My Plant-Based Family

Eating Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet recipes, On a Budget.

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Snacking While Traveling

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We have not taken a family trip since before we went to a Plant-Based Diet. A lot of the fun of our trips was related to food. We would pack a ton of snacks and stop at gas stations and buy tons more. Once we little one’s came along we had to be intentional about buy them healthy and kid friendly snacks because there was no way I would feed my precious babies the garbage we were eating. 😉

Another tradition that will continue is making a freezing PB&J’s or AB&J’s. They slowly defrost throughout the day for a quick and timely lunch. We pack easy to eat fruit and crackers, dried fruit and trail mix has always been a big hit with us. 

This year we will take Go Go squeeZ. GoGo squeeZ is applesauce in little handy pouches, I know you’ve seen them. They are easy to use because they require no dishes, perfect for my 3 year old. (They are a much better deal at Costco so if you have a membership buy them there instead of a regular store.) Additionally they are all natural and gluten, nut, and dairy free.

I’ll share my experience of traveling with kids and eating a Plant-Based diet in a few weeks, but for now I seek your advice. What would you take on a trip?

If you follow My Plant-Based Family on Facebook you will get to see how it is going in real time because somethings are just to funny to wait. 

Meal Plan Monday: How I Plan

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I sit here a fully admit I don’t know what we are eating this week. At the end of the week half of our household will be going on a trip to see family. I did not buy much at the grocery store because I did not want to leave a bunch of food that would go bad.

I thought that this would be a good opportunity to walk you through how I Meal Plan. First I take all of the food we have into consideration:

  • Carrots*
  • Potatoes*
  • A little Spinach
  • Sprouted grain bread
  • Oatmeal*
  • Cooked quinoa**
  • Cooked pinto beans**
  • Several vats of hummus
  • 7 cups of cooked chickpeas**
  • Fresh (but going downhill) Strawberries**
  • Several Gluten Free Cereals*

At the store I picked up:

  • Almond Milk
  • Bananas
  • Apples
  • Broccoli**
  • Freeze-dried Veggies I wanted to try (Bleck…not a fan!)*

Item with * will be fine when I return from traveling and do not need to be used immediately. Items with ** can be frozen and used another time. I have a well stocked pantry and freezer so I have other options available. When my fridge is empty I plan meals based on what produce is the best value while also balancing nutrition and taste.

The Meal Plan

Breakfast will be oatmeal, Breakfast Quinoa, cereal and smoothies.

Lunches will be leftovers, Nachos made with Pinto Beans, PB&J or AB&J, Not So Tuna Salad sandwiches or wraps, and my favorite Spinach, carrot and hummus Wrap.

Snacks will be hummus with fresh veggies, smoothies, chickpeas, and fruit with nut butter.  

Dinner will not be completely planned because I want to focus on using up everything the will not last while I travel. A few of the things that we may eat are:

  • Bean Burrtios
  • Quinoa Tacos
  • Veggie Soup with Chickpeas
  • Steamed Spinach with Chickpeas (I had this yesterday and it was tasty)
  • Nachos
  • Baked Potatoes
  • Potato and Broccoli Soup
Each evening I’ll decide what needs to be eaten and focus on that food type. Some things can be combined like the beans and quinoa to make nachos, or everything thrown together for soup. Most of these things are already cooked so I’ll just have to throw it together and warm it up, or throw it in a pot to simmer. 
 
I also try to eat several different colors of food throughout the day. If I feel like we are missing out on something I’ll make a smoothie because I can throw in spinach, blueberries, pineapple, mango, cherries, or strawberries and feel like we are covering all of or bases. We typically eat a lot of whole grains and carrots so we are rarely missing out on those. 
Do you Meal Plan? It saves me money and frustration each week, give it a try.

Dirty Mashed Potatoes

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Nothing says comfort food quite like Mashed Potatoes and Gravy.

There was  only a tiny bit of mashed potatoes left after the four of us ate. I wanted to stuff my face with the rest of them but I resisted.

These Mashed Potatoes are really easy to make. I’ll give estimates on amounts but it will really depend on your preference and the size of your family.

dirty mashed potatoes

Dirty Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

  • potatoes (I used four small-medium sized, see the ambiguity here)
  • cauliflower (1/4 of a head, or 1 1/2 cups of florets)
  • water
  • salt
  • garlic powder or fresh garlic
  • onion powder
  • black pepper
  • unsweetened plant milk (I used Almond milk)

Do

  1.  Bring water to boil.
  2. Wash and cut potatoes in to smaller pieces. I left the skin on but you do not have to. Add them to the boiling water.
  3. Wash and cut cauliflower into florets. Add them to the boiling water.
  4.  Once the potatoes and cauliflower are both soft, carefully drain the water. Return the potatoes and cauliflower to the pan or place in a large bowl.
  5. Mash the potatoes and cauliflower with a potato masher. Add milk to get the a creamer consistency. Try 1/4 cup at a time.
  6. Add salt, pepper, garlic and onion powders and mix well.

