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A Peek Inside our Meal Planning Process {Updated}

Check out how I make our family's weekly meal plan.

Meal planning is crucial in making our week run smoothly.  It’s so nice to come home from work knowing what we will be having for dinner.  It also helps us plan accordingly on busy nights when my husband and I can delegate who is going to cook.  Meal planning keeps our food budget in check, since there are rarely last minute trips to the grocery store for “a few items” or multiple nights of takeout.   There are many ways to meal plan and there is no one tried and true method.  You really have to figure out what works best for your family. I am showing you how I create our weekly meal plan which will hopefully give you some tips and inspiration.

1.  The Calendar:  You can find fancy, online printable menus if that will help motivate you or you like things to look pretty. For meal planning, I do not go the fancy route.  As seen above, I use the back of a piece of scrap paper and set up a monthly calendar.  I plan our menus weekly and write the meals in pencil, so I can erase and move things around if needed. It’s a constant work-in-progress with lots of erasing and moving things around.

2.  The Day:  Deciding what day you want your meal plan to start on is up to you and your schedule. We do our weekly grocery shopping at Shoprite. The new sale circular begins on Sundays, so over the weekend I write out the menu and make the grocery list.  Then Sunday mornings, my husband and I do the shopping together.

3.  Time:  Meal planning does take a little bit of time.  Especially in the beginning if you have never done it before.  One you’ve built up a library of recipes your family enjoys it will become much quicker to rotate those meals. It takes me a little bit longer, because I rarely, if ever make the same recipe twice.  It takes some time for me to go through my recipe resources (see below) and pick out the new recipes I want to make for the week.  However, my new routine is to get up early on Saturday morning, make myself a cup of coffee and sit on the couch watching a show while I work on the weekly meal plan. This past weekend, I was super productive and got most of November’s meal plan completed!

It’s not the prettiest, but it works!

4.  The Planning:  If you are new to meal planning, it might be easier to start with some recipes that you know your family eats and enjoys and maybe aim for one new recipe a week.  I recommend you use your grocery store circular to start your planning.  If chicken is on sale this week, I recommend making at least one chicken dish and buying some extra chicken that you can freeze for the future.  Some people prefer to have a themed dinner for each day, like Meatless Monday or Taco Tuesday.  This helps in keeping a consistency to meal planning.  Although my meal plan varies from week to week, we always have homemade pizza on Friday nights.  Once I find a recipe that I decide I’m going to make, I write it in pencil on the calendar, along with the name of the source (blog name, magazine, website).  Although I will have my five recipes for the week written in, I won’t necessarily make them in that order.  When we eat each meal depends on factors like which dishes have produce that may spoil or how busy our schedules are.  I will then write in each box, what day I actually plan on making that dish.

5.  Grocery List:  After the meal plan is made I write the grocery list. I go through each recipe I plan on making for the week and write down the ingredients that I need.  I circle the recipe on the calendar to know that I made sure I had everything I needed for that recipe. I then go through the grocery store circular adding in all of the other items we need that week to the list. And that is my meal planning process!

Meal Planning Resources:

So, where can you find recipes? For starters, check out the resources right here on the blog! Although I stopped posting new ones, I have a page that includes 89 of our weekly menu plans and seven vegan meal plans that I have posted!

Food blogs have become my main source of dinner recipes. There are so many food blogs out there, ranging from family focused, quick and easy meals, to more involved recipe blogs. I subscribe to several food blogs and get new posts e-mailed to me. We are vegetarian and my main focus when meal planning is to find recipes that sound delicious but are quick and easy to make. 

 Here are a few food blogs that I use often and recommend:

Eats Well With Others – Joanne posts vegetarian recipes. I think I make at least one recipe of hers a week. She also posts a weekly meal plan post.

Half Baked Harvest, How Sweet Eats and Pinch of Yum are all great blogs with consistently good recipes.  I’ve rarely made a recipe from these blogs that wasn’t delicious.  Some of these recipes can be a bit involved or require a bunch of ingredients, so just review the recipe before deciding to make it.  While their blogs are not strictly vegetarian, they all post a good number of recipes that are.

