Many people new to plant-based eating get overwhelmed with finding and then following a bevy of new recipes, which often have a daunting list of unfamiliar ingredients. Even those who have been eating this way for a while can find themselves constantly on the hunt for new recipes that will be somehow faster, easier, or cheaper than what they made last week.
The good news is that there are many things you can make without any recipe at all, and you can come back to these things again and again to simplify your food and your life. That will free up time and brain space so if you do want to go ahead and try some fancier meals, your time and budget will better allow it.
1. Beans and Rice
This is a standby of thousands of vegans for a reason. When in doubt, just cook up a pot of beans and a pot of rice.
Here are four ways to simplify this:
Use canned beans. Just rinse them first! Kidney beans, black beans, or black-eyed peas are all good choices here.
Use salsa and/or taco seasoning to flavor it. Stir in the salsa afterwards, or add the taco seasoning to your rice cooking water.
Use a rice cooker (or an instant pot) to take the guesswork out of cooking.
Make lots and freeze it. It freezes beautifully. Tip: If you ever end up with too-dry leftover rice, throw a couple of ice cubes on it and stick it in the microwave. It’ll be tender again in a hurry.
Here are 10 ways to jazz this up:
Chop up some romaine lettuce to put on top, or heap your beans and rice on a bed of spinach or arugula.
Add some chopped cilantro or sliced green onions.
Throw a can of diced tomatoes with chiles (Rotel) in with your beans.
Throw some frozen corn in with your beans.
Make the beans yourself. You can do it in an instant pot or in a slow-cooker. You can soak them or not. But making them homemade allows you to season them while they cook, which is a plus. Again, just a taco seasoning blend will work, but you could also chop some onion, garlic, and bell pepper to put in there, or dried onion and garlic. Beans are VERY forgiving as long as you stick to these type of seasonings. (Cumin, chili powder and paprika also work here.)
Try blending up those home-cooked beans with some of the cooking water so they are a “refried” consistency.
You can also use a can of fat-free refried beans. I like to stir in some salsa and warm it up in the microwave before using.
Toast up some corn tortillas in a dry skillet and make oil-free tostadas.
Wrap your beans and rice in a whole grain tortilla.
Add avocado or chopped fresh cherry tomatoes.
Use a different grain for variety. Quinoa is also a good choice here.
By all means, look up cooking times online and even consult a beans and rice recipe if you want to make sure your seasonings are in the right ball park. But then let yourself wing it and just enjoy the result.
This counts. This was many a meal for me in college, even before I ate a plant-based diet.
Homemade refried beans take 5 minutes to pull together in an Instant Pot and topped with romaine they are a solid option.
Toasty corn tortillas give this bean and rice meal a different feel.
My 12 yo daughter used canned refried beans and dressed them up with things we had on hand: some red onion, frozen roasted corn, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes and romaine. She piled it all on a toasted up corn tortilla.
1b. Sweet Potato and Black Beans
Instead of serving those beans over rice, try topping a roasted or steamed sweet potato with beans. Add salsa, avocado, a squeeze of lime, and/or any of the suggestions above. Yum.
Alternatively, you can cube up a sweet potato into bite-sized pieces, sprinkle on taco seasoning and roast it. Add it to any of the bean and rice options.
2. Pasta and Red Sauce
I think this is a standby of many meat-eaters as well, but they often brown up some ground beef to go in it. Totally unnecessary!
Just grab a jar of meat-free marinara sauce and a box of whole-grain pasta, and you’ll be in business.
I can’t make it easier than that, but I can make it more interesting:
Cook some lentils up (1 c. per pound of pasta is a fine place to start) while you’re cooking your noodles. They’ll take 20-25 minutes to get tender. Then just drain them and add them to your sauce and pasta. They bulk up the meal and add texture.
Alternative: My kids like rinsed cans of kidney beans added to their sauce.
I know lots of people add frozen vegetables (especially chopped spinach) to their sauce. We haven’t done this, but I think it could be great as long as you thaw and drain those veggies first. No one likes a soggy sauce.
