Feeding My Family a Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet, On a Budget
One of the best and easiest soups I’ve had since adopting a plant-based diet is Minestrone Soup.
One of the great things about making plant-based Minestrone Soup is that you don’t really have to make all that many changes from your typical recipe. Plus, you can easily adapt it based on what you have on hand.
I like to use my Dry Veggie Broth Mix in this recipe. If you haven’t tried the broth mix yet you are missing out!
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?
My household is a little under the weather this week. I want to pack as much wholesome nutrition into our meals as I can, hopefully we will recover quickly. With that in mind, I have proclaimed that this is Soup Week. And no, it has nothing to do with the Super Bowl.
For the next few weeks I will not have any rice or rice products (rice milk, rice noodles, etc.) in the Meal Plan. My 1 year old has eczema. It has gotten much better since I removed dairy from my diet (he is still nursing). Sometimes I notice reactions to rice products so I’ve decided to eliminate all rice for a few weeks to see if his eczema gets better. Instead of rice I’ll be adding plenty of other grains like quinoa, millet, and maybe even amaranth.
Breakfast will be oatmeal or toast with a nut butter and fruit.
Snack will be fresh fruit, smoothies, or raw veggies with Jalapeno hummus.
Lunch is typically leftovers or sometimes a sandwich or a wrap. My favorite lunch is throwing together leftover grains, beans, and seasonings or salsa.
Monday: Minestrone Soup
Tuesday: Potato and Broccoli Soup
Wednesday: Veggie Noodle Soup
Thursday: Black Bean Soup
Friday: Chili
Last week was much less hectic since I had a meal plan, click here to see it. I had already done the shopping and planning, there was no reason to dread the question, “what’s for dinner.” I didn’t stick to it the plan perfectly but I didn’t plan to. On Thursday night we ended up having bean burritos instead of the black bean burgers. We went out to eat on Friday so there was no planning involved.
Have you planned your menu for the week?
Stir-Fry never sounds good to me, but in the last 4 months of eating this way it has been awesome every time I’m made it. Truth be told, I am NOT a lover of vegetables. Shocking I know, what with this Plant-Based Diet and all. Even still, every time I made stir-fry it tasted amazing, as if God worked a miracle right there on my plate.
Until last night. The stir-fry was awful. I’m not sure what I did different but bleh, yuck, and more bleh!!! By popular vote stir-fry will not return to the Meal Plan for at least a few weeks.
Sometimes things just don’t turn out. Sometimes it happens several times in one week.
Take these muffins for example. The first time I made them they were good, but not quite sweet enough more my taste. They were perfect for my husband who, unlike me, isn’t cursed with a big honking sweet tooth.
The second time I made them….what the???
They sank, were wet, and just plain pitiful. On the plus side they tasted great. I had hoped to use these for my 1 year old’s birthday, but that wasn’t going to happen.
The next day I made these. Big difference. I finally realized what I did wrong. I left out 1 cup of flour. Genius I know. But I learned a lesson: when reading chicken scratch directions pay careful attention to detail. And, follow the recipe, I always want to tweak them.
The third attempt was good enough for a Birthday Celebration! And this is how we do it.
Back in the days before I transitioned to a plant-based diet I made a really savory Chicken Enchilada Soup. It was soooo good. People would come from miles around, OK my friend Sarah would drive a few miles to eat this soup. I love this soup!!!
The problem was it contained a ton of not so healthy ingredients. I was determined to make it healthy without compromising the flavor.
This soup is very forgiving. If you are missing an ingredient go ahead and made it. I make it all the time but when I’m out of corn or green chilies it still tastes great.
My husband kept going on and on about how great this soup is, how it reminds him of soup his mom made when he was a kid, how amazing I am; OK I threw that last part in there but it is not uncommon for him to say that.
Don’t you just want to dive in that bowl and swim around? Well you would if you tasted it.
If you love this soup be sure to try it’s grain-free counterpart, Taco Soup!
I just saw this on Facebook and wanted to pass it along.
Julieanna Hever, R.D. the Plant-Based Dietitian answers some frequently asked questions about a Plant-Based Diet.