Big Flavors from a Tiny Kitchen – My friend Ashley has been running her food blog since 2006! It is full of delicious recipes and a great resource if you’re not sure what to make!

For beginner cooks I also highly recommend the website allrecipes.com.  You can search for recipes by a number of different factors, including ingredients or name.  I’ve found most recipes that I’ve used from the site easy to make.  It’s especially helpful since there are tons of ratings and reviews.  If a recipe has lots of five star ratings, it’s probably going to be good.

Try cooking recipes from several different blogs.  You will eventually find you like certain bloggers’ recipe choices, presentation, photographs, etc. over others.  You don’t need to subscribe to all of them! I have two meal planning folders on my phone.  One is titled “Vegetarian recipes” and anytime I see a recipe I want to make I bookmark it there.  If I decide to make the recipe, I bookmark it in the “Cooking This Week” folder, so it’s easier to find when needed.

And don’t forget about Pinterest.  There are millions of recipes posted on that site.  Start creating boards of recipes that you see that interest you and you can refer to your board for inspiration when meal planning!

I’ve found that as much as I enjoy reading cookbooks, I don’t use them very often.  Most recipes can easily be found online. If you have a favorite cookbook, I’d love some recommendations!

I hope this helps give you a better idea on how to meal plan, if this is new to you!  Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments section or e-mail me.  I’d love to hear how others meal plan and am always looking for tips on how to make the process easier!

Vegan Meal Plan {Week 7}

Check out this week’s vegan meal plan. With pictures, recipe links and reviews, hopefully you will find something tasty to make! This week’s menu includes a curry, a stew, quesadillas and more.

Sunday: Bang Bang Broccoli – I saw this recipe on Instagram and it looked so good I had to try it. I believe the whole “Bang Bang” recipe phenomenon is a copycat of Bonefish Grill’s Bang Bang Shrimp (which I have never had). In this recipe, the broccoli is battered in a panko mixture and baked in the oven. Then it is tossed in the Bang Bang sauce. My husband and I enjoyed this dish a lot but the kids weren’t huge fans. They didn’t like all of the breading. They did enjoy the fried rice and dumplings that I served it with though.

Monday: Cauliflower Al Pastor Quesadillas – Before we started cooking vegan at home, Half Baked Harvest was one of my go-to blogs for recipes. I have realized that I can take some of the recipes there and “veganize” them. This recipe was my first attempt. All I did was substitute vegan cheddar shreds for the cheddar and pepper jack cheese the original recipe called for. I also didn’t use fresh pineapple chunks and used canned instead. I didn’t buy enough though, so the filling was a little short, since we used most of the chunks in the sauce. We also used chipotle powder instead of the canned chipotle peppers in adobo. These quesadillas were tasty and filling.

Tuesday: Crispy Tofu with Maple Soy Glaze – This was my son’s recipe of the week. He made this dinner entirely on his own, while I sat nearby in case he needed help. The tofu got fried until it was crispy, giving it a nice crunch. This recipe was easy and tasty. My son made rice in the rice cooker to serve it with and heated up some frozen veggies to go with. I only had frozen broccoli and both kids complained that they dislike frozen vegetables.

Wednesday: Vegan African Peanut and Sweet Potato Stew – This was my husband’s recipe of the week. This is one of those recipes that I didn’t think I was going to like, but was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. He says this was easy to make. Of course, we had this on a hot summer evening. This will be really good in the fall or winter on a cold evening.

Thursday: Easy Coconut Curry – This was my daughter’s recipe of the week. She also made the recipe completely on her own, except for my husband helping to cut the butternut squash. This was such a delicious recipe! This was the first curry recipe that we’ve made that includes butternut squash. It was such a great addition. This will definitely be making it on the repeat list.

Friday: Vegan Tofu Lazone – This recipe actually is called Vegan Tempeh Lazone. However, we do not like tempeh, so I substituted it with tofu. Overall this was an okay pasta dish. I don’t think I’m a fan of the combo of tofu and pasta. This has a coconut milk based sauce and we had just had coconut curry the night before, so it was a little bit of coconut milk overload.