Make your own sauce! Plenty of sauteed garlic + crushed tomatoes + dried oregano + time simmering = spaghetti sauce. Of course you can find recipes online, but you can also just keep it simple and still enjoy a yummy bowl of pasta.
If I have mushrooms, zucchini, or green bell pepper I’ll sauté those up and add them to the sauce as well. No measuring or fussing needed.
Jarred sauce plus cooked lentils and some extra salt and pepper. Fast and filling!
3. Green Smoothies
Ok, so maybe this is a recipe. But I don’t ever have to look it up! I just pack my Vitamix with handfuls of leafy greens (spinach or “power greens blend” from Costco, usually) until it’s 1/2 full (for a mild smoothie) or 3/4 full (for a stout smoothie). I add a handful of flaxseed, fill it with water up to the line of the greens and blend it well. In goes a banana or two and whatever frozen fruit I have (mango, strawberries…) . Blend and done!
Yes there are lots of delicious smoothie recipes out there, but this one always works with what I have on hand and it’s so easy to follow that I can have it often.
4. Vegetable Soup
It turns out, you can make a delicious vegetable soup with just the following:
A good vegetable broth
Quinoa, couscous or barley
A type of bean (already cooked) or lentil (will cook in the soup)
Diced up vegetables
I often like to add leafy greens once the other vegetables are tender, then serve the soup when the greens begin to wilt.
Jazz it up:
Start with minced onion, carrot and celery. That makes a delicious beginning.
Use a bay leaf (remove after cooking) and some thyme, or simply use an Italian seasoning blend.
As before, you can start with an official vegetable soup recipe but once you’ve made a few, shake off the shackles and feel free to use up whatever veggies YOU have on hand, and make it suit your tastes.
Vegetable soup doesn’t have to be complicated!
5. Asian Vegetables
This can be as simple as combining broccoli, which you chop and cook up (roast, steam or saute), with some soy sauce and serving over rice.
Jazz it up with roasted seaweed, avocado, or sliced green onions.
Use a fresh or frozen stir fry blend of vegetables or make your own by adding carrots, green beans, and whatever else suits your fancy.
Start your veggies cooking with garlic and ginger in the pan. Mmmm.
Add a can of drained pineapple for a fun twist.
Cubed tofu fits easily here.
Use rice noodles instead of rice for a change of pace.
Soy sauce alone not cutting it? Add Sriracha for some kick, or try: 1 TBS each of soy sauce, brown sugar, rice vinegar, and peanut butter. Yeah it’s sort of a recipe but you won’t have to look it up once you’d done it a time or two.
There are loads of fabulous plant-based recipes out there, and sometimes that leads us to overcomplicate eating this way! There’s nothing wrong with having simple tastes and simply making something from what you have on hand.
What are your favorite no-recipe ways to eat plants?
Take it from this mother of 5 plant-powered kids: You can absolutely help your kids (and spouse!) enjoy a more plant-based lifestyle.
You’ve done your research and you’re convinced that a vegan, or plant-based, diet is better for your family’s health. Or maybe you’ve recently watched a compelling documentary and you’re curious enough to give plant-based eating a try.
It’s intimidating though, because serving up three meals a day to a hungry family is no joke. You might have kids who turn their noses up at new foods. You may have a meat-loving spouse, and perhaps you yourself don’t even like vegetables
I’ve Been There.
When I switched to a plant-based diet over a decade ago, I only like baby carrots and corn on the cob. Really and truly. Salad was definitely a no-go. What’s more, my husband considered himself a “meat and potatoes” man, and I didn’t exactly have a lot of skill in the kitchen.
Finding your groove will take some time, but with persistence, you’ll get to a point where it feels far more comfortable to throw together a plant-based meal than to go back to your old stand-bys.
Of course, just getting healthy food on the table is no guarantee that your family will eat it! It’s no fun when you’ve put all the effort into making something for your family and it’s met with grumbling (or worse.)
