Low Waste Cooking: Our favorite quick and easy plant-based meals

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.

Link: Greek lentil soup (Fakes) 

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. 

Link: Greek chickpea stew (revithosoupa) 

 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. 

Link: Milk Street: Cook What You Have 

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. 

The Weekday Vegetarians 

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! 

Feast and Fast

Lent seems to have snuck up on us this year, don't you think? I am always prepared, or at least expecting, Great Lent in the spring, but the forty day fast before Christ's birth seems to come out of nowhere! I think the American Holiday season kind of distracts you from it...everyone else is preparing for Thanksgiving with turkey, stuffing and the like. Personally, I love cooking without meat or dairy- it's cheaper, simpler (in my mind, anyways) and tends to be healthier (I'm an everything in moderation kind of gal.)

If you're like me, a little guidance in your cooking goes a loonngggg way. Throwing things in a pot and magically creating an amazing dish is NOT my thing. I need very clear instructions to work from, at least the first few times, before I go rogue (i.e. switch out the rosemary for dill, ha!) So the following websites are a few of my go-tos when it comes to cooking during fasting periods. I thought I'd share them, in case anyone else is in the same or a similar boat!


1. Naturally Ella

I've been making the above paella for a few years now, and only recently realized what a great selection of vegetarian recipes this site has. There's a few new ones I'm excited to try out- this African curry, for example. Plus, the website is SUPER easy to navigate, with recipes grouped by meal, season, and even dietary needs.

2. Authentic Greek Recipes

I love this recipe index. When I moved back over to the U.S. from Crete I went through serious food withdrawals. Sure, you can get an ok gyro or maybe some awesome calamari if you're lucky, but slightly more odd or obscure dishes (often the lenten ones) are MUCH harder to come by unless you make them yourself. So this site was a bit of a Godsend when I found myself craving Greece's amazing lemony chickpea soup back in Florida.

3. Oh Dear Drea

Confession time: I've never actually used this site for food! It's a lifestyle blog, and while I don't personally subscribe to veganism, I love that Drea feeds her kiddo so many different types of cuisine(and so many fruits and veggies! you go girl!) Pictured above is a vegan Thanksgiving feast of 8 recipes (I might try that stuffing next week!) and her instructions on how to prepare basics such as tofu can open a whole new world in your cooking. And I am all about trying new things!

4. Real Simple Recipes

Lenten Meals

Alright Peter, I've got the recipe for you. Sorry if my raving has started to get on your nerves, but seriously- this meal was delicious. Creamy beans + delicious shrimp + DILL AND LEMON. Did I mention this meal was delicious?

 I feel kind of funny posting this, because even though this recipe is technically lenten, it's certainly not a bland food- fasting is about not only abstaining from animal products olive oil and wine, but also about reviving our hunger for Christ. We achieve this by attempting to adhere to a fairly strict fast- simple foods, simply prepared, in smaller portions. This recipe is certainly none of those things (well, it is pretty easy to make- so there's one!) but it does not contain any meat or dairy products and I thought it was worth a share.

This is the original recipe. I don't like scallions and if you've hung out with me in the kitchen at all you know I LOVE dill (some would call it an addiction...they would be what I like to call 'haters' in American English. dill rocks.) So the recipe I am writing down here is a tad bit different from the one on the web site. But here's the gist of it:

• 1  10-ounce  box couscous (1 1/2 cups)
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 3  tablespoons  unsalted butter So, here I used olive oil. Ok, technically it's not lenten, but you can hardly consider the super-market stuff they sell at Publix to be the same as the fragrant green gold they used in the ancient church. (p.s. can you tell I'm Greek?)
• 2  cloves garlic, chopped
• 4  scallions, chopped I used 1 large white onion, as scallions suck 
• 1  pound  medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1  15.5-ounce  can cannellini beans, rinsed --> in the running for new favorite bean. sorry chickpeas (and my entire yoga class.) 
• 1/2  cup  fresh flat-leaf parsley ALL THE DILL. 
• 2  tablespoons  fresh lemon juice (or as much as humanly possible

Directions

1. In a saucepan, bring 2 cups water to a boil.
2. Stir in the couscous and ¼ teaspoon salt. Cover and let sit off heat for 5 minutes; fluff with a fork before serving.

I crossed out the above directions because there's directions on the box. just follow those. 

1. Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon of the butter  olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Add the garlic and scallions  onion and cook for 30 seconds until the onion begins to clear. Add the shrimp and cook, stirring, until they begin to turn pink, about 3 minutes.
3. Stir in the beans, parsley ALL THE DILL, lemon juice, remaining 2 tablespoons butter olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
4. Cook until heated through, 2 to 3 minutes. Serve with the couscous.

I would add toasted pine nuts too. Because they are awesome. And since I don't have any fancy pictures of my beautiful kitchen masterpiece, here is the Real Simple version, (which is also obviously much prettier than mine:)

καλή πέπση!