Last year, one of our new year's goals as a family was to reduce our meat consumption. With two working parents we have no choice but to run a tight ship it we want to keep things going smoothly, stick to our food budget and minimize waste.
We have a loose meal plan that helps tremendously with this. In general we cook two big meals on the weekend that we eat the first half of the week, then cook the rest of the week with a break on Thursday for takeout. We generally stick to cooking one meat dish and one meal with fish, and the rest of the home-cooked meals are plant-based.
A year on and I can say we've finally found a rhythm that works for us. Here are four of our most-used dishes and links to where we got the recipes (plus a bonus tip at the end!)
Greek lentil soup (fakes): this is a hearty, low effort meal that can come together in 45 minutes or less. What's more, it's generally pretty hands off. My biggest meal pet peeve is when a meal boasts being easy or quick but doesn't factor in the amount of chopping needed (anyone else? Just me?) This one is definitely not that, and the hands-on time is pretty quick. We usually serve this with garlic naan or the everything but the bagel bread from Aldi, feta cheese and a side salad (we love making salads from scratch but are currently in the bagged salad season of our lives for efficiency and survival.) We use a recipe typed into a word document from a friend in Greece, but this recipe is pretty close (almost word for word!) We just swap out fresh tomatoes for tinned crushed tomatoes or passata.
Revithosoupa: I discovered this in the cafeteria at the university where I studied during my Fulbright grant. For 3 euros you would get this incredible rich, completely meat and dairy-free soup and bread, and it was the perfect quick meal on a cold winter day. We're actually making it today when it's unseasonably cold in Florida (55 degrees Fahrenheit and chilly!) and the kids both tend to like it about half the time we serve it (real talk, that's a win in our family! both kids have become major snackaholics lately.) It can also be made with dry chickpeas (soak at least 12 hours before boiling) or with two cans of chickpeas, drained.
bonus tip: take two cups when finished cooking and blend with some olive oil, salt, pepper and the lemon juice before re-adding to the pot. This makes for a thicker, creamier texture that's just amazing.
Red lentil dal with tarka.
This one's a new addition I found during my library ritual of flipping through a cookbook while the kids play in the children's room (highly recommend!) It comes together SO quick and is so filling and tasty! And my favorite part is the tarka we make to go on top and add a little heat to the grown ups' plates. It's also versatile - we often toss a handful of greens in towards the end or mix with yogurt for some extra calcium for the kids.
Sheet pan tofu and broccoli with peanut sauce.
This was another library cookbook discovery, but I've followed Jenny Rosenstrach for a while through her writing on Cup of Jo and had somehow never picked up one of her cookbooks! There are so many great recipes in The Weekday Vegetarians. This one is a mix of the basic baked tofu and spicy (ish) peanut sauce. We just add broccoli, tossed either in olive oil, salt, garlic powder and pepper, or soyaki sauce if we're feeling fancy, and serve on a bed of rice.
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Honorable mention: Bean and cheese quesadillas. This could also be labeled "anything with beans" because when I open a can of black beans my two grazers inevitably start eating them right from the sieve in the sink! We like to do basic rice and beans with bell peppers, onion and garlic (easy, quick, cheap and great because the kids get to choose additional toppings and think its a fun game to assemble their own meals) and quesadillas, which my four year old still calls "bean pizza."
So much of low waste living is not about the big buys or changes - it's the simple little things you can do every day and might not even think about.
What are your favorite plant based recipes? I'm looking to add some new ones into rotation in 2025!
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