Let me offer some hope on that front: Although my own kids have grown up eating this way, we regularly have other children come stay in our home for extended periods of time (through the Safe Families for Children program). I’ve seen these kids go from wanting Pepsi and Flaming Cheetos to asking for more snap peas for their snack in a surprisingly short time.
Preferences and attitudes often change quickly given the right environment.
A Few Small Truths:
Sweetness
Fruit is so much sweeter when you are not constantly eating food with added sugar in it!
Adaptation
Our taste buds are constantly changing, and with time everyone will find new (healthier) favorites they’ll think they can’t live without.
Attitude
Kids (and husbands) can learn not to grumble. With some new habits they’ll try new things with more gratitude. (Find help with table etiquette here.)
Hunger = Sauce
The absence of go-to filler snacks means we have a good appetite when meal time comes around, so everything tastes better. Hunger is the best sauce.
“As a mother, you are largely responsible for creating the food environment in your home.”
Anne Bean
Feed Them Plants
Here’s a perfect example: Every time I’m pregnant and morning sick, the whole family’s eating gets thrown for a bit of a loop. Why? Because I’m the one usually planning meals, stocking the fridge, officiating at the kitchen table, and setting an example. When I’m curled on the couch with a bowl, even though my husband picks up the slack when he can, everyone else is eating a lot more cold cereal. I’ll bet you can relate!
Mothers know better than anyone else that life has seasons, but setting a baseline of plant-based eating means that you have a good groove to settle back into when you come out of survival mode.
You can find loads of lists online with “quick tips” to get kids to eat more vegetables, but what I’d like to do is walk beside you as you change your family’s food culture.
Food is so emotional that there’s seldom a quick fix if you want lasting change. However, what we eat has such a big impact on our health (and weight, self-confidence, mood, and behavior) that it’s a tremendous opportunity to strengthen our family now and give our kids a solid foundation for the future.
Unfortunately, the prevailing food culture in our country is toxic right now. It’s literally making people sick and fat, dramatically decreasing our quality of life. If you were to simply follow the marketing, believe the billboards, and buy what you see lining the shelves at the grocery store, then you could only expect the results that others are getting: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. If this paragraph sounds overly dramatic, you should see the actual data.
The wonderful (and simultaneously tragic) news is that these things are optional. While we can’t change our country’s approach to eating overnight, I know that as a mom, you have tremendous power to heal your own family.
There’s a catch though. (You knew there would be!)
Change. Is. Hard.
It just is! There’s no avoiding it. And food is so wrapped up in our emotions, our traditions, our memories and relationships, that when you consider a change to what you eat you are doing something rather enormous.
But food is so powerful. Eating well gives you more energy to pursue your life’s purpose. When you eat well, you give yourself: better sleep, more stable emotions, a healthy body weight, a longer life… the list goes on. Your good health puts you in a better position to help those you love, and your example will light the way for others. Truly the two most precious things we have in this life are relationships and our health, and putting more plants in your body can improve both!
So this is going to be hard, but it’s the good kind of hard. The satisfying, proud-of-yourself, invest-in-the-future-of-those-you-love kind of hard.
And I feel like I need to tell you right now:
You can eat as much as you want of delicious whole plant foods. No counting calories or finishing before you’re full. This is what I regularly order at Chipotle:
Also? You can totally still have chocolate cupcakes. These are made of whole plants, and they are decadent and delicious:
And no, there are no black beans hidden in there, though that is a thing. We prefer those in burritos.
Know your starting point
I strongly recommend taking the time to assess what things are like currently in your family with regards to food. It’s worth writing down, even, both because you can leverage your current habits and strengths to make the transition easier on yourself, and especially because you can better see how far you’ve come if you have a clear “Before” picture in mind.
Take an inventory of what a typical day or week currently and realistically looks like in terms of food and meals.
Where are you now?
Do you plan meals or wing it?
What happens for breakfast on school days? On the weekends?
How about lunches, dinners, snacks?
