Vegan Pantry Math

Who it is for

• Home food-business starters selling at farmers' markets, craft fairs, gift orders or a small online shop: yield, cost per pack, price, profit and break-even worked out honestly, and the rules to check before the first sale.
• Cooks and gardeners with a glut of apples, zucchini or tomatoes: dry and season on purpose, with numbers instead of guesswork.
• Vegans and plant-based eaters who want jerky, chips and seasonings without the meat shelf and its prices.
• Gift makers batching jars and pouches for the holidays: how many, how much to buy, and what goes on the label.

Not for: canning (water-bath or pressure), meat or fish, wild-foraged mushrooms, or diet and health advice. Metric first, US units beside it; every price illustrative and dated October 2026.

What you build: the Stall Batch

One dehydrator, one weekend, three products for a market stall, and every chapter adds one number to it.

• Smoky Tofu Jerky: 10 blocks of extra-firm tofu, pressed, marinated and dried to a checked target: 890 g of jerky, 15 packs of 2 oz, sodium worked out per serving, and a lab water-activity test before anything is sold as shelf-stable.
• Cinnamon Apple Chips: 16 medium apples sliced to 1/8 in, loaded by tray area and dried by weight: 12 packs of 1 oz.
• The House Rub: a smoky blend by parts, 1,800 g, 24 jars, which also seasons the jerky's marinade.
• The business: cost per pack, price, a market day's profit after the stall and card fees (about 129 at the book's example prices) and break-even on the first year's kit and fees after 7 market days. These are worked examples with a column for your own numbers, not promises.

48 recipes: 12 marinades, 18 dehydrator recipes, 12 rubs and powders, and 6 quick pickles, each written as a formula you can scale. They are worked out on paper from published ratios and USDA data: make a small test batch first.

The book was written in collaboration with AI tools and reviewed by the author. Its numbers are checked by a verification program, and its figures are drawn by the same program, but mistakes may remain: see corrections & errata. The book does the arithmetic and names the authority; it is not a food-safety assessment. Water activity must be lab-tested, and selling food from home follows your own state's or council's rules.