Saturday: Spaghetti with Meatballs – Weekends we tend to be busy and don’t have a lot of time or energy to cook dinner. This week I cooked up some spaghetti with jarred sauce and baked a bag of Aldi’s vegan meatballs. I have to say that we were pleasantly surprised at how tasty the meatballs were. They were a tad bit salty but my son thought they were real meatballs and wanted to see the bag to verify that they were vegan! Pre-vegan, spaghetti and meatballs was my daughter’s favorite meal. I know we will be buying these meatballs again, since she was so happy with this dinner.

Recommended Recipes of the week: Easy Coconut Curry, African Peanut and Sweet Potato Stew and Cauliflower Al Pastor Quesadillas.

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Vegan Meal Plan {Week 6}

Check out this week’s vegan meal plan. With pictures, recipe links and reviews, hopefully you will find something tasty to make! This week’s menu includes breakfast for dinner, Instant Pot Burrito Bowls, Tofu Katsu bowls, nachos and more.

Sunday: Tofu Korma (vegetarian, not vegan) – There is no recipe for this since we used a store-bought korma sauce. The sauce did contain milk products, so this is vegetarian, not vegan. I simmered tofu in the sauce and served it with Basmati rice and homemade naan. Yes, the naan was homemade and vegan! Korma is an Indian yogurt/cream based sauce. This jarred one had a nice sweetness to it.

Monday: Maple BBQ Cauliflower Wraps – I used the recipe as a starting point but made a couple of modifications. Instead of making the bean spread, I used store-bought hummus. I used coleslaw mix and made coleslaw, instead of red cabbage. And I bought a Maple flavored BBQ sauce instead of mixing my own. The cauliflower was flavorful. I should have used salad mix to fill out the wrap a bit more though. I served these with some seasoned waffle fries.

Tuesday: Instant Pot Burrito Bowls – We have not been using the Instant Pot as much as we could be. This recipe reminded me how versatile this kitchen appliance is. It’s nice to be able to saute and then pressure cook all in one dish. We’ve made many variations of burrito and taco bowls. But this one was tasty and pretty hands off.

Wednesday: Pancakes – This was my son’s recipe for the week. I don’t really call it a recipe because we used a box mix. He mixed the batter and helped cook the pancakes. He chose to make both blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes.

Thursday: Vegan Tofu Katsu Bowls – This was my favorite dinner of the week. It did require a little bit of work to get the vegetables pickled and the tofu fried. But, all we have now is time, right?! I tried pan frying some of the tofu and air-frying the other half of it. The pan fried tofu was much crispier and our preferred cooking method for this dish. All of the flavors of this dish worked really well and I know we will make this again.

Friday: Chipotle Cauliflower Nachos – This was my daughter’s recipe of the week. They were actually just Cauliflower Nachos, since we left out the “chipotle.” Only after getting ready to make the recipe did we realize that there was very little cauliflower in this recipe! Only 1 cup of cauliflower gets cooked along with a diced potato and blended with some other ingredients into a sauce. Of course going to make this we realized that we didn’t have any white potatoes. But, I did have one sweet potato, which worked wonderfully! It gave a nice color to the “cheese” sauce and added a hint of sweetness. She added some of the leftover pickled onion from Thursday’s Tofu Katsu Bowls which gave the nachos a nice pop of color and added flavor. Plus, she added dollops of guacamole. These were very tasty and were devoured!

Saturday: Mango Marinated Cauliflower and Peppers Burrito – There is no recipe for this meal. On the weekends we tend to be busy and out and about, with little energy left for cooking. This meal came together as a use up the leftovers meal. I had bought a bottle of World Harbor Mango Marinade. Since we had most of a head of cauliflower left over from Friday night’s nachos, I marinated the cauliflower and some red pepper in the marinade. We some rice left over from the Tofu Katsu Bowls and we had tortillas left over from Monday’s cauliflower wraps. So, we put the rice and the roasted marinated veggies in the tortillas, along with some guacamole. It was a quick and easy meal that cleaned out the fridge. We served the burritos with truffle fries.

Recommended Recipes of the Week: Cauliflower Nachos, Vegan Tofu Katsu Bowls and Instant Pot Burrito Bowls.

