Like many of you I have good intentions to eat well. My intentions don’t always result in the best outcome though. I’ll get busy, or frustrated, or overwhelmed, or lazy and default to quick and easy instead of balanced and nutritious. You know what I’m talking about right? Please tell me I’m not alone in this. Some days seem hectic from start to finish. I’ve looked back over the course of a day to realize I’d eaten toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and cereal for dinner; yes, that is the kind of day I’m talking about.
I’ve discovered I feel best when I eat certain things foods. Beans, whole grains (like rice or oats), fruit, lightly steamed veggies, potatoes, salads, nut butters and let us not forget my daily cup of coffee. Sometimes I’ll try to abandon these foods in favor of “healthier” options; I usually fail to prepare and end up eating toast or cereal. Boo!
Those food that I love and feel great eating are the food I primarily ate when I first transitioned to a plant-based diet. I eat other foods too and try to have enough variety that I get all the nutrients I need.
This weeks meal plan will be pretty basic, believe it or not I have another busy week so I want to keep things simple. Healthy Cravings is this week and it looks to be a very FULL meeting! I’m looking forward to meeting several new ladies who are coming!
Meal Plan
Breakfast this week will be oatmeal most days. I did buy a box of gluten-free waffles to feed my boys an a particularly busy day. We enjoy baked sweet potatoes with a dash of cinnamon as well.
Lunch is usually leftovers and I wont be getting fancy this week. I sometimes cook pasta for my boys for lunch. We don’t eat much pasta as a family but I don’t mind them having it once a week or so. If you feed your kids (or yourself) pasta more often I’m not trying to condemn you; I just feel like it isn’t the most nutrient filled choice and we have to buy gluten-free pasta which gets expensive if we eat it too often. My new trick is giving my kids salad or just greens to snack on while I’m making their lunch, yes they eat salad. I will definitely be eating our fair share of almond butter sandwiches this week.
Snack will be fruit and smoothies. I’m already doing enough extra cooking this week for Healthy Cravings so I won’t be cooking snacks.
Dinner will be an assortment of many of the foods I mentioned earlier. Beans, baked potatoes, steam veggies, and grains. I think this Mexican Casserole will be a great choice because it uses brown rice and beans, plus it will serve us for two days worth of dinners. Broccoli & Cheese Baked Potatoes using the Faux Cheese Sauce will be a crowd pleaser too. We will probably have a big salad at least one night. Over the weekend we visited a U-Pick organic farm and brought home some greens, my kids got to do some of the picking. As previously mentioned Healthy Cravings is on Thursday so I’ll be serving Breakfast Tacos, Blueberry Muffins, Savory Breakfast Muffins, and an Oatmeal Bar to name a few.
A few fun things that are happening include:
- My Plant-Based Family on Facebook has exceeded 500 Likes! Thank you all!
- The Facebook group Plant-Based Christians is at 99 likes.
- I’ll be hosting my first giveaway very soon!
- This week I’ll be interviewed on the blog at Pursue a Healthy You!
- I’ll be sharing a guest post from the Plant-Based Pharmacist.
- I got a hair cut, well it was exciting for me! 🙂
- My husband took a couple of extra days off so we had a lot of family time.
What has been going on in your life worth celebrating? Go ahead, share with the class!
I certainly understand when circumstances push us to make less than stellar choices. We had a day like that our self last week. I won’t write what we ate! Too bad 🙁 But I wonder what you are using for bread eating gluten free. We haven’t found a bread we like yet and we always made our own bread until the child with wheat allergy. I have tried several recipes that have ended up feeding the goats and chickens.
I haven’t been brave enough to attempt my own bread. GF ingredients are so expensive I don’t want to chance having to toss them out. We usually buy Rudi’s or Udi’s brands. I don’t think they are vegan, I believe they both contain eggs but we like them well enough. We keep them in the freezer and toast them before eating. Since they are more expensive we normally just give them the the 2 year old and the rest of us use a whole or multi grain wheat bread.
I hear you about good intentions! I think for me the hardest part of eating healthy is the constant, shopping, chopping and cooking. I feel like I’m at the grocery store or chopping veggies all the time, and there are times I don’t want to bother with it all. I do my best, and I guess that will have to do!
I know what you mean. Sometimes, especially when we are really busy, I’ll buy some veggies prechopped. Broccoi is the one we buy most often. It is so much easier. If veggies just need to be sliced sometimes I’ll use my food processor.
I cut myself slack when I need it and do the best I can too.
I really enjoy seeing how you guys cope with the every day things. I thought I would share the link I found that I found for Meat Free Week recipes….it definitely looks good 🙂
http://factotum-of-arts.com/2013/03/16/new-recipes-for-inspiration-this-week-week-10/
Your meal plan looks delicious! I have a shepard’s pie recipe that I never got around to posting. I’ve been thinking I need to make it again before it gets to hot and I boycott the oven. 🙂
I will keep an eye out for it. I have been thinking that for both shepherds pie and soups lately too….not too much longer and it will be back to salads and summer things. I can’t wait for the warmer weather :-).
I like baked sweet potatoes for breakfast too! Happy eating.