Marina van Dijk is a 64-year-old semi-retired gardener living in Hillcrest, on Auckland's North Shore.
She has followed a vegetarian diet for 48 years, and has also raised her 27-year-old son Ryan as a vegetarian. He splits his time between her home and his girlfriend's place.
This week Marina spent a total of $144.10, divided between PAK'nSAVE Wairau, Woolworths Northcote, Da Hua Supermarket and Top in Town Spice City in Nothcote.
I tend to go for specials, if I can, especially when it's canned stuff, frozen stuff. I generally don't buy any of that at full price unless it's cheap enough already. So price is very much a driver, and I'm not so much brand-orientated.
PAK'nSAVE is just down the road, so that's an easy one. But Woolworths is within walking distance, and Northcote has very good Chinese supermarket options. So I walk home with my stuff, and they have a few products at the Chinese shops that I can't get in the mainstream [supermarkets], more vegan and vegetarian options.
[I'm] pretty much vegan now. I grew up vegetarian, but as time's gone on and as the planet's changed, my views have changed of eating dairy. So I never buy meat, don't have any in the house and I don't buy dairy. I can occasionally be persuaded by a little piece of chocolate.
I brought my son up vegetarian, because that's how I grew up from my mid teens. When I was nearly vegan, but still buying cheese (there wasn't the choice of vegan cheeses that there is now), Ryan watched a couple of movies that were very pro-animal rights, pro-planet, and he just said, 'I don't want to eat any more dairy either'.
So we made a complete switch. I was already partly there, you know, I already used soy milks and things — which are actually cheaper than cows' milk — and keep longer! I always have some in the cupboard.
And probably the other influence is, of course, you can see a lot more online over the last 10 or 20 years, a lot more recipes. I found I've swung towards the sort of 'one pot' kind of things such as Thai, Indian food with lentils, dahls, that kind of thing.
Non-negotiables each week would be canned beans and red lentils. They go in everything, they're easy to cook, they take 10 minutes. You can chuck them in salads, chuck them in soups and stews. It's a good filler if you want to fill the meal out a bit.
My most expensive item this week was probably the vegan ice cream – it was $7.50 on special for a litre. It's actually Tip Top that make that one, it's the Salted Caramel Fudge. I wish they made a vanilla one because I like affogato.
I managed to get tomatoes for $3 a kilo from the Chinese shop, not the big guys. And I bought a packet of wraps for $3.
Generally plant-based food is a damn sight cheaper, unless you buy meat-free sausages for say $8 or something, which I've started buying less of. I've switched more to buying tofu. But generally, lentils and beans, they're so cheap. So you can see in the jar over there the red lentils, that's a kilo, right? You can make four kilos of food out of that for $5. If there was going to be a takeaway from this for people trying to stretch their budget further, it would be red lentils.
I've always enjoyed cooking, but you do learn over time with experience what does and doesn't work. Tofu, for example, is one of those products that people go, 'Oh, I don't like that', but they're not all the same — not all tofu is created equally, and you can do different things with different tofus, you just need to know what it is and then eventually you learn.
My favourite is firm, because I can cube it. So it's good for Thai food. I use it as an alternative to paneer in Indian food, paneer is the cheese that they normally use. So it's a learning curve.
I recently made a chia berry pudding, and people go, 'wow, really? What's the recipe?' Soon as someone asks, What's the recipe? I go bingo. I'm on to a good one, because that had a custard on it as well. But it was a soy coconut cream custard.
I've always had in mind cooking effectively. That's my personality, to be effective about what I do, hence going for one pot and easy.
And of course, you can cook for a meal two or three days in a row and maybe add something else to make it a bit different. If I'm cooking mung beans, which takes about 25 minutes, I'll cook enough for two or three nights and freeze portions. With brown rice, same story. Cook enough for two or three but you don't have to eat it all in a row. Freeze it and it makes it handy for grab-and-go.
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