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Weekly Vegan Meal Plan {Week 5}

Check out this week’s vegan meal plan. With pictures, recipe links and reviews, hopefully you will find something tasty to make! This week’s menu includes risotto, tacos, tofu bowls and more!

Sunday: Curried Chickpea Cauliflower Bake – This casserole is quick to prep, but then it has to bake for 25-30 minutes. I don’t think that I tucked the spinach in enough, as you can see in the picture that it got dried out. Unfortunately, despite all of the curry powder, I felt like this recipe lacked flavor. We had leftovers for lunch the next day that I added some soy sauce too.

Monday: Restaurant-Style Teriyaki Tofu Bowls – This dinner was easy to make and so tasty! I didn’t have broccoli, so I roasted some asparagus instead. I also roasted the carrots, instead of serving them raw. And I marinated the cucumbers in rice vinegar with some sugar before adding them to the bowls, instead of serving them raw as well. I think the small changes that I made elevated the flavors of these bowls. The homemade teriyaki was so good. This meal was devoured by everyone!

Tuesday: Creamy Pasta Pomodoro – This was my son’s recipe of the week but I helped him make it. I was really craving pasta so I had high hopes for this dinner. It was pretty tasty, I just found the sauce to be a bit bitter. I had never even noticed that you can buy canned cherry tomatoes until I went shopping for this recipe. Two cans was a bit much though. We also opted to skip the “creamy” part of this recipe.

Wednesday: Corn Risotto with Zucchini – This was Dana’s recipe of the week. This was easy to make and was very tasty! The recipe states it only makes 3 servings. We were able to get four servings out of the one recipe. Next time we will double it so we have enough for seconds and leftovers.

Thursday: Roasted Potato Tacos with Chimichurri – This is not the first time that I have made these tacos. And after making these for the second time, I have wondered why I don’t make these more often. The potato mixture is tasty and I love the addition of the chimichurri sauce. I remade the potato mixture over the weekend for breakfast and topped it with the leftover chimichurri sauce, which I served with a tofu scramble.

Friday: Salad Pizza – There’s no recipe for our salad pizza. Dana cooks store-bought pizza dough with tomato sauce. We buy spring salad mix and he makes a homemade vinaigrette. Then we add whatever veggies we have to the salad mix (this week was cucumber, tomato, peppers and red onion) and put it on the cooled pizza crust. Although we try out different vegan pizza recipes, this is one of our easiest and go-to pizzas.

Saturday: Creamy Vegan Pasta – This was my daughter’s recipe of the week but I helped her cook it. We chose to roast the broccoli and it to the pasta and sauce at the end. I liked how this recipe used a can of white beans to make the “cream” sauce. Her sauce ended up a little thicker than she would have liked. Next time, we’ll add extra vegetable broth and/or pasta water to thin it out. This was tasty and I feel like a variety of veggies can be used in place of the broccoli (asparagus, zucchini, etc.).

Recommended recipes of the week: Teriyaki Tofu Bowls, Corn Risotto with Zucchini, Roasted Potato Tacos with Chimichurri Sauce.

Weekly Vegan Meal Plan {Week 4}

Check out this week’s vegan meal plan. With pictures, recipe links and reviews, hopefully you will find something tasty to make! This week’s menu includes fajitas, pizza, pasta and more. There were so many tasty recipes this week that we recommend!

Sunday: 5 Ingredient Vegan Vodka Pasta – We were out Sunday and got home late. We thought about ordering takeout. But I had this recipe on our menu plan for the week and decided to cook instead. This is super quick and easy to make! We were eating it faster than if we had ordered and picked up takeout. The coconut milk gave the sauce a slightly sweet taste. It tastes a little different than non-vegan penne vodka….because heavy cream! But this was a tasty vegan version.

Monday: Vegan Bombay Potatoes – I made this for dinner a couple of weeks ago and my daughter loved it so much, she chose to make it again for her recipe this week. It’s easy to put together and very tasty! We served with Basmati rice and naan.

