Low waste vegan family dinners – what we’re eating this week!
More stores are allowing for reusable bags again (yay!) & our groceries are slowly getting back to pre-COVID plastic-free levels. Here’s what we’re eating this week:
- Pasta night! This includes pasta in a paper box and marinara in a jar or can with TVP for protein, plus a green salad . We reuse the jar and donate it to the local thrift store when our cupboards get too full of jars. Or recycle the can, which has a high recycle value. This is an easy and fast dinner for nights when the kids have sports stuff.
- Vegan crab cakes & seared Napa cabbage! I found these 2 recipes on TikTok (time well spent, I guess 😉 ). The vegan crab cakes are made from jack fruit, hearts of palm, chic peas, onions, Panko bread crumbs, vegan mayo, and seasoning. We can find all of those ingredients plastic free except the bread crumbs (which we could also make if needed!). The seared Napa cabbage is dressed with a miso-based dressing, and all of those ingredients are available plastic free too!
- Red lentil soup, toast & roasted veggies. This is a staple at our house. Red lentils cook so fast. I love to season them with onions & carrots, plus cumin, tumeric, ginger, salt, pepper, and veggie bouillon. We have a big brown bag of red lentils that we got last year and are still working through. We can usually find these in bulk too. For the roasted veggies, I’ll roast either cauliflower, broccoli, or brussel sprouts. My easy-peasy approach is to toss them in olive oil, salt & pepper and then cook them at 450F for about 30 minutes, with a stir halfway through. So yummy. I love having roasted veggies leftovers for lunch the next day too!
- Buddha bowl! Is it okay to use that name? I saw the general idea of this dish at MinimalistBaker.com and we LOVE it. It’s basically a grain (like quinoa or rice) plus veggies & tofu or TVP in a bowl. We like to include roasted brussel sprouts or broccoli, plus fresh carrots & cucumber, sometimes avocado. Then we drizzle it all with homemade tahini dressing. So delish!
- Sushi bowl! Kinda self-explanatory, but we make sushi rice, then add in avocado, cucumber, carrots, and baked/sliced sweet potatoes if we have them. Plus TVP (I like the beef-strip style for this dish) tossed in a homemade teriyaki sauce. Add a little soy sauce & mayo – so yum! We don’t usually have any nori with it – so much packaging – but that’d be delicious too.
- Tacos! Everyone’s favorite Tuesday dinner. We love homecooked pintos, tortillas (in plastic usually, but we’ve done homemade too), homemade pico de gallo salsa, guacamole, shredded cabbage with vegan mayo, and brown rice. This is a staple. We soak the beans the night before and cook them in the pressure cooker.
So that’s what we’re eating the next several days or so! I hope this gives you some ideas for how to cook low waste vegan dinners for your family too.
And I’d love to hear what you’re eating too! Leave a comment below!
Thanks for reading & for all that you do for the planet.
xo,
Liz
