I received an email from one of my sisters today asking for help in coming up with new weekly meals and eats as she also does a meal plan. My suggestions were to:
a) Check out blogs with meal plans, or just visit food blogs in general. Seeing and reading about something helps me decide if I’d like to try it or not.
b) Try a new food a week. This often gives birth to new dishes to try, and new ways of cooking, too. Be it a new vegetable, grain or fruit, trying something new (and hopefully seasonal) offers your body some nutritional variety and your tastebuds a bit of a night on the town.
c) Buy/borrow a new cookbook. When I get a new cookbook it becomes serious reading material for me. I devour it as if it were fine literature, pouring over the pages and reading the recipes in detail. I find this to be a wonderful way to give new foods or preparations a try, keeping things from becoming boring.
Do you have any hints or tips to share? I’d love to know how you decide what you’ll be eating each week.
Chorizo Lasagna* enjoyed a few plans ago…
I admit my meal planning has been pretty easy of late as I’ve been recipe-testing up a storm. It’s so fun to head over to the testing site and decide what sounds good. (As always, the Celine & Joni test recipes are followed by an *).
Monday : Brussels Sprouts Chestnut Pot Pie* and greens.
Tuesday : Falafel* served with Coriander Pita Bread*.
Wednesday : Peanutbutter Pretzels*, left-overs served with a side of greens.
Thursday : Hummus in a bowl* with homefries.
Friday : Pizza Night!
Weekend Eats : Homemade waffles, probably from VWAV.
Pesto Pizza with homemade vegan cheese*. That red stuff would be hot sauce.
Monsieur Fish is heading to the new house this week to drop off a car-load of boxes, take care of administrative stuff, and hopefully he’ll snap a few pictures so I can share with you. I’m spending most of my “imagination time” dreaming about the garden, what I’ll be able to plant once we arrive, and what we’ll plant next year…
Looking for more Vegan Meal Plan inspiration? Go visit Your Vegan Mom and for GF vegan goodness visit In My Box.
Musings From The Fishbowl 
This would really help me stay on track so I need to give it a try..I’ve also heard that menu planning saves money because it’s harder to “forget” what you have in your fridge. I’m all for that!
Doing a lot of testing is definitely a great help when it comes to mealplanning! Oh, that lasagna, I remember its greatness.
P.S. I purchased Ricki’s ebook and it looks awesome. Yay!
I usually plan a few recipes, then buy vegetables and base meals around them.
Meal planning can definitely be tough! I sometimes plan around various blog events, but mainly because right now I just seem inundated with them! Most of the time though, I try to plan different types of meals for different days…pasta on monday, beans on tuesday, tofu on wednesday, etc. Or, I’ll go to the Farmer’s Market and pick out some fresh fruits and veggies and then plan everything around those!
Sounds like a delicious week! I always buy a few staples, and try to cook something new once or twice a week. The “new” things are either something I found in a blog, or something I dreamed up.
And weekends are for baking!!
Blogs and cookbooks are my inspiration for meal plans too. Even if I don’t go with an exact recipe, sometimes looking at the recipes is enough inspiration for me to come up with something.
Looks like you have a great week planned! Brussels sprouts chestnut pot pie sounds just mindblowingly good. Your menu planning suggestions are great ones. I, too, love to climb in bed with a good cookbook and read it like a novel.
I have only just recently gotten into a menu planning routine that actually works for me. I wrote a whole post last week about the rules/tips that are helping me to finally make it happen: http://inmybox.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/making-the-rules-up-as-i-go-along-on-a-vegan-gluten-free-menu-plan-monday/
Now if only I could stick to them! I get attracted by all the shiny recipes and make menu plans that are too ambitious. It’s fine when there are leftovers to cover the nights when I don’t have time to make the meal I have planned, but I’m starting to have a few nights here and there when there’s really no dinner. Not good! Gotta work on that…
Have a great week of cooking, and thanks for the link!
Oh, I feel the same way about cookbooks… I even read them when I’m not in the mood to cook.
One of my tricks is to thin out leftovers with potatoes- something like chickpea paprikash, sphaghetti sauce, or curry dishes do well with this sort of treatment.
Also, when roasting a vegetable- say, eggplant and potatoes for a moussaka- I’ll make extra because I know roasted eggplant would be equally good over a salad or pasta- etc. Plus you get the time consuming part out of the way.
Quite a bit of what we’re eating here too is courtesy of Céline and Joni’s recipes! Your meal plan for this week sounds terrific!
I’m looking forward to seeing your new home – well, pictures of it for now… until next time I cross the pond! 🙂
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I agree with Bianca, hummus and home fries sounds awesome!
I usually write down a list of meals, sometimes one or two change just because of what I feel or the family feels like eating. I also try to make at least one new recipe a week.
Thursday is always our taco,tostada or burrito night, then we watch Survivor. Then we have some sort of pasta dish a week so that brings me to really planning 5 other meals a week.
Home fries with hummus sounds awesome! I’ve never thought of that. But I’m so trying that now. As for meal planning, I make a couple big meals each week and live off leftovers the rest of the week. I write all my meals out on a dry-erase board. My friends make fun of me for doing that!
I cannot wait for you to have un jardin! what a dream, dude.