Tuesday: Sheet Pan Cauliflower Fajitas with Instant Pot Spanish Rice – These cauliflower fajitas were delicious and so easy to throw together. I made Instant Pot Spanish Rice from the same blog, but that didn’t come out as expected. First, note to self, read number of servings before preparing the recipe. I started making the recipe and when I saw I had to add 4 cups of rice, I knew it was going to make A LOT! If I had previewed the recipe first, I could have halved it. The rice came out a bit mushy, almost porridge like. It wasn’t bad, just not the consistency that we are used to.

Wednesday: Healthy Taco Salad – This was my son’s recipe of the week. There was little actual cooking involved. There were no avocados at the store when we did the grocery shopping, so we had to do without. But, they would have been a great addition to this salad. This is a light recipe. But even with chickpeas and black beans, we all felt hungry later that evening.

Thursday: Simple Summer Corn Soup with Beer Bread – Dana made this soup for dinner along with Beer Bread. We’ve been finding the corn at the supermarket has been super sweet. The soup was tasty and easy to make.

Friday: Vegan Zucchini & Hummus Flatbread – The original recipe that I linked to actually calls for eggplant. But since the kids aren’t big fans, I swapped it with zucchini. We made this into pizzas using dough from the grocery store. This was really good and we will be making it again!

Saturday: Veggie Burgers and Tater Tots – No recipe here. This is our go-to lazy lunch or dinner. I took some frozen veggie burgers and cooked them in a pan. I realized that we didn’t have any hamburger buns so I had my burger on a tortilla and everyone else ate theirs without a bun. We topped them with vegan cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion. This is a quick and easy meal that I served with some tater tots cooked in the air fryer.

Recipe recommendations of the week: 5 Ingredient Vegan Vodka Pasta, Sheet Pan Cauliflower Fajitas, Vegan Bombay Potatoes and Vegan Zucchini Hummus Flatbread.

Weekly Vegan Meal Plan {Week 3}

Check out this week’s vegan meal plan. With pictures, recipe links and reviews, hopefully you will find something tasty to make! This week’s menu includes a pizza, ramen soup, a veggie burger and more….and a lot of fries!

Sunday: Nacho Pizza – Our Nacho Pizza was inspired by this recipe, but we really didn’t follow it all. Instead of homemade guacamole, we used prepackaged guacamole from Aldi’s. We topped the guacamole with the leftover quinoa taco “meat” from earlier in the week instead of using the taco meat recipe. We were due for a grocery trip and didn’t have many veggies left, so we topped it with some bell pepper and olives (on half – for Dana and me). Overall, this was just “eh” for us. It was more of a use-it-up recipe. However, with more toppings, I think it has potential.

Monday: Broccoli Stuffed Potatoes with Cheese Sauce and Avocado Arugula Cherry Tomato Salad – I chose these two recipes from the same blog. While the potatoes were baking, I made the cheese sauce and started the salad. I used frozen broccoli that didn’t roast very well in the oven. I recommend using fresh broccoli. The recipe made a ton of cheese sauce. The potato recipe was just okay. The kids don’t like sweet potatoes, but with the broccoli and cheese didn’t complain too much about eating it. The salad was a great complement to the potatoes. We all loved the salad and I see it being made a lot over the summer. I only used one carton of cherry tomatoes and one avocado, instead of the recommended two of each, and I thought the salad had enough “stuff.”

Tuesday: Spicy Sofritas Tofu Bowls – Have you had the Sofritas from Chipotle? This recipe is supposed to be a copycat of that. I was cautious in not making the sofritas too spicy, since I wanted to make sure the kids could eat it. I only used one chipotle pepper in adobo sauce and one tablespoon of the adobo sauce in the sofritas sauce. This ended up being the perfect amount of heat for them. I may have broken the tofu up too much, as it looked like mush. But it was very flavorful! I made rice bowls with black beans, lettuce, tomato and salsa. Guacamole would have been a great addition, but we used it up on the Nacho Pizza.

