside over winter. The plants are a bush and last for years. Other peppers would work well this way, too. You'll get many more peppers this way. You can prune them to encourage new growth.
Put the cooked beans, rice and veggies in a large bowl and mix in a can or two of tomato paste. Add whatever spices you like (I use the Simply Heavenly cookbook as guidance here, basically cumin, cayenne pepper and sage, with paprika if you like, I use a teaspoon of each), mix them up with a spoon, mash with a potato masher, and freeze what you won't use within a week. I use empty cottage cheese containers to do this. I like to eat this with flour tortillas and homemade salsa, cold in the summer, warmed a bit in the winter. The reason I put "refried" in quotes is that they really aren't refried, just mashed up.
Tortillas, I do both corn (masa) and flour. A fresh masa tortilla is flexible and holds together well, unlike the store-bought kind, but after a few hours they harden and become tough to chew. Masa is more a corn flour than corn meal. I get the masa at the dollar store. Follow package directions on the masa. The real key to this is how you flatten the tortillas. Use waxed paper underneath them, and I work on good breadboard for stability. Use the heel of your hand to form the tortilla into it's basic shape. If it splits at the edges, fold it over and press down on the crack. When you've got the basic shape, finish with a roller of some sort if you wish (glass jars work well, but don't press down hard or the dough will stick). I cook them in a 12" cast-iron skillet at medium heat (not enough to smoke) and in about the time it takes to cook one, flipping it as the edges start to curl, I can pat out another by the time it takes to cook, and start another. Two at a time, quicker and cheaper that way.
Credit where credit is due. I got the idea for using my hands to shape corn tortillas from watching a Mexican or Native American woman make them at an El Fenix restaurant in Fort Worth, TX during the mid-sixties.
The experience I had with flower tortillas was difficult. I was using a white bread recipe using "better for bread" flour, and making large (10 inch) tortillas (for a fajita event, I would roll up the bean mixture I give here, toothpick it, and fry it in hot oil. They are delicious, freeze well, and are a great traveling food, but the tortillas were a pain to cook. I cooked the flour tortillas in the oven over an upturned cookie sheet at about 350. They turned out well but were a hell of a lot of work using a rolling pin. Now I use all-purpose flour, perhaps not knead it quite as much (ten minutes or so), and use my hands to get the basic shape and size, as in the masa tortillas. I finish with my rolling pin and cook in my frying pan on medium-low heat, it's cooler and simpler that way. I have to use a lightly floured breadboard and not waxed paper for flour tortillas. Flour tortillas refrigerate or freeze well. Warm them in the microwave for a bit to make them more flexible.
Update, I just made both the bean dish and flour tortillas above today, and probably spent two hours hands-on time at a total cost of about two dollars. I now have enough of the bean-rice mixture to last me a month and the tortillas turned out better, and a lot cheaper than store-bought.
This next is a home-grown recipe I came up with from my dear departed Mother's cooking. She had an absolute fear of under-done meat, so the roasts she prepared were always very dark and dry. But the veggies she cooked with them were great! This is my solution without meat, and it works nicely.
Cut up some root vegetables, carrots, potatoes, onion and any others you have handy (I've used fresh tomatoes too), throw in a few peeled garlic cloves, add 1/4 cup of oil and 1/4 cup of soy sauce, and cook in a covered pot in a 350 degree oven for an hour, stirring before and at about 45 minutes during the cooking. This makes a very inexpensive meal that goes well with chicken and other meals(I am not a true vegetarian).
This next is a gravy similar to that my Mother used to make to help out her roasts that works well with the roast veggies above, potatoes, or anywhere a gravy would work. a simple brown gravy that can be made with no oil, if you brown the flour. Our monastery loved to observe the strict fast days, which meant no oil at all on some days. This is also an original recipe, although I got the idea from "Simply Heavenly."
I start with about two tablespoons of oil. I add some minced garlic and while it cooks I get 1/4 cup, slightly rounded, of all-purpose flour. When the garlic starts to brown I put in the flour and stir to mix, adding a bit of oil to thin it enough to cook evenly if the lumps are dry. I don't let the flour brown, just cook. Two cups of liquid are needed. I use one cup of milk and one cup of water, then I add enough soy sauce to "brown" the gravy, stirring constantly (stirring is important). My version comes out a light brown color, YMMV. I turn up the heat a bit and stir constantly, after a few minutes it thickens and begins to bubble. When it bubbles pretty vigorously, I turn off the heat and stir a bit more, then remove from the burner and cover. This refrigerates well and lasts me a week or more at very little cost. After refrigerating, just slice off a section for the meal you want and microwave a bit. I put it on a baked potato, microwave a minute, then mash and serve. I use this gravy with the veggies above or a microwaved potato, these days with a bit of cottage cheese for added flavor.
Disclosure, I have no monetary interest in any of the cookbooks discussed above, and have no wish to sell my own copy of "Simply Heavenly." While I was at the monastery I got good enough that I became the "head cook," responsible for the "feast days," (sometimes with 100 visitors (using some of the recipes above, among others). A couple of the "Simply Heavenly" recipes I tried were wonderful, both were vegan and used gluten, the wheat protein, as a meat substitute. Gluten is hard to make, and preparing it as the cookbook wished was time consuming, but given a couple of days I could do it (I was also doing my regular cooking duties during this). Instructions for gluten are in the cookbook, and I'm sure google would get you a good start, but the cookbook includes very necessary steps to get a good result. I tried a "Salisbury Steak" recipe, because I recalled that I'd loved it as a child when Mom cooked it. The result was actually better than what Mom cooked, as there was no gristle or chunks of fat involved, yet still had the flavors I'd remembered. I tried a recipe for "chicken soup" also using gluten, also vegan, and got called out for it by some of the other monks because it tasted so much like real chicken soup, textures and all, that they thought I was cheating, which I wasn't. As best I knew there wasn't a chicken around for miles. Good times, bad times, but I really cannot ever repay them for what I learned there. Simply how to cook cheaply for myself and others.
As for the "saving the earth" part of the title, just read some of the diaries about the climactic expense of animal food based diets or beach babe in fl's vegetarian diaries. I think you'll understand.