Are you eating out a lot or a little? Where and why?
How much time are you spending in the kitchen currently?
What role do fruits and vegetables play currently? Beans? Whole grains?
What do people in your family drink?
What cooking skills do you have, and are you willing to learn more?
Do you know what you typically spend on food? Do you try to stay on a tight budget or is there some flexibility?
Do you have any members of your family that you might describe as “picky?” (p.s. I recommend choosing different words for that, but here’s help for “picky” eaters.)
What diet-related health concerns do you currently have for yourself or family members
Here’s an example of what you might come up with:
I’ve never quite gotten meal planning to work, so we usually end up at the grocery store several times a week picking up food for dinner. Breakfast is usually something cooked on the weekends (pancakes, eggs) and cold cereal or frozen waffles during the week. The kids are supposed to pack their own lunches, but they end up with a school lunch a few times a week. We go out to eat once a week as a family, order pizza in once a week, and pick up fast food through the drive-thru sometimes when we’re running between activities. I consider myself a good cook, but I tend to make the same dishes again and again. We eat a lot of chicken and cheese, because nobody complains when I serve those. My 6 year old thinks green things are “gross” and my husband can’t live without hamburgers. The pediatrician recently expressed concern about my daughter’s weight, and I’d like to lose about 15 pounds myself.
You get the idea!
Your situation may be completely different, and that’s why I recommend pausing to really consider it before forging ahead.
What’s the Ideal Diet?
Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion in the popular press about what constitutes a healthy diet. So many trendy diets come and go (Atkins became paleo, which became keto! Macros! Whole 30! “Eating Clean” and countless more). Everybody loves controversy, so we click on articles that imply red meat is healthy after all, that coconut oil is the new miracle food, and that eggs aren’t as bad as we thought.
Money is the culprit. “New” diets sell books, “new” studies that seemingly contradict established truths garner clicks. If everyone just went ahead and ate vegetables there would be a lot less drama and disease in the world.
When you go to the science though, there’s very little controversy about the foundations of a healthy diet. The longest lived populations on earth eat mostly whole plants. Foods with fiber win! It’s surprisingly straightforward. The same foods prevent heart disease and type 2 diabetes as prevent obesity and dramatically reduce your risk of cancer. The more plants (vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains) you eat and the less of anything else (meat, dairy, added sugar, oil, and processed grains) the better for your health.
The science is compelling, but almost more so for me are the real-life examples I see. I try to be a noticer of the long-term results of other people’s choices so I can more wisely choose for myself. I know plenty of people in their 30s who look trim and fit on a variety of diets. However, I know very, very few who look trim and fit into their 60s and 70s and are free of chronic illness. That is, outside the plant-based community. When you look at people who actually eat this way, it’s rare to see anyone overweight or with a chronic condition. And the longer they eat this way, the better they look and feel.
I’m always cautious when reading studies to keep in mind that “association does not prove causation,” meaning just because two things are often found together doesn’t mean one causes the other. However, in this case I’ve actually seen a diet change consistently cause a health change, so I feel pretty confident I know the long-term results of this effort. And I like them!
Here’s my mom at 68:
My kids love having an energetic grandpa who eats plants. My grandpa (his father) died of a heart attack when I was too young to remember him, so it’s extra significant for me that my dad’s arteries are clean and clear because of what he eats:
I wish we knew then what we know now. But, of course, knowing doesn’t actually help if we don’t change our actions to match.
How Did We Get to Where We Are?
If you are like the vast majority of people, your self-assessment revealed that your family eats quite a bit of processed food, meat and dairy. Fruits and vegetables play a minor role, and perhaps you’re not as deliberate about what you feed your family as you’d like to be.
Here are some reasons why, and they aren’t your fault:
We are constantly faced with a barrage of images and videos that imply our family will be happier if we feed them junk food!
Hamburger Helper will save our sanity. The kids will suddenly be polite enough to smile and say “Thank you” if you give them the new flavor of goldfish cracker. No one will squabble at the dinner table if Velveeta is on it.
