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! 

Happy Earth Day

Hi!

Pacific Coast Highway, somewhere near Jedediah Smith State Park

Like seemingly everyone on the planet, our lives have been turned upside-down by an invisible enemy. Thankfully, myself and my loved ones are all safe, healthy and still employed. But I’d be lying if I said this experience wasn’t throwing us for quite the loop. I hope you all are doing ok during this truly crazy time.

Anyway, Instagram was kind enough to remind me that it’s Earth Day. It’s so fun, this tradition of arbitrarily assigning a day of the year to celebrate something. Kind of a weird tradition, right? I guess as long these random days include ones associated with getting a free donut, I have no complaints.

El Chalten, Argentina 

And to be fair, Earth Day is a pretty important one. Now more than ever, we need to think long and hard about how our daily behaviors impact the planet and other people living on it with us. The impulse buy of a cheaply made blouse that gets tossed or donated a few months later, the food we throw out because we forgot about it in the fridge for too long, or the gas-guzzling SUV you purchased for the great horsepower (is that why people buy these cars? What is a horsepower? Can you tell I know close to nothing about this subject?) – all these things have downstream effects - on the planet, on people more vulnerable than ourselves, and of course on everyone’s future.

Did you know the 20 warmest years on record have all been in the past 22 years?  Or that various species of animals are going extinct at a faster rate now than ever before in modern history? 

Balos, Crete

Grand Canyon National Park

Upstate New York

And if you’re a grinch who doesn’t care about the health of the planet or the animals on it, research has shown climate change has detrimental effects on humans, too. Higher temperatures, worsening air pollution, and more severe weather will all contribute to increased morbidity and mortality globally. 

Plateau Point, Grand Canyon National Park

So if you already cared about the planet (high five!), or you decided you care now that these sobering facts have scared you, read on for some lifestyle modifications anyone can try to reduce their impact on the planet.

Go vegetarian (or vegetarian-ish.) Believe it or not, this is one of the biggest and most important things you can do for the planet. Loss of unfarmed natural lands to farming is one of the leading causes of extinction, and because over 80% of farmland is used to keep livestock, which then produces 60% of agriculturally-generated greenhouse gas, cutting your meat and dairy consumption, even by 1 or 2 times a week, can have a huge positive effect on the planet.

Stop shopping. Or at least, cut back a bit. We have all been trained by media, the internet, and pretty much all the brands we rely on daily, to buy, buy, and then buy some more. Whether it’s upgrading your iPhone every time a new one comes out, switching cars every 1-2 years, or buying that cute new skirt because it keeps popping up on your Facebook feed, companies everywhere encourage us to go for the newest, the latest, the most cutting edge- when really, shopping our own closet or holding on to that smart phone a few more years will work just as well, save us some money and reduce our impact on the planet. Definitely something to think about.  

Support organizations trying to make a difference, if you can. There are many, many good programs out there working hard to protect the remaining wild places on the planet and hopefully slow climate change. This is not an exhaustive list- but a few organizations I like and have donated to in the past include The Rainforest Foundation, which specifically aims to protect the remaining tracts of forests across the globe, nationalparks.org and the official charitable partner of the NPS. Charitynavigator.org is a great place to go if you want to get more info on a specific charity or for top 10 lists for charities in different areas. Lastly, its always nice to support local groups if you can- I grew going to a nature center in our town that helped fuel my lifelong love of animals, is a place I always try to visit when I’m in town and donate to when I can.

Learn Something. Many of us have more free time on our hands than ever before. Instead of watching The Office re-runs (also a stellar choice, don't get me wrong!), tonight consider putting on a nature-focused documentary. Planet Earth has some absolutely stunning cinematography, and Chasing Coral on Netflix will open your eyes to how bad things have gotten for our ocean's reefs. There's so many great films out there that have a great story and can teach you a few things :)

Stay home. This virus has caused so, so much devastation, so I hope it doesn’t sound flippant to bring up the fact that staying home has had a positive impact on gas emissions and the planet. And when it is safe to move more, travel more and get outside, choosing vacations that are closer to home and limiting air travel really is a great way to reduce your impact on the planet.

