Vegan meal (December 10th, 2015): -two slices of sourdough 3-malt bread -a quartered tomato -a few silverskin onions -mushrooms and smoked almond tofu fried in olive oil -chickpea patties (crushed chickpeas, pinch of curry, pinch of salt, ginger, and olive oil) Cost: £3.77 or $7.79 CAD or $5.71 USD All you need for a meal like this is a little bit of imagination and patience. The chickpea patties take a reasonable time to bake and may crumble a bit, but further experimentation may remedy that. After crushing them with a fork and adding the sliced ginger/pinch of salt/pinch of curry, mix it all up and form them into patties. Put them in the oven for about 35-45 minutes (flip in the middle) at 200°C/392°F if you want them to have a crunchy outside while maintaining a soft center; ultimately this creates a nice texture and averts the somewhat homogeneous consistency they have when uncooked. The frying of tofu and brown-cap mushrooms is very much up to your own judgement. They brown easily (especially as olive oil has a low burning temp.) so a medium to low temperature is advised. The other items of food are pretty straightforward. A tiny trick that will give you the almost flower-like presentation of the tomato is to not cut it entirely through when quartering. While purely aesthetic, sometimes it’s the little things that ward off the sense of futility in our largely insignificant existence. Happy cooking, Graham