If you’ve been following our Stretch Your Food Dollar series, you’ve probably gotten the sense that I think veganism is a great way to make your food budget go the extra mile. I’ve shared a lot of my favorite vegan recipes (chocolate cupcakes, anyone?) and this week I thought I’d do a quick roundup of some of the best vegan blogs on the internet to help you diversify your vegan recipe portfolio.

Vegan Dad – When you have kids, supper has to be on the table every night. And when you are a vegan, the drive-thru, the deli counter, and TV dinners/frozen convenience foods are not an option. So, you do the best you can. This blog is a realistic look at what a vegan family eats.

The Post-Punk Kitchen – Vegan cookbook author extraordinaire Isa Chandra Moskowitz is taking over the interwebs with recipes and practical tips. Ever wondered how to make your own vegan ice cream? Check. Love the tofu scrambler at your local vegan eaterie and want to make your own at home? Check. PPK’s got it all.

Super Vegan – OK, so eating out isn’t always the best way to stretch your food dollar, but we all do it. Whether you’re traveling or you’ve got a hot date, Super Vegan provides restaurant reviews for vegan restaurants in New York City, as well as links to vegan resources all over the country.

Facebook has several vegan groups, including the Vegan Recipe Exchange, and Vegans with Vengeances. Swap cooking tips and tricks with other social networking savvy vegans.

There’s always a raging debate between vegans and meat eaters about nutrition and how much it actually costs to eat a nutritious vegan diet. If you think that you need to buy lots of pre-packaged meat substitutes like Boca Burgers or Morningstar Patties to survive as a vegan, sure . . . you’re going to be spending a lot of money each month. But that would be true of anyone who was purchasing convenience foods. The key to stretching your food dollar whether you’re vegan or not is to prepare whole foods yourself and eat seasonal, locally grown produce as much as humanly possible.

One of the challenges for new vegans is that they often get bored with the tedium of eating the same things all the time because they don’t have enough resources at their finger tips to expand their cooking repertoires. I hope that these resources help you introduce new meatless dishes to your diet. Because even if you only eliminate meat and dairy from your diets once or twice a week, you’re still making an impact, both on your wallets and on the environment.

Happy eating, everyone!