If that sounds far fetched, look carefully at the next ad you see targeting you to buy food. I’ll bet it’s either a reward because “you deserve it” or an implication that food will somehow solve relational problems and stressors in your life. Of course we know that can’t be accurate, but the marketers continue to send those messages because it’s working! We’re buying the food with the happy kids in the commercials because we want our own kids to be happy. We want to feel like we have our act together, so we’re doing what the lady who seems to have her act together is doing.
But here’s the thing: broccoli doesn’t have a very big marketing budget. Blueberries or lentils aren’t going to buy their way on to our instagram feed very often. When food is processed, it’s more expensive to buy and cheaper to produce, which leaves enough profit to invest in more flavor engineering and plenty of very targeted marketing.
Processed Foods are Designed to be Hyper-Palatable
Even after we buy them, processed foods are tricking us into wanting more of them. Foods that occur in nature are flavorful and offer a variety of textures that we can appreciate. Foods produced in factories take everything to the extreme. They are so salty, so fatty and/or so sweet that they hijack our taste buds and leave us craving more of things that can never satisfy. That’s why it tough for a kid to appreciate a vegetable stir fry when he’s had Doritos for snack. Millions of dollars have been spent on the exact mouth feel and flavor of a Dorito chip. You’ve spent 15 minutes throwing the stir fry together. It’s tasty, full of color, and nutrition, and you want it to be well-received, but it’s an uphill battle for someone whose palate is accustomed to processed food.
And so, to keep the peace, to keep our sanity, we give our kids what they want. But we’ve created a situation that seems easier now but will assuredly be harder later.
But you’re flexible, you’re creative, and you’re powerful. You can effect change in your home.
Know Your Goal
What do you want for our family in terms of food? What do you want from yourself in terms of effort in this area? What kind of habits and attitudes and preferences do you want your kids to leave your house with? How about weight and health?
Here are some things that I could put on my goal list:
I want my family to enjoy preparing and eating food together.
I want to be wise in planning meals so that we don’t waste money on food we don’t eat, and I don’t spend more time in the kitchen than is necessary to achieve my other goals!
I want us all to be in tune with hunger cues so that we can feel satisfied and not eating in response to emotions.
I want eating whole plant foods to be the “regular” thing in our family, and deviations from this to be guilt-free.
I believe this will lead to family members maintaining an ideal weight and the best health possible.
While those are worthwhile goals, that’s far too much to remember!
Author Michael Pollan summed up an ideal diet much more succinctly:
“Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”
– Michael Pollan
(He clarified that “food” meant real food, not processed with chemicals you can’t pronounce. )
His is a great statement! But, I haven’t found the “not too much” to be a necessary addition. It turns out you can eat lots of whole plants without weight gain, because they aren’t very calorically dense. It’s one of my favorite things about eating this way! No calorie counting or portion control. Here’s mine with adjustments:
“Eat real food. Mostly plants. Do it with love.”
-Anne Bean
My reason for feeding my body well is because I love it, and my reason for feeding my family is well is because I love them. So, that means one of my goals as a mother and a wife is:
“Feed them real food. Mostly plants. Do it with love.”
-Anne Bean
That was my goal when I changed my diet 13 years ago, and I think that’s why I’ve been able to stick with it ever since.
When we are motivated by love rather than by fear or guilt, the results will last far longer.
I started out convinced that this was the best way to treat my body, but without any skills in the kitchen, or any real fondness in my heart for vegetables. In fact, I would have sided with the six-year-old example up above in thinking them generally “gross.”
But I had a vision for what I wanted in my body and family future, and I knew it was dramatically different from where most Americans (and now people around the globe) are headed.
The CDC tells us that more than 70% of adults over age 20 are overweight or obese, and those are actually very conservative numbers because of the way BMI is calculated. With my build, I could carry an extra 30 pounds and still be considered “normal” weight. But I can tell you right now I would not feel as as good if I was carrying a toddler on my back 24/7! (Though it seems like some months that’s just what I’m doing… my toddlers always love their Mama.)
