vegan

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.