There you go! Usually when I am making a list like this, I include a lot more on cutting back on single use items. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of the Covid-19 pandemic is that in certain situations, single use items may be safer- we just don’t know yet. As time rolls on, hopefully we can be more careful and selective about what stays single-use and where we can go back to reusable items. But for now, we are just following local guidelines in this area. 

Lastly, this is a really, really weird time right now. If any new changes in your habits or lifestyle sound overwhelming right now, if you don't have the financial means to donate to charities, or if you don't have the brain space to handle worrying about anything else, that is totally ok too. The most important thing right now is keeping ourselves afloat and safe, physically and mentally. 

What do you do to lessen your impact on the planet? Would love to hear more in the comments section :)

Stay safe out there,

Checking In

Hello! Breaking out of my sleep deprived phase to check into this space. My brain feels like I'm back in intern year mode again- the overall hours are WAY better but switching between 3 pm- midnight and 10pm-8 am shifts is really putting my circadian rhythm through the ringer. LOL. Oh well. Here's a mix of things I've been reading about/thinking about lately.

Upsetting piece from Vice on coerced sterilization of indigenous women in the U.S. and Canada. If you think mistreatment of Native peoples of North America is in the past, this article is a sad reminder that this is simply not true.

On the positive side, stories like this one remind me that it's not all bad news out there. Amy Yeung is doing amazing work both on the sustainability front and keeping children from going hungry in Navajo reservations. You can shop her store- a mix of upcycled pieces, unique vintage and hand-crafted Native American jewelry and arts- online here.

Interested in working towards a more planet-healthy diet and don't know where to start? Tania from joyfelicityjane.com recently published a guide on her experiences. Her instagram is full of great recipe stories and some favorite vegan restaurants around London and beyond. Even if you don't feel like you're up for the challenge of going completely vegan, have a look around- swapping out even a couple of meat-based meals per week for beans, pulses or other veggie options can make a huge difference in your health and the health of the planet. P and I recently tried her chickpea curry and loved it.

On a similar note, this study has been making rounds in the news, and it seems like most outlets are focusing on the observations of increased stroke risk in vegans and vegetarians. Reading through it, it looks like the risk of stroke could be as little as 1.02 times greater to as high as 1.4 times greater risk, or roughly 3 more strokes per 1000 people. While they did adjust for fruit and vegetable intake, to me it wasn't totally clear if they were able to control for proportion of calories coming from processed foods (such as nut cheeses or veggie meats.) It will be interesting to see what subsequent studies show...

Unless you've been living under a rock, you are probably at least aware that Taylor Swift released a new album recently. Since 1989 came out I never know what to expect when she says an album is going to be different from her prior work, but this one is pretty great. Rolling Stone put out this article ranking all her songs up through Reputation, if you're interested in a deep dive (I completely agree with their choice for number one track.) And you know you've got musical street cred when Pitchfork reviews not only your new album but 5 of your prior works (they also clearly recognize the lyrical genius that is Red, haha.)

And for anyone still hating on popular music (I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's pretty much nobody, haha), this meme dissection says everything I could possibly want to say on that as someone who grew up with a love for folk rock, classic rock, country and blues and zero interest in boy bands or Britney Spears. Music can move us in so many ways. We're not in high school any more, so you're not a sell out for loving different types of music. Neil Young's Ragged Glory and Harvest albums are just as genius as Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 and Iron and Wine's EP with Calexico. Its more fun that way anyways...

This is getting long and rambly! I'll blame the weird work/sleep hours. Happy hump day! I'm going to try and post a few more travel posts and a couple more personal ones in the next couple weeks. All depends on how my work/school schedule goes. :)