Zero waste vegetarian dinners:  

What our family eats in a week (working parents – you can do it!).

 

Yes, I have a job outside being a mom.  And yes – we still eat mostly home cooked, zero waste dinners.  My hubbie and I both work full time (and then some) and aren’t amazingly organized.  But we still get it done. And you can too!

 

Now, I’ll admit that I work from home most days and don’t have a long commute on the days I go into the office.  BUT – and this is important to keep in mind! – I RARELY start on dinner before 5:30pm. We put our kids to bed around 7:30 (they read, wind down, and pass out around 8) so we try to eat dinner around 6:30.

 

BTW, this is part 2 of my series on easy zero waste meal planning for families!  In case you missed part one on zero waste breakfasts, check it out here!

 

Okay, back to easy zero waste, vegetarian dinners.  We aren’t big planners but we know the kinds of foods that we all like to eat.  So we shop for a lot of the same foods each week.

 

Big disclaimer:  These aren’t gourmet dinners.  If you’re looking for fancy, you’re on the wrong site!  BUT – these are healthy, well-balanced, low waste dinners.  And our kids LOVE them!

 

5 easy zero waste vegetarian dinners

 

Monday night’s zero waste vegetarian dinner

 

Pasta dinner with TVP and a big green salad

 

We’re lucky enough to have bulk pasta at two shops in Santa Cruz – New Leaf in Capitola and Staff of Life in Santa Cruz.  We usually fill a big bulk bag once a month at Staff and it lasts us a few weeks (depending on how many dinner guests we have!).

 

Sometimes we’ll get a glass jar of tomato sauce (and reuse the jar) or canned tomatoes (and recycle the can – cans are generally valuable to recycle in our town).  Other times we’ll toss the pasta in olive oil, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and sauteed veggies. Think mushrooms, sweet peppers, onions, broccoli, zucchini. Or whatever veggies we have lying around in the fridge.

 

For protein, we’ll rehydrate some dried TVP (texturized vegetable protein).  We can get this in bulk bins at Staff of Life and New Leaf. All we do is soak it in hot water for maybe 10 minutes, until it’s tender enough to eat.  You could saute it with some seasoning, but we often just toss it with the pasta. The TVP in bulk at Staff of Life comes in 2 sizes – large chunks and small pieces – like ground-round sizes.  The small pieces you can toss right into pasta sauce without rehydrating for added protein.

 

We make a super simple salad dressing from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper – all available in bulk at Staff of Life.  Or, we swap out the vinegar for fresh squeezed lemon juice (and leave out the pepper) for another super simple and delicious homemade dressing. If we have enough lemons (usually from our tree!), I’ll make extra dressing and put it in a jar to use for other dinners that week, or for lunches.

 

Salad includes whatever veggies and greens we have – usually lettuce, shredded carrots, sweet peppers, and cucumbers.  Toss it with dressing just before you sit down to eat.

 

That, my friend, is our pretty well balanced, easy, zero waste dinner number one!  Moving on…

Tuesday night’s low waste veggie dinner

Tuesday night is taco night, amiright???  

 

Here’s what we usually do for taco night:

–Homemade pinto beans.  We soak these overnight and then pressure cook them with bay leaves, chopped onions, salt, and cumin in about 30 minutes.  SOOO delicious!

–Homemade rice.  Just rice. Sometimes we cook it with chopped tomatoes or onions or canned tomatoes.  Usually we skip the extras and make it plain.

 

–Shredded cabbage with a little lemon juice and olive oil or a little mayo

–Avocado, chopped tomatoes, and cilantro

Note:  sometimes we have homemade salsa too if hubbie has time to chop tomatoes, cilantro, onions, jalapenos, and lemon juice.  With a little salt. So yummy.  Or we pick up salsa in our own container from a nearby taqueria!

 

–Corn tortillas.  As of this writing, we can still recycle the plastic bags that we get our store bought tortillas in, so this is honestly what we usually do.  BUT, there are zero waste options out there. We have a tortilla press and make homemade tortillas too when we have time. It takes us about 20 minutes to make everyone in the family a few tortillas.  You might also be able to find a taqueria that’ll sell you homemade tortillas. Another option is to ditch the tortillas all together and use lettuce as your shell! We don’t do that but I’m sure it’s delicious.  

 

–Cheese – we do a few things for cheese.  The fastest homemade vegan cheese I’ve made so far is based on Minimalist Baker’s recipe for Mexican nacho cheese sauce.  We use ingredients from bulk for this – everything straight into the blender and then warm and serve. Super yum.

Another easy homemade vegan cheese calls for nutritional yeast plus flour (chick pea or wheat or whatever flour you have).  This is ready in about 10 minutes. All the ingredients are available in bulk. Check Bob’s Red Mill recipe here. Other times we buy dairy cheese at the store and ask them to cut us a piece off a big block.  We also buy it in plastic wrap that, as of this writing, we can recycle. As fewer and fewer recycling centers take plastic wrap, we’ll probably be opting for store-cut and homemade cheese only in the near future.    

Wednesday night’s zero waste vegetarian dinner

Okay, I don’t know what your Wednesday’s are like, but I’m usually feeling the mid-week hump by this day!  So I love a super easy meal we call

 

FANCY TOAST!

 

Yes, it’s toast for dinner.  But we make it extra specially with some homemade hummus.  We might make hummus on the weekend or that night. It’s super fast and easy if we remember to soak chick peas the night before.  Then 20 minutes in the pressure cooker. Then blend with tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, a little water, and garlic. I put out cheese slices, olives (Staff of Life has delicious bulk olives), sliced tomatoes, and sliced avocado.  For veggies, we have roasted cauliflower or a big green salad.

 

The bread we get from local bakeries (Gayle’s and Companion) in our own bags usually.  Sometimes we get bagettes in paper bags if we can’t get to the bakeries.  

Super easy and tasty!

 

Thursday night’s zero waste vegetarian dinner

If we have extra chick pes aafter making hummus, we’ll often saute them with canned tomatoes, onions, and seasoning (garam masala, tumeric, ginger, a little lemon juice) to make Chana Masala.  Served with with rice and sauteed broccoli or some other fast cooking veggie. We usually have a jar of mango pickle in the fridge for a little tang and heat. The jar gets reused or recycled. We put a little salt or soy sauce (from bulk) on the rice.  Super yummy.

 

Friday night’s easy low waste vegetarian dinner

I usually don’t cook on Friday nights so we usually either have leftovers, go out to eat, or order a pizza.  I know, pizza delivery isn’t the most sustainable option. But sometimes, especially if hubbie is out of town, it’s what I have the energy for.  We ask for it without the little plastic do-hicky and we compost the box at home in our compost. If you want to invent a reusable, plastic-free pizza take-out box, PLEASE DO IT!!!  I will totally buy one from you. The world needs a reusable option!

 

So that’s a pretty typical week of zero waste vegetarian dinners for our family.  Is that helpful for you? What are your favorite low waste weeknight meals?  I’d love to hear in the comments below!

 

Thanks for reading!

Liz