Wednesday: Asian Chick’n Wrap with Spicy Tahini Sauce – This was a quick and easy, barely any cooking type of recipe. The original recipe called for Beyond Meat “Chicken” strips, but I have never seen these at my grocery store. I used Franklin Farms Chickenless Seitan. We realized only when putting the wraps together that we should have gotten two packages. So, these wraps were heavy on the salad and light on the “chicken.” Shoprite was out of tahini when we went grocery shopping and we never made it back this week to try and get more. We made the sauce with peanut butter instead and it was still delicious. We served the wraps with fries.

Thursday: Coconut Curry Ramen – Dana took a trip to HMart this week and picked up the noodles, shiitake mushrooms and bok choy that I used for this recipe. While the tofu baked, the rest of the recipe came together. So, this was made in about 30 minutes. We have made ramen before, but the addition of curry powder gave this ramen a unique flavor profile. We all enjoyed this dinner!

Friday: Lentil Sloppy Joes – Dana chose this as his recipe for the week. Neither me nor the kids really like lentils. But, when it’s your night to cook you get to pick the recipe. Dana made this in the Instant Pot, but there are also directions for cooking it in a slow cooker or on the stove top. We do not have liquid smoke so ours were missing the smoky flavor. When we did the grocery shopping Shoprite didn’t have coleslaw mix, so our sloppy joes were missing that as well. These weren’t bad, but we weren’t raving about them, as 3/4 of us don’t like lentils. We had these with some kettle potato chips.

Saturday: Veggie Burgers – We have eaten A LOT of veggie burgers over the past couple of months. However, my son was the first of us to tackle making homemade ones. This recipe was easy to make with a black bean base. Since any diced veggies of choice can be added, we added sauteed onion and zucchini. The recipe says it makes 4-6 burgers. However, we only got 3 burgers out of it. Luckily, we had enough ingredients to double it, so we ended up with 6 burgers. The burgers are good. They are soft and were falling apart a bit. But, they were tasty! We served these with fries.

Recommended Dinners of the Week: Coconut Curry Ramen, Asian Chick’n Wraps and the Avocado Arugula Cherry Tomato Salad.

Weekly Vegan Meal Plan {Week 2}

Check out this week’s vegan meal plan. With pictures, recipe links and reviews, hopefully you will find something tasty to make! This week’s menu includes meatballs, tacos and breakfast for dinner.

Sunday: Cauliflower with Chimichurri Sauce, Tostones, Sauteed Zucchini and Rice and Gandules. This was my requested Mother’s Day Dinner that the family cooked for me.

Monday: Vegan Burritos – This was my son’s recipe for the week. I helped him, but it was actually easy to make. He made the seasoned corn and beans while I made the pico de gallo. We used store bought guacamole and cooked the rice in the rice cooker. We did not make the sundried tomato basmati rice and used plain white rice. These were easy and tasty!

Tuesday: Vegan Cauliflower Meatballs with Pasta – My daughter’s favorite meal before becoming vegan was spaghetti and meatballs. I’ve tried a couple of different meatball recipes but still haven’t found, “the one.” These required a bit of prep work and I thought I’d be turned off by the use of oats. The kids said that it reminded them of stuffing, which was a result of the Italian seasoning blend that we used. Overall, these get a not bad. I served with pasta and marinara sauce.

Wednesday: Vegan Breakfast Hash – Another breakfast for dinner recipe! The only change I made was omitting the vegan sausage. This was easy to cook. Vegetarians can add an egg on top. I served this with buttered toast. Everyone enjoyed this.

Thursday: Sticky Orange Tempeh with Maple Thyme Roasted Vegetables – Dana had to run out to the store Thursday morning to find some tempeh for me to make this. This was an easy to make recipe for those who like tempeh. However, after tonight we won’t be making tempeh again. It has nothing to do with this recipe. I may even try the sauce on tofu. It’s just that we’ve already tried tempeh several times and finally agreed that none of us actually like it!

Friday: Quinoa Taco Meat – This was Dana’s recipe of the week. I have to say, I’m not a fan of quinoa, as I find it to be a bit mushy. But after the quinoa is cooked in this recipe, it gets baked, which firms it up a little bit. Plus, it gets mixed with salsa, which gives it some flavor. Once we added all the toppings, it was a tasty taco. He made a cilantro lime rice to go with it.