Serve

I served this with brown gravy, a Lentil Loaf and steamed spinach. The mashed potatoes were perfect, savory and delicious. I think I could have eaten the whole pot by myself. I didn’t taste the cauliflower at all but my husband mentioned that they smelled like cauliflower. These would also be good with broccoli, although that would be noticeable. 

I just mentioned that I served brown gravy. You can find that recipe here at the Happy Herbivore. I love Lindsey’s blog, and her cookbooks. I use them all the time. I halved this recipe for us and we had plenty leftover. The gravy was delicious! My husband topped his Lentil Loaf with it and he isn’t a big fan of nutritional yeast.

I hope to try this Lentil Loaf again soon. I couldn’t find a recipe that used the ingredients I wanted to cook with so I made up my own. It needs some tweaking still but I think if will be a winner. 

These are also great with Portobello Steaks! Be sure to use my Mushroom Marinade!

Dirty Mashed Potatoes

Dirty Mashed Potatoes

A yummy twist on mashed potatoes that your the whole family will love.

Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Additional Time 10 minutes
Total Time 45 minutes

Ingredients

  • potatoes (I used four small-medium sized, see the ambiguity here)
  • cauliflower (1/4 of a head, or 1 1/2 cups of florets)
  • water
  • salt
  • garlic powder or fresh garlic
  • onion powder
  • black pepper
  • unsweetened plant milk (I used Almond milk)

Instructions

  1. Bring water to boil.
  2. Wash and cut potatoes in to smaller pieces. I left the skin on but you do not have to. Add them to the boiling water.
  3. Wash and cut cauliflower into florets. Add them to the boiling water.
  4. Once the potatoes and cauliflower are both soft, carefully drain the water. Return the potatoes and cauliflower to the pan or place in a large bowl.
  5. Mash the potatoes and cauliflower with a potato masher. Add milk to get the a creamer consistency. Try 1/4 cup at a time.
  6. Add salt, pepper, garlic and onion powders and mix well.

Notes

Serve with brown gravy.

Did you make this recipe?

We'd love to see it! Tag us and use #MyPlantBasedFamily!

© Heather Mayes

Progress Report: Unprocessed Challenge

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This week I’ve been only eating unprocessed food. I’ve enjoyed some really good food but I’ve also let a bad attitude get in the way a few times.

I miss my toast. I decided not to eat bread at all, even my sprouted grain bread, because I was eating it way too often. It would find its way into breakfast, lunch, snack and dessert some days.

Eating processed food was really more of a habit than hunger. When I’d give my son a handful of animal crackers I’d normally eat a few too but not this week.

A few things that helped…

  • Having food already cooked and ready to eat.
  • Cutting fresh fruit and veggies for easy snacking.
  • Hummus!
  • Supportive husband and friends, and public accountability.
  • Cooking delicious food so you don’t feel deprived.

So what have I been eating this week…

If you remember on the weekend I cooked black beans and quinoa. I heated them up together in a bowl and added chili powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cumin, and onion powder. I laid them on a bed of greens, added salsa and mashed up half and avocado. A few squirts of lime juice and it was delicious! It reminded me of a salad from Chipotle. When I mention eating a bean and grain bowl this is what it is like sans greens. I love it with tortilla chips but not this week, roasted corn would be amazing in this.

Yesterday I cooked Minestrone Soup, one of my husbands favorites. I changed teh recipe a bit but we didn’t miss any thing I left out. I competely forgot about the green beans, too bad a have some in the freezer ready to go. I left out the noodles and veggie broth since they are both processed. The soup simmered for hours and tasted great. There was hardly enough left for my husband to take to work. Maybe if I wouldn’t “quality” check so often there would have been more. 😉

Fresh veggies and Jalapeno Hummus! Easy, delicious, unprocessed!

Smoothies! Who doesn’t love smoothies? We have been eating these for our after dinner snack/dessert. My husbands favorite this week was made with frozen bananas, frozen cherries, and a little almond milk. I like frozen banana, a few frozen cherries, a little peanut butter, a little cocoa powder and almond milk. You can make them with whatever you have, for a tropical flavor add frozen mango and/or pineapple.

Earlier this week I ate leftover Enchilada Soup. This time I made it with millet instead of rice. It was tasty.

There are really a lot of options when it comes to eating unprocessed. Some recipes can be slightly adjusted to become unprocessed. A few other things to consider are…

The Best Chili Ever

The Happy Potato

Avocado Chocolate Mousse, if made with date paste it becomes unprocessed

Stir Fry

How have you been doing? Is it difficult for you to stick with it? Do you have any tips or recipes for the rest of us? Leave a comment below and encourage someone else with your journey.

