My Plant-Based Family

Feeding My Family a Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet, On a Budget

Baked Potatoes

Meal Plan Monday: Back to Basics

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I love good food! LOVE IT! I’ve been eating a Plant-Based diet for 6 months and my taste buds are still changing, I’m loving food I never liked before and giving new foods a chance. I like to try something new every week when possible.

This week we are craving a return to simple foods, the foods we are when we first started our journey of healthy eating. Plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables along with whole grains. My Meal Plan this week will not be sexy but it provide nourishment and comfort. The picture above is our fruit and a few of our veggies for the week. We also have 3 bunches of banana’s not pictured along with spinach, 5 lbs of carrots, red bell peppers, celery, kale, beets, sweet and white potatoes. We normally don’t get so many tomatoes but I’ll be making salsa soon!

Meal Plan

Breakfast will be oatmeal, smoothies made with fresh and frozen fruit (and kale and spinach), toast with peanut butter and fruit, and maybe even a bowl of cereal.

Lunches are usually dinner leftovers for us but right now I’m hooked on wraps. I’ve been eating wraps made with spinach, bell peppers, carrots and hummus. So good!

We eat lots of snacks too. I love fresh veggies and hummus! Yes I’m on a big time hummus kick. I just bought more dried chickpeas so hopefully I’ll experiment with more hummus recipes. I love hummus with carrot sticks (and do does my 3 year old) so were go through a lot of carrots, 5 lbs last week! Fresh fruit and smoothies are a good snack too. Last week I let my boys have a lot of crackers so I’ll be reigning this in this week.

Dinner

Monday: Baked Potatoes with broccoli

Tuesday: Beans and barley, this will be my first attempts at cooking pearl barley. We will have additional veggies as well. I’m also planning on making homemade salsa.

Wednesday: Couscous with steamed broccoli and spinach

Thursday: Soup, yay! I’ll use various odds and ends (including any veggies that I forgot to use previously.

Friday: This is usually a date night so I don’t cook a big meal.

On the weekends we eat leftovers. I’ll often pull everything out that we need to eat and we will create a meal out of that. This weekend our big kids are coming to visit for a week! We are very excited to see them! Since they are teenagers I will be doing A LOT more cooking. The eat a typical teenager diet so it will be interesting to see if I can win them over with my Plant-Based cooking. More about that next week.

Is your Meal Plan ready for the week?

 

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.

A Happy Potato

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On the weekends we like to use up odds and ends in the refrigerator instead of cooking a lot of big meals. One particular weekend we had baked potatoes, chili, broccoli, and black eyed peas. I really enjoy baked potatoes topped with broccoli OR with chili.

I had left the room and when I reentered my husband had this monster on his plate.

Now for a closer look, I believe I even see some spinach in this one…

I looked at this potato that had completely over taken his plate and asked, “What is that?”

My husband said (in a very playful voice),

“That is a Happy Potato!”

What to Eat…Part 3

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When I started eating a plant based diet it was important to be satisfied with my food. I could not eat this way and feel hungry all the time. I also don’t like bland food so I decided to make hearty and spicy dishes. I’m not the kind of girl who can eat a salad everyday for lunch. Typically I’ll have maybe one or two salads a week, in the summer when it is too hot to cook here in Arizona I eat more salads.

So if you a beginning to eat a plant based diet and you’re starving all the time you are doing it wrong. Eat more and eat more often. I often eat toast or a smoothie for a snack between meals. If you can chomp on baby carrots mid afternoon and be satisfied God bless you, but for the rest of us eat something else. Tomorrow I’ll share a yummy vegan muffin recipe that makes a great snack.

Today’s Meal Plan

Smoothie

Breakfast: Smoothie

Smoothies are make a great breakfast, they are easy, fast, and portable. Smoothies can be made with whatever you have on hand. No one in my house will refuse a smoothie.

Today’s Smoothie (My smoothies vary every time I make them)

Ingredients
  • 1 Tbsp flax seeds
  • 1 cup Spinach
  • 2 peeled bananas
  • 1 cup frozen strawberries
  • 1/2 cup blueberries
  • 1/2 cup frozen cherries
  • 1 cup plant milk (I use rice milk)
Do
  1. Blend flax seeds in a blender.
  2. Add everything else and blend until smooth adding more liquid if necessary.
Serve

Serve this in a tall glass or insulated cup if your on the go. My smoothie made about 30 ounces so you can adjust the recipe accordingly.

When I have fresh fruit I use it instead of frozen but this time of year frozen is typically priced much better than fresh. I buy big bags of frozen berries at Costco. When strawberries and blueberries are in season I buy a lot and stock my freezer. Mango, pineapple and raspberries also make delicious smoothies. When I have orange juice I’ll add it instead of milk. Smoothies can hide veggies as well. The spinach in this smoothie is undetectable. Try adding kale, parsley, or chard instead.

Lunch: Baked Potato

I love a big baked potato. You may need to retrain your taste buds to enjoy a baked potato without butter, bacon, and sour cream. Before removing dairy from my diet I didn’t realize that I could enjoy a potato without it.  Earth Balance Spread is a great transition food that will help with that dairy addiction, they also have a soy free variety. Earth Balance tastes and looks like butter. You can substitute it for butter in any recipe as well.

Aside from Earth Balance Spread other toppings include steamed veggies like broccoli, vegan chili, salsa, nutritional yeast, and soups. Yesterday my husband had a baked potato for lunch topped with leftover Potato and Broccoli Soup. He said it was great and wanted to have it again next week.

Dinner: Chili

I just mentioned that Chili makes a great topping on a baked potato but it also taste great on it own. There are several vegan and vegetarian chili’s on the market but it is really easy to make it on your own. This never tastes exactly the same because it varies based on what ingredients I have and and how hot the pepper are.

Ingredients
  • 3 cans of beans OR about 6 cups of cooked beans
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 can diced tomatoes OR about 3 tomatoes, diced
  • 1 can diced green chili’s OR your choice of fresh peppers
  • 1 8 oz can tomato sauce
  • 1/4 cup chili powder (add more to suit your taste, we use 1/2 cup)
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp cumin 
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • salt
  • pepper
Do
  1. Add beans, diced onion, tomatoes, peppers, and tomato sauce to a large sauce pan and cook until onions, peppers, and tomatoes are cooked.
  2. Add spices to suit your individual taste preferences. 
  3. Heat until extra liquid, if any, has cooked out. 
Serve

This chili is great on a cool day, it is hearty and filled with fiber. Cornbread or crackers make a great accompaniment. Chili also freezes well so make a big batch and save some for a rainy day.This chili is on my stove right now, I used pinto beans, kidney beans, and black beans. Yum!