An insidious message in our culture has been to “love our body no matter the size or shape,” which then translates too often to indulging our body’s appetites. Of course love your body! It’s the only one we have, after all. But do treat it well because, it’s the only one you’ll have. If you feed it right, it will look its best.
Imagine a future when you’re sending your daughter off to college. “Normal” for her is showing love for her body by generally eating when she’s truly hungry and choosing plant-based, unprocessed food. That girl is going to be the one at the salad bar in the cafeteria, seeking out the lentil soup, stocking up on brown rice and bananas at the grocery store and calling you to share her delight that pomegranates are back in season. You’ll have set her up to avoid so many pitfalls in her future. And even if she turns to brownies to get through finals week on occasion, she will fall back on the habits of her childhood again and again. Because of your efforts now, she will have the skills to continue a healthier food culture and share it with others.
Of course we want this for our kids, but with anything, it has to start with us.
You First
Since becoming a mother, I’ve often seen myself reflected back in my children’s attitudes and behavior. This is so satisfying when I see my toddler sharing bites of her food with me or sweetly saying “tank oo” because she’s seen me do the same. It’s downright painful when I see my 9 year old respond snappily and I realize I’ve been short-tempered lately, and she’s just doing what she’s seen me do.
My husband is a family physician and often has parents come in concerned about their children’s weight. These are great parents who are anxious for their children to have a great start in life. My husband often gently asks them about their own weight and habits with food as a starting point to the conversation, knowing that where the parent isn’t willing to go first, their children have little opportunity to follow.
Related example: I homeschool and am often asked how people can encourage their children to be readers. The first piece of advice I give them is to read themselves, and read to their children. If they think they are too busy to read or don’t enjoy it, they have little hope of igniting a desire in their children to do so.
If I really want to keep snacking on yogurt covered pretzels all afternoon and nursing a diet Coke, but I want my kids to be eating broccoli and hummus, I’m in a bit of a pickle.
I want to be clear: I’m not saying you need to change your diet before you change your family’s diet. Instead, I recommend that you bring your whole family on board with healthier eating at the same time. Nobody wants to be fixing multiple meals all the time if they can help it!
Just make sure you are actually on board yourself – willing to give it a good try. Kids can sniff out hypocrisy! Plus, they will unconsciously mirror what you are doing so your modeling is key. If this is just about “fixing” them, be prepared for some self-examination.
Parenting, right?
You Are the Boss of Your Family
And feel free to tell your kids I said so, if things get rough when the junk food starts disappearing at your house. You are the boss.
Seriously though, the person who is willing to buy and cook the food for the family is the one who directs what the family eats.
People are lazy by nature, and very few will object so much to a diet change that they will put for the effort to cook something different. That works in your favor here.
My husband has patients come into his practice and wring their hands that chicken nuggets are the only thing their child will eat. Kids with strong food preferences can definitely be concerning. (Here’s help for “picky” eaters.) But, as my husband tells the parent, keeping a very sympathetic tone (parenting is hard!), “If you don’t give them chicken nuggets, they won’t eat them. Promise.”
It really can be as simple as that! I’m saying simple here, not necessarily easy.
If your kids were whining to watch a tv show you thought was inappropriate for them, or if they wanted to stay up all night because they thought bedtime was torture, you likely wouldn’t say, “Well, you know what you like. Go ahead.” Parenting involves helping them learn how to make good decisions, and guiding those decisions (strongly!) when they are young. But when it comes to food, somehow we are afraid of setting limits.
Change is hard and there may be some whining and complaining for a time, but at the end of the day, the only way your kids are going to eat eat junk (generally speaking) is if you buy it for them!
If you start handling food and meals differently, the whole family will start eating differently. Behold the power of a deliberate mother.
Your Next Move: Go All In Or Make One Change at a Time?
