The Frugal Vegan’s Happy Home: Crafts, Rituals, and Recipes for Every Season
Make sustainable housekeeping easy and fun!
Even when you’re broke, you can live a full, fun, compassionate life.
Are you plant-based, penniless, and keen on making things yourself? This cookbook and DIY compendium of vegan living starts with a focus on spring and summer, offering hot-weather tips and treats like recipes for popsicles, sorbet, and tofu burgers; budget vegan travel tips; craft ideas; yard sale delights; and guidance on environmentally friendly housecleaning.
The second half of the book is focused on harvest and holiday, offering cozy activities and recipes for cool-weather treats like pumpkin bread, cookies, hot cocoa, and more. You’ll find egg alternatives for baking, vegan survival tips for family occasions like Christmas, and Valentine’s Day gift ideas and guidance for doing it yourself and avoiding commercial holidays altogether. Save cash and learn new skills while staying socially and environmentally conscious all year round.
Read on for an excerpt of The Frugal Vegan’s Happy Home: Crafts, Rituals, and Recipes for Every Season by Lisa Van Den Boomen, shipping now from our site and available from your local bookseller or vegan retailer November 1st!
Publisher’s Note
In 2004, we received a package from Canada. It contained a zine with lots of energy, festivities, and creativity. We let the author know that we were interested in republishing it in the U.S. and she sent a gleeful response. When we sent her a royalty check, she published a blog post about how awesome it was to get paid to make zines! She made more. We continued to work together. More mutual appreciation ensued.
This book started out as four zines in a classic nineties cut-and-paste style, with each page full of cheerful effusions in various fonts, pasted in at odd angles. When we decided to compile them into a book, the format posed a few challenges, primarily that the zine pages were different sizes. We realized we’d need to pull them apart and put them together again, while retaining the scrappy charm of the originals as best we could. You can judge the results for yourself. . . .
Those of you who were frugal vegans in Canada in the late nineties and early aughts may find the dollar amounts that appear in these pages comfortingly nostalgic; the rest of you may have your eyes pop out at just how frugal it seems, but we’ve preserved it as part of the lore. Things have changed in the economy more broadly! Eggs and avocados are no longer available at the bargain prices we once enjoyed. The restaurant The Spirite Lounge is no longer in business, but the review is so charming we didn’t want to deprive you of it.
The world changes constantly, but the impulse to live lightly and joyfully upon it stays strong. Please take your inspiration from Lisa’s exuberance and experience, even as you derive your own methods and wiles. We hope you’ll keep a record of your own favorite methods to share with others.
Foreword
The book you are about to enjoy comprises a collection of zines created by Lisa Van Den Boomen, aka “The Frugal Vegan,” my amazing late wife who left us far too soon.
Lisa was many things: a maple-syrup-loving Quebecer, a proud vegan, a free-spirited, witchy hippie, a polyglot, a humanitarian, an environmentalist, a soap maker, a foodie, a coffee nerd, and an animal lover with a relentless drive and passion for making this world just a little bit of a better place to live in for all creatures, big and small.
The zines initially served as a creative outlet and a way to promote veganism at a time when vegan alternatives were not as readily available as they are today. The frugal part was out of necessity at some points, but also to let people know that not everything in life has to be expensive or cost money at all. “I can make that myself” was always one of her favorite things to say in my native Dutch (kan ik zelf maken), and she sought to empower her readers to do the same.
I am so proud that her message continues to live on and resonate with people all over the world and is now available in book form. Flip through the pages, browse a specific section, read it cover to cover, but most of all, enjoy the many recipes, frugal tips, projects, crafts, and gift ideas, which are still as relevant and useful as ever.
A big thank-you to Microcosm and to you, dear reader. Any author royalties for this book will be donated to Microcosm’s worker snack fund, as well as an animal shelter in Portland.
I hope you will love this collection as much as Lisa loved creating it.
—Walter Van Den Boomen (aka Dutchie)
Save money, empower yourself, make a difference with The Frugal Vegan’s Happy Home: Crafts, Rituals, and Recipes for Every Season by Lisa Van Den Boomen, available to order now on the Microcosm site, or ask for it at your favorite bookstore when it officially pubs November 1st!