Nostalgic Vegan Recipes Roundup

Spotted at Aldi this week! 🛒🪙

It’s national mac & cheese day but let’s celebrate it vegan! Here are some products which should all still be active and available in stores but some are harder to find than others. This isn’t an exhaustive complete list as I know there are others out there but it’s what I found in my archives. 🥣 I also have some of my own recipes at the end if you want to make it from scratch. Just comment RECIPE and I’ll send them to you. We must honor the ones no longer with us. Rest in cheez Earth Balance, Aldi, Trader Joe’s and others. 🫡

New Crisp Power and plant-based cheddar protein pretzels at Costco. I tried these and they sort of reminded me of goldfish crackers. The apple berry pie is back at Costco. Late July jalapeño line chips spotted at Costco. Saint James zero sugar drinks at Costco. Orgain chocolate dairy-free protein shakes at Costco. New Jif crunchy peanut butter chocolate spread at Walmart. New Smuckers apple cinnamon jelly at Walmart. Late July pickle lemonade chips at Whole Foods. New Whole Foods pistachio butter. New Elavi blueberry muffin blonde bars at Whole Foods.

Walmart’s frozen plant-based section has steep clearance markdowns right now with some stores seeing prices as low as 50 cents, while others seeing nothing at all. One rumor going around claims shelf space is being cut back and another is they’re moving items around but I haven’t been able to confirm that with Walmart yet. Full breakdown of what might be going on is up on my blog now, so comment LINK and I’ll send it to you. I only spent $22 but got a lot of things. Did you score any deals? UPDATE: see the pinned comment from a Walmart insider as to what they say is happening. I got a lot of it right from my reporting which is a bit good and a bit bad as it seems some products are not coming back but some new ones may be on the horizon. Also, it seems vegan items may be placed nearer their conventional counterparts which I also reported as a rumor but looks like this might be the case.

These are the items I actually buy at Trader Joe’s. 🛒 People always think I buy everything I post but I’d probably go broke. I always say everyone has their own “good” so while these are my picks, you might have a much different list. I only had 19 slots for photos so I’m definitely missing some things like bulgogi (my store was out) and others but please refrain from saying “you forgot…”. This isn’t an exhaustive list and don’t assume everyone loves what you might equally. It’s one of the beautiful parts of being human because wouldn’t life be boring if we were all the same? 👨🏻‍💻 Did you know you can search TraderJoes.com for most of their products, new items and see the ingredients and pricing as well as info about them? Now you know! What are your go-to items that make it into your cart?

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard about the viral TikTok banana latte trend as Kimmy (aka Mrs. BBV) handles that platform (make sure to follow there too!) and I’m personally not too sure about the flavor with coffee for me but it’s definitely appealing to some! 🍌 Califia is even bringing two new products to shelves soon with this flavor profile. 🆕 Comment LINK to learn where they’ll be showing up and more about this bananas taste sensation in my new blog post.👇🏼

🍁 New Pillsbury maple grands biscuits spotted at Walmart that look to have maple sugar bits in them. I have some observations and an update on my correspondence with the brand regarding the crescent rolls and l-cysteine saga. For the maple biscuits, these do not contain l-cysteine which is good news. The cross contamination “may contain” warning is a bit different than they normally use and honestly, they don’t often include one. I found it interesting that they used the word “ingredients” at the end of it as that’s not usually used but there are no real rules for these disclosures. That word implies “maybe we added milk, maybe we didn’t” rather than “this may have come in contact with trace amounts of milk due to shared equipment manufacturing lines”. It’s probably the latter and I found it odd but after dealing with them regarding the crescent rolls, I’m not surprised. 🥐CRESCENT ROLLS UPDATE: I got a fourth phone call from a customer service representative who said they asked their product team again and they stated that the current and most recent recipe “3” as they called it DOES contain l-cysteine as an ingredient which was bad news. I then pushed further and asked why their own listing on their website doesn’t list it as an ingredient for the original crescent rolls. Their response was only the seasonal summer packaging doesn’t contain it for some reason (she couldn’t provide a reason why but I’ve seen different formulations for seasonal products like cereals that don’t contain vitamin D3 for example, so it’s not unprecedented that this happens in production but it seems odd). I know others who’ve found regular packaging with the l-cysteine not listed in the ingredients and their own website has it that way as well so she said she would go back to the product team for clarification. I don’t think she’s asking the right questions to them and I wish I could speak to them directly. As I mentioned, something is wrong but I’m trying to get to the bottom of it and I’m hoping it will be that this ingredient has been removed but that’s TBD for now. As always, check the ingredients on the labels yourself. Comment LINK for my updated blog post.

Some new things headed to stores! Only thing I know is exclusive are the Blue Diamond sour cream and onion almonds (no dairy or gelatin in these!) at Walmart. The nut thins are on Amazon currently but should also be coming to stores. The new Like Air rice cakes are also on Amazon but are showing up in my Publix app and there might be a warehouse club pack available as well soon. The Bloom pear scare should be coming soon and the Olipop crisp Apple mini’s are at some stores already. The Backflip cereals are in the Target app already and the blueberry Uncrustables have been spotted there and at Walmart. Check your local stores, their apps or Instacart for availability near you!

Spotted at @bjswholesale club! 🛒