Plant based family meal planning really isn’t as difficult as a lot of people expect it to be, there are so many great vegan bloggers sharing their recipes on Pinterest and even Jamie Oliver has a vegan recipe section on his website. There are also lots of great vegan cookbooks out there too so even if you struggle a bit to start with, once you have worked out what you need to replace for certain dishes you will be able to knock them up in no time.
I find I have weeks where I don’t have much inspiration and rely on other people’s recipes, then I have weeks where I have lots of ideas and feel like making up my own concoctions, much to Matt’s delight ;). Plant based recipes are actually pretty forgiving when it comes to making them for the first time, mainly because you don’t have to worry about a piece of flesh being overcooked and becoming dry, something which happened a lot in my pre-vegan days!
One of our favourite books at the moment is Keep It Vegan by Aine Carlin, quite a lot of the meals we ate last week were out of her book. It was only £5 on Amazon and everything I’ve made from it has been amazing.
If you are looking for some plant-based meal ideas then here is what we ate last week.
Monday: We made the stir-fry with marinated tofu out of the book I mentioned above.
Tuesday: We made macaroni cheese (or no cheese!). This recipe was also out of the book above, the sauce was made from butternut squash which is different from how we normally make it but we loved it.
Wednesday: I made the pea and mint risotto out of the book I mentioned above. This was a meal Cherry picked out and was desperate to try, I wasn’t sure I would be that keen on it but it was really tasty.
Thursday: I made dahl with rice. This is my go to recipe when I haven’t been to the shops for a while as we always have the ingredients in the cupboard. I basically just shove some red lentils in a pan with some stock and spices, plus any vegetables we have lying around then add coconut milk or a tin of tomatoes, or both.
Friday: Cheesy pasta bake. We love this meal so much and usually always have it on a Friday night.
Saturday: Falafels. I just added some chickpeas, fresh coriander, spices and oil to the blender then added a bit of flour and salt. Shaped into balls and fried before adding to a pitta bread with houmous, salsa and grated carrot. So easy and yummy!
Sunday: Pie with sweet potato mash and veggies. This is an aloo gobi Clive’s Pie which is my favourite type, everyone else had the Linda McCartney ones. I make the gravy by whisking up some flour and stock then adding nutritional yeast and tamari sauce, it’s so much healthier than shop bought gravy and just as tasty.
Hope you’ve found some plant based family meal inspiration here, you can follow my ‘what we eat’ Instagram account to see more – @livingonleavesfoodpics
You can check out week 2 here.
You can find more vegan meal inspiration here..
