Meal Plan Update

Last week, I tried out some new recipes with my first week of meal planning. If you didn't catch the first post, here's another look at the past week's menu:

 

 

Here are some reviews of a few of the recipes I tried:

Mexican Chorizo 

The Mexican Chorizo recipe that I made last Thursday was another Happy Herbivore hit! Her Chorizo recipe uses quinoa, which is pretty awesome. I ate the quinoa chorizo with leftover corn tortillas from Wednesday's taco night, Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream, Daiya shredded cheese, and some romaine lettuce. I'll definitely be adding this to my cooking repertoire. It's super simple to make and another way to make quinoa delicious.

Cornbread and Baked Beans

I don't have any pictures of the Happy Herbivore cornbread and baked beans that I made last week because they were that good. We demolished them! The baked beans were amazing, and much better than any baked beans that I've ever had before (probably because they were not canned). Also, the cornbread was moist and delicious, and the first time that I've tasted good vegan cornbread. It was very quick and easy to make, and I plan to make it again several times in the near future!

 Cheezy Shells and Broccoli 

 Whole Wheat Shells
 

 Cheezy Sauce
 

 Pre-Cheeze Sauce 

 Close-up of Cheezed Shells

 

 Finished Cheezy Shells & Broccoli

This recipe of Easy Cheezy Shells and Broccoli came from Vegan Comfort Foods from Around the World By: Veronica Grace  AKA Low Fat Vegan Chef. I've made this recipe before, but the first time I didn't have all of the ingredients to make the cheese sauce, so I just mixed some of them with a processed vegan cheese. This time I followed the directions.

 

I think this recipe is pretty good, but I would not recommend it for your omnivore friends and family. My omnivore husband was not a fan. It doesn't exactly taste like cheese, but it is a good sauce. The sauce doesn't have any added fat, so if you want to add a little bit of oil or vegan margarine to the sauce for a more creamy taste, I say go for it. I'm trying to be healthy and lose weight. So I only added a little extra paprika and chili powder.

 

In conclusion, the first week of meal plans went really well! I'm currently working my way through week 2 of Meal Planning, and I'll try to post an update on some of the new recipes I tried out sometime this weekend.

Meal Planning: Chickpeas & Dumplings

Lately, dinner time has meant either one of two things: we need to go to a restaurant/get some takeout or I need to find out what I have in the freezer or fridge that I can somehow magically turn into a meal as quickly as possible. Being the proud owner of quite a few vegan and vegetarian cookbooks (see Exhibit A below), I decided to take charge of this problem by making a meal plan for the week. So this Sunday I planned out my meals, went shopping for ingredients specifically for the meals. This plan will also help us save money by 1) not eating out during the week and 2) only buying things at the grocery store that are actually needed for meals (NO impulse buys allowed!).

So, here's Exhibit A, my collection of vegan & vegetarian cookbooks:



And here's my meal plan for the week:



I'm incorporating some new recipes from The Happy Herbivore cookbook By: Lindsay Nixon and one recipe from Vegan Comfort Foods from Around the World By: Veronica Grace a.k.a. Low Fat Vegan Chef.

Both of these cookbooks happen to be written by authors who believe in the whole foods, plant-based, no oil, no added sugar healthy mindset, which is an excellent way to continue the second week of my recently refocused weight loss journey. (I lost 3 lbs. last week!)

Monday night, I made the first recipe on my plan: Chickpeas & Dumplings.  I followed the directions to the best of my abilities, but I may have added a little too much of the spices. I didn't feel like mixing together HH's Poultry Seasoning Mix because then I would have some leftover. So instead I added a teaspoon of each spice from the Poultry Seasoning Mix. Now there are only 3 teaspoons in a Tablespoon, which I didn't think about at the time, and the recipe only called for one tablespoon of the Poultry Seasoning Mix. Since there were 5 spices in the mix, that means I added two extra teaspoons of spices. It smelled very fragrant, but I will definitely use less spices next time I make it. I also added peas because for some reason, there were peas and carrots in the picture in the book, but there were none in the recipe or ingredients list.

Here's a picture from during the cooking process:

I've never had Chicken & Dumplings before, so I was a little off-put by the taste and texture of the dumplings. Maybe it's because of weird dumpling-taste or the extra spices, but this recipe was not a big hit at my house. My husband is also not a fan of chickpeas, and he told me there were "too many chickpeas".  I also wasn't entirely loving it because for some reason I was expecting the dumplings to taste more like cooked biscuits than chunks of unbaked dough. My final product turned out nothing like the picture in the book. Mine's a little goopy and brown and Happy Herbivore's picture had a whitish broth (plus the previously mentioned chunks of carrots).

I have liked every other Happy Herbivore recipe I've made before, so I will definitely be giving this recipe another try sometime in the future (with less spices) and maybe separate the mixture in half before I add the chickpeas (to appease the husband).