Did you know that My Plant Based Family is on Facebook? To hear more about what’s going on in my kitchen check it out.

How To Get It Done

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I’m very fortunate and thankful to be a stay-at-home-mom. I love being home with my kids. Occasionally I miss the working world, usually it is when my kids are driving me crazy. My boys do keep me busy during the day, I can’t just stand in the kitchen for hours at a time.

Using this weeks Meal Plan I’m going to give you examples of how I prepare our dinners. I’ll give you a day by day run down of what I’ve done and how it works for us. We primarily use dried beans and grains. If that doesn’t work for you feel free to use canned beans. Dried beans are less expensive so I prefer them. I do keep canned beans in the pantry for those days I don’t plan ahead. Sometimes I do all of the soaking and cooking on the weekend; that approach may work better if you work full time during the week.

Saturday: I put about 3 cups of rinsed quinoa in 6 cups of water to soak over night. You do not have to soak your quinoa but we prefer it this way.  If you don’t know how to cook quinoa check out this link from The Kitchn.

Sunday: I rinsed the quinoa, again you don’t have to do this step but I prefer it this way. I put it in a sauce pan and with new water and cooked it for about 15 minutes. Once it cooled we put some away for my husband to take to work and the rest is stored for meals throughout the week.

On Sunday night I rinsed 2 cups of white beans and 2 cups of red beans and left them both to soak in 4 cups of water each.

Monday: I cooked both set’s of beans in the morning. It will be hard to resist those come lunch time. They could be combined and cooked in a slow cooker as well. This evening I’ll throw the red and white beans into a large pot with all of the other ingredients for Minestrone Soup. While I’m cutting veggies for this soup I may cut extra for tomorrow nights soup as well.

Tuesday: Cook Potato and Broccoli Soup, this could be done in a slow cooker before you left for work. No prep work unless I want to cut veggies for tomorrow nights meal.

Wednesday: I’ll cook a Veggie Noodle Soup. While it is cooking I will rinse black beans and soak them in water over night.

Thursday: I’ll soak beans to use in Friday night’s Chili. I may have enough leftover beans and not need to cook any new beans.

Friday: I’ll cook Chili. Depending on our leftover situation I may start something new soaking. I try to use up all our leftovers over the weekend so I can shop for groceries and plan a new week of meals.

This works for us but may not work for you. Some nights we just grab bean burritos from a drive thou or eat a PB&J.

If you’ve planned your meals for this week try thinking ahead. What can you do now to save time later?

 

Plan for Success

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Last night I didn’t really feel like making dinner. Have you been there? Fortunately I had prepared a number of basic ingredients so dinner was a breeze, a warm, delicious breeze. I reheated cooked quinoa and black beans, while steaming spinach, broccoli and red bell peppers. I added a few seasonings and I had a delightful dinner. 

You’ve heard it said, “those who fail to plan, plan to fail.”

If I hadn’t been prepared we would have probably gotten take out. We still get our fair share of take out but it is typically bean burritos or hummus and pitas. I know we are wild!

If your new to this pick one or two things to try. When we began eating a plant based diet I would make a large batch of pinto beans and a large batch of brown rice. If you’ve never made beans it is really easy. 

Making Beans: A Quick How To

  1. Buy dried beans (any variety)
  2. Look through the beans for debris like sticks and rocks. I like to do this by spreading beans out on the counter. I also discard and gnarly looking beans.
  3. Rinse the beans. I pour them in a large colander to rinse them.
  4. Put your beans in a large pot and fill with water. Your beans will likely double in size so make sure you have plenty of room. Let the beans soak overnight.
  5. The next day rinse your beans again, sometimes I skip this rinse, and add clean water to the beans.
  6. Cook. It will likely take a few hours, depending on the type of beans.  Once the beans start to boil turn the heat down so they simmer. I like to place a wooden spoon on the top of my pan to keep the beans from boiling over. 
  7. You can add spices or veggies now. If your not sure how you will be using they beans you may not want to season them. I always add onion and garlic to my pinto beans, for example, but I do not season my black beans. 
  8. The beans are done when they are soft. You can remove a few beans with a spoon and lightly blow on them, if the skin peels away they are done.

Why I love beans?

  • Inexpensive
  • High Protein
  • High Fiber
  • Easy to make
Beans are also versatile. One large pot of beans can be eaten plain, made into chili, burritos, eaten “unfried” as opposed to “refried,” made into veggie burgers, nachos, or into a layered casserole. They also freeze well.
Vegan Chili

This is the chili I made last week. There were two problems with it. First, the recipe only made enough for two adults with a little bit of leftovers. Second, since I used canned beans and didn’t soak and cook them myself they made us, ahem, gassy. But don’t tell anyone because that would be embarrassing. 😉

I’ve revamped that recipe, you need to try this delicious vegan chili!

You can make beans even faster in the Instant Pot!