Back in 2006, my husband and I decided to go 100% plant-based for six weeks as a trial. We knew the science was sound, but we wondered if we could possibly make it work. My husband worried he’d always be hungry and miss his meat. As for myself, I may have mentioned vegetables were high on my “Foods to Avoid” list. So, we agreed to give a good try and then re-evaluate.
We ate a lot of black beans at first, because we liked them and could change them up for different simple meals (bowls, burritos, soups, cheeseless nachos). We got better at it as we went, and we were surprised how quickly our tastes changed and how much better we felt. We were sleeping better, had plenty of energy, never had that post-meal comatose feeling, and we enjoyed eating until we were full. Our grocery budget went down, and the decision was easy: We didn’t want to go back to our old way of eating.
My husband had previously lost over 100 pounds (mostly through calorie restriction,) and we knew that a plant-based diet would be key in helping him maintain that. He was happy to have so much variety and flavor without having to limit portion size.
Doesn’t he look great, especially for having been a 280 lb teenager? (I’ll post his recommendations of how to help an overweight kiddo soon!)
But wait, you say, “Is that a legit eclair you’re eating on the streets of Paris? I thought this was supposed to be a lifestyle change!”
Yes, yes it is. But also notice in the picture the tub of hummus we picked up to take home to dunk our veggies in for lunch. We decided all those years ago to shoot for 90% plant-based, to allow for occasional dairy-based desserts, flavorful cheeses, or other favorites we didn’t want to write off entirely. We’ve stuck with this for more than a decade because it was flexible enough so we don’t feel ever deprived, but also it was a significant enough deviation from our old pattern of eating that we’ve found new favorites, that we enjoy 90% of the benefits of a plant-based diet, and we’ve truly changed the food culture in our home.
For us, going all-in on changing our diet (but only settling in at 90%) was a good choice. It forced us out of our comfort zone and we learned to swim much more quickly by jumping in the deep end.
Benefits to Going All-In
See the benefits very quickly
If you are someone who is curious if this diet will improve your health and/or weight (spoiler alert: it almost certainly will), if you go all-in, you’ll be able to see and feel the benefits within days and certainly weeks. If you just stick your toe in the water by adding a few meatless meals every week, your health is unlikely to change enough (or quickly enough) to reinforce the eating changes.
There is power in a “bright line”
Some people do much better with a clear boundary, and if you set a timeline and agree in advance to just eat plants for that amount of time, you free yourself from the wrestle of indecision and self-control for every meal and snack.
You’ll learn more quickly
It’s plants or nothing with this approach, so you’ll figure out much more quickly which plants you already like, and you’ll be more apt to try new ones. Some people describe it as learning how to grocery shop and cook all over again, but you can at least shorten the learning time!
This can be a family adventure
It might be easier to get buy-in from a spouse or teenagers if you pitch it as a trial period, or a challenge. “From now on” is scary. “Let’s try something cool for six weeks” is intriguing.
Challenges of Going All-IN
There is a potential for “easy come, easy go.”
If you have experienced boom and bust cycles with behavior in the past (and who among us hasn’t?) you know that starting something too hastily without really buying into it can lead to abandoning it just as quickly.
Creating lasting but more moderate change in your family is going to have a more positive impact on long-term health than a very short-term turnaround.
It requires more of you
If your diet is pretty standard for an affluent country, you’ll be making a lot of changes all at once to go fully plant-based. Our lives have seasons, and to set yourself up for success, make sure you have the extra “umph” to make the change before you jump all in.
(Remember how before potty training, you have to take a deep breath and gather your strength before embarking on a potty training adventure? You’ll want to pick a time when you can commit the extra effort to focus on this. I promise it’s more fun than underwear accidents though. )
You’ll also need a clear vision of where you’re headed to help you stick with it for the whole trial. Then really be aware and recognize the improvement in how you feel in order to sustain the change going onward.
The Other Option: Pick One Place to Start, and Keep going
Look at your family’s current eating, and pick one place to target. Soda? Candy? Fast food? Pop-Tarts for breakfast? Identify one area and get to work. (Here’s why I think you should eat oatmeal for breakfast if at all possible.) Remember that any step in the right direction counts for something, and it can build momentum to keep going.
