Meal Planning: This aspect of transitioning to a vegan diet can seem the most daunting. How do I take all these veggies + fruits — and new items like nutritional yeast, which, despite looking like fish food, is delicious on everything from salad to popcorn — and make nutritious, filling, and tasty meals?
To begin, I sit down once a week (maybe once every two weeks) and surround myself with cookbooks or open a bunch of tabs on my browser. Once I’ve identified 4-7 savory, main-course recipes I copy down all of the ingredients not currently in my apartment to a Google doc to bring with me to the grocery store. Almost without fail the first day I bring all these groceries home I end up not eating or cooking any of it and instead order takeout or have a very Reasonable and Adult Dinner of popcorn.
Meal Planning vs. Meal Prepping: I meal plan. I do not meal prep. While I find the trend of Sunday batch cooking admirable, I also find the idea of cooking all of my food for the week and dividing it into individual Tupperware containers both overwhelming and a bit monotonous. With the exception of the second grade when I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every single day for a year, I get easily bored with repetitive meals.
In an effort to make the transition to eating plant-based or vegan more accessible, I’ve organized the meals I plan to make this week for you to take inspiration from.
Meals for the Week of January 1:
- Roasted cauliflower, farro, arugula salad (Love Real Food)
- Chickpea tikka masala with green rice (Love Real Food)
- Autumn minestrone soup (Complete Vegan)
- Creamy caesar salad (Complete Vegan)
- Sabudana (Indian-ish; a savory tapioca dish I first heard about on the Home Cooking podcast with Samin Nosrat)
- Cozy vegan mushroom and white bean pot pies (Love and Lemons 2, 141)
- Sticky sesame tofu rice (Deliciously Ella app)
- Date balls (not technically a meal, but can be, in a pinch)
- Best fudgy brownies (Rainbow Plant Life)
In these recipes we’ve got beans and legumes galore, a couple of green salads, and some rice-based meals. I’ve also included a couple sweets because I have an insatiable sweet tooth and I predict that a sudden lack of dessert will send me into a tailspin.
General Grocery Store Categories
- Produce (e.g. spinach, bananas, leeks)
- Frozen (e.g. blueberries, raspberries)
- Canned Goods (e.g. chickpeas, cannellini beans, coconut milk)
- Dry Goods (e.g. lentils, flour, spices)
- Bulk (e.g. dates, oats, chocolate chips — anything I can get in the bulk section of Lucky’s)
- Staples
- These might not be recipe-specific for that week, but they are items I know I like having available
- e.g. Almond butter, oat milk, tofu, chia seeds
Want to create your own menu? Use my recipe suggestions above or check out my top three favorite vegan / vegetarian bloggers here:
Happy cooking!