Saturday: Tofu in Indian Simmer Sauce (Vegetarian, Not Vegan) – So, we didn’t actually “cook” tonight. We simmered tofu in a store bought, jarred sauce. And the sauce wasn’t vegan since it contained milk. We served it with naan, samosas and leftover cilantro lime rice for a super easy, lazy weekend dinner.

Recommended Dinners of the Week: Vegan Burritos and Vegan Breakfast Hash

Weekly Vegan Meal Plan {Week 1}

Our family has been vegan now for almost 5 months now. Way back when, I used to post our weekly meal plans. I’d share them a week behind, so I could post pictures and give a short review – did we like the recipe?, what changes we made, etc. During this pandemic, besides working from home, most of our time has been spent in the kitchen cooking. So, I thought that I’d start sharing our weekly vegan plan. With the current meat shortage, I feel like more people will be cooking meatless dinners a little more often. I am not here to convert anyone. We became vegan for health reasons. If you are already vegan, maybe you haven’t tried some of these recipes. And if you’re not, maybe some of these vegan dinners will appeal to you and make you want to try one for your next Meatless Monday!

Sunday: Mediterranean Vegan Eggplant Roll Ups – This meal was pretty labor intensive, which is why I chose to make it on a Sunday. I served it with a side of pasta. In my opinion, the end result wasn’t worth all of the effort. My daughter didn’t like the cauliflower rice (and she usually likes everything!). Not worth repeating.

Monday: Simple Crispy Vegan Falafel Bowls -This was my son’s recipe for the week. Our family loves falafel and probably have it at least once a month. This particular recipe called for red pepper flakes which gave the falafel a little kick. We cooked these in the air fryer. They came out crispy on the outside but a bit mushy on the inside. I think we may have to try frying the falafel to get them really crispy.

Tuesday: Vegan Caramelized Mac n’ Cheese – We are huge cheese fans, and it’s definitely one of the foods that I have been missing since becoming vegan. I’d rather omit the vegan “cheese” in a recipe since it does not taste anything like the real thing. This particular recipe intrigued me because it uses eggplant as the base of the sauce, with the promise of the sauce not tasting like the vegetable. Well, we did not agree. We all could taste the eggplant, which wasn’t bad, but it doesn’t pass for mac and cheese. The kids were not fans at all. Not worth repeating.

Wednesday: Vegan Bombay Potatoes – We have made a variety of different Indian inspired dishes since becoming vegan. This dish is made of chickepeas and potatoes in a spiced tomato sauce. I served it over rice with a side of naan. This was one of my daughter’s favorite meals of the week and she’s already asked me to make it again!

Thursday: Vegan French Toast – My daughter does not enjoy finding recipes, nor does she enjoy cooking….baking is a totally different story. We are such opposites! On her nights to cook she tries to find the easiest recipes she can. Breakfast for dinner has always been a hit with the fam. This week she chose french toast. Instead of the ciabatta the recipe called for, I had her use a regular loaf of white bread. While she cooked the french toast, I made sauteed apples that we served on top. This was the first time that we had french toast in months. It was tasty and we will be making it again.

Friday: Black Bean Vegan Empanadas – Dana chose this for his recipe of the week. The recipe made enough for each of us to have two empanadas….although we all could have eaten at least two more! These were really tasty and we can’t wait to try different types of fillings using the phyllo dough as the empanada dough. He served these with sauteed garlic spinach.

Saturday: Taco Pasta – I switched dinners on the meal plan mid-week and didn’t realize that I ended up with two dinners back-to-back with similar flavor profiles. I also didn’t realize when I went to make this that I was out of taco seasoning. So I used fajita seasoning instead, which definitely changed the flavor a bit. Overall, this was an okay dish and one of the few taco pasta recipes that I found that didn’t call for some type of plant-based “meat.”

Recommended dinners of the week: Black Bean Empanadas, Vegan Bombay Potaotes and Vegan French Toast.

