I’m doing something a little different with meal plans this week and am going to be including suggestions for breakfast lunch and dinner. You can still access the old dinner only meal plans and there’s loads of them! Just scroll down to the archives and choose a month. You can also click on the ‘meal plans’ tag on any of the posts about them.

The reason I’m changing this up is because I was growing tired of them. I’m also making a change in my diet and doing them this way is going to be more of a helpful exercise for me, so selfish!

The change I’m referring to is to go vegan until dinner. Why? Well for purely environmental reasons. I am not ready to give up animal products entirely, and research into what a climate friendly diet looks like in Australia suggests that everyone going completely vegan would replace our emissions issue with a water scarcity one. But we eat more animal products than is sustainable and desperately need to cut down on them. This little rule ‘vegan before dinner’ is my way of limiting the animal products I eat and making a meaningful change.

In his book We are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer suggests that eating less animal products is the one change we as individuals can make that will have a meaningful impact on the world. I am also aware that having family overseas that I take long haul flights to see has an impact on the environment. I guess I’m trying to balance that.

I know that making this a space where I can talk about making meaningful change and how frustrated I feel at the lack of leadership on climate issues in my own country, could be a turn off for some of you. I’m okay with that because we’ve got to be who we are. This is an action I can take to make a difference and feel less helpless. I’m really passionate about making decisions that will protect the future of earth and I hope to share research and ideas that will help spread the idea of vegan until dinner time or ( whatever arrangement you can make) to eat less animal products. That said my recipe posts will still be all about the food!

Why not just eat less animal Products? Why have an arbitrary rule? For me, without the rule I lack accountability and don’t pay attention the ingredients in things I eat.

So below will be my plan to tackle this approach in a delicious way next week!

Breakfasts

I will be mixing up the following 3 options across the mornings because I am incapable of eating the same thing each day!

Simple Green Smoothie

Zucchini and Potato Hashbrowns I’ll have them with salsa and avocado on the side. There something else I’ll be prepping today so I can just heat them up in the morning.

Loaded Avocado Sourdough Toast (just about with some shredded fried kale on top, squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of seeds)

Lunch

I’m meal prepping the first one today so I have ready for work then the second will also be in the dinner list. These two recipes will get me through the week.

Satay Noodle Bowls with Crispy Salt and Pepper Tofu the tofu in these actually tastes good cold in lunches too.

Grilled Eggplant and Hummus with flatbread (you can just skip making the bread and use pita or if you’re incredibly lucky like me and your partner is currently getting a sourdough starter going you can fry up the discarded starter as a flatbread. AMAZING)

Dinner

There’s 4 meal ideas below, plus the vegan eggplant dish above that I’ll be making for dinner one night and then having for lunch 2 days. The ideas below have animal products in them, the first one is vegetarian.

Pumpkin and Goats Cheese Tacos, I have delicious hot sauces we got in the USA to use on these!

Chicken, Cashew and Green Bean Noodles. This is a great way to make a little chicken mince go a long way!

Chicken Salad with Creamy Cashew and Herb Mayo this Mayo is a great way to use up leftover herbs and would also be yum with hashbrowns I’m having for breakfast!

Sweet and Sour Prawn Salad I get prawns from my local fishmonger and use the sustainable seafood app to make the best choice I can.

And that’s the plan this week! I usually snack on berries at this time of year but might also grab a cashew and dill cheese to have on crackers, with carrot snacks to fill the cheese and crackers afternoon snack hole I have going on!

HH. x