What’s Cooking? – A Weekly Meal Plan {Week 5}

What's Cooking {A Weekly Meal Plan Week 1}

Here’s another edition of What’s Cooking?, a weekly meal plan providing you some dinner inspiration.  Meal planning is an essential organization tool for me, and ensures that I get dinner on the table each night.  I try to find new-to-me recipes that are quick and easy.  Hopefully, you will get some ideas for your dinner this week, based on the pictures and reviews of what I made this week!

Monday – I made Spanish Beef Stew from Every Day with Rachael Ray.  This is one of those “Make This, Then Make This” type recipes.  Of course, I didn’t read the recipe through and when I went to make it at 5 PM, noticed that it has a 2 hour cook time.  There was no way we were eating after 7 PM, so the Instant Pot to the rescue.  I put everything in the Instant Pot and then cooked it on the stew setting for 35 minutes.  It took a little bit of time to prep and then have the Instant Pot get to heat.  But it was a lot less than 2 hours!  Unfortunately, we thought the stew lacked flavor and we weren’t big fans of it.  I served the stew over white rice, instead of with the yellow rice that the recipe suggested.

Tuesday – I made Beef & Pepper Jack Enchiladas from Every Day with Rachael Ray, as the second recipe of the “Make This, Then Make This.”  I used the leftover beef stew and turned them into enchiladas.  I put the leftover white rice into the tortilla along with some shredded cheese.  However, I didn’t use pepper jack.  I used taco mix cheese and cheddar jack.  The enchiladas weren’t bad and were different than the usualones we eat.  I served these with yellow rice and veggies.

Wednesday – My husband and I went to his company awards dinner, so no cooking for me.  We made the kids chicken nuggets and mac and cheese.

Thursday – My husband made Ricotta Naan with Fried Eggs and Sweet Potato Fries from Half Baked Harvest.  The sweet potato fries took some time to cook (about 40 minutes).  But otherwise, there was relatively little cooking, just making the ricotta mixture and frying the eggs.  This was a tasty vegetarian meal that was easy to put together.

Friday – We made our usual homemade cheese pizza.  Quick, easy and tasty!

What are you having for dinner this week?

What’s Cooking? #4 {A Weeky Meal Plan}

What's Cooking {A Weekly Meal Plan Week 1}

Here’s another edition of What’s Cooking?, a weekly meal plan providing you some dinner inspiration.  Meal planning is an essential organization tool, ensuring that I get dinner on the table each night.  I try to find new-to-me recipes that are quick and easy.  Hopefully, you will get some ideas for your dinner this week, based on the pictures and reviews of what I made this week!

Monday – I made Easy Beef Picadillo from Savory Tooth.  This was easy to make and was really tasty!  I had never made, or even eaten, beef picadillo before, but this was good!  The kids really liked it as well, minus the green olives.  I served it with rice and veggies.

Tuesday – I made Leek-y Chicken and Couscous from Rachael Ray Express Lane Meals.  I’ve made this dish before and we enjoyed it.  Since it’s quick, easy I decided to put it on rotation again….a couple of years later!

Wednesday – I made Philly Cheese Steak Burgers from Dinner Then Dessert.  I omitted the rib eye steak from the recipe.  I thought that with the beef patty was a bit much.  I discovered that you need a heartier roll than a regular hamburger roll.  Ours got a bit soggy and was difficult to hold the burger with the onions and peppers. After making this, I realized that I’ve made a burger like this before, just not this particular recipe.  In my opinion, the burger needs more seasoning than just salt and pepper.  Burgers tend to be a fairly quick and easy meal.  They’re even quicker when the burgers are pre-made the night before and just need to be cooked.  I served these burgers with fries.

 Thursday – I made 15-minute Sesame Ramen Noodles from How Sweet Eats.  This is one of the quickest meals I’ve made and it’s tasty!  I used four packages of ramen noodles for the four of us and there were no leftovers.  I could have probably used one or two more packages of ramen, since there were hardly any noodles left for seconds.  I served this with edamame.

Friday – We had a ton of fries left over from Wednesday’s burger night.  My husband decided to make Nacho Fries for dinner.  Unfortunately,  they weren’t that great.  It was a great idea, but I guess poorly executed.  He add shredded cheddar cheese, salsa, chopped tomato and sour cream.

What are you having for dinner this week?