Just make sure that you do keep going, because one meatless dinner a week is not going to give you the vibrant health you’re looking for. If you put in 10% of the effort, you’ll get 10% of the results. Remember that your diet will need to be significantly different from most Americans if you want to have significantly improved health.
Benefits to Slow and Steady Changes
You may get less pushback from family members
If all the favorite foods don’t disappear at once, the change may feel less threatening. You might be able to wrap new foods into your routine without raising too many red flags and quietly not re-buy others when you run out.
This benefit younger kids and spouses who aren’t food-focused. I would guess most older kids will figure it out pretty quickly, and you’ll need to either get them on board or be willing to carry on with some resistance!
You’ll be able to target and replace individual habits
Habit change tends to be more sustainable when addressed at the micro level. Switching from chicken soup to lentil soup for dinner is wonderful, but if you’ve also got a mid-morning cookie snack, a weekly donut run, and after school fast food tradition to tackle, then it may that if you go with an all-in challenge, you’d slide back into your same habits once the shine wears off.
If instead, you start by tackling the cookie snack and replace it with fruit, then come up with a new after-school tradition, etc. you might shift your baseline slowly but surely, with less friction.
Challenges of Slow and Steady Changes
You may actually get more pushback from family members
It could be, depending on the personalities and dynamic in your family that each individual change is resisted, so you are fighting lots of extra battles by making changes over time.
Tastebuds won’t change as much with small changes in diet
Broccoli just won’t taste very good until graham crackers are off the menu. Consistently feeding kids easy-to-like processed food cripples them when it comes to embracing vegetables. (And it does the same to us adults!) Added sugar throughout the day makes kale taste bitter. If it tastes bad, nobody will want to eat it for long, no matter how healthy it is.
People are constantly marveling that my kids will voluntarily chow down on green beans, a heart of romaine, or a bowlful of frozen veggies. But there would be little chance of them doing that if there were ritz crackers and fruit-by-the-foot in the pantry.
If you’re trying to simply add the good stuff without getting rid of the bad, it’ll be tricky with kids. (For adults, filling your plate with good stuff often can crowd out the bad more naturally, but kids resist the flavor of vegetables far more in my experience.)
Strike while the iron is hot?
If you’re fired up and interested in a plant-based diet, taking baby steps to get there may just take the wind out of your sails. Consider forging ahead and getting your feet wet. Ride the momentum of your initial motivation.
Take Heart
Go ahead and consider the approaches and decide which one is the best fit for your personality and circumstance.
However you begin, though, take heart. You don’t have to be perfect at this to help your family improve their health. It gets easier with practice, and it’s becoming popular enough that there is a lot of support from those who have walked this road before. Stick with it and you’ll see a healthier baseline emerge for you and your family.
Having a plant-based meal plan, even just for dinners, can help tremendously with your family’s health and grocery budget… but only if you actually follow it! Otherwise you’re left with wilty produce, take-out (again), and possibly a side dish of feeling defeated.
Thanks to the wisdom of many moms who have come before me and slayed the dinner dragon, I have successfully identified and implemented these lynchpin habits that help me feed my family better.
Without further ado:
1. Match your Meal Plan to Your Reality
I find that meal planning when I’m already a little wiped out at the end of the day is better than making a plan when I’m feeling all optimistic and energetic.
Seriously.
It’s just a little too easy to jot down a complicated, delicious-sounding NEW recipe and pencil it in for 6 days from now. “Surely on that day I’ll have a free hour before dinner with no phone ringing or baby crying.” It doesn’t work like that at my house! The pre-dinner hour is sometimes cah-razy. And if I keep that in mind when I’m planning my meals, the plan is much more realistic.
I look at my week ahead and make sure I’ve got leftover nights, crockpot nights or pull-something-from-the-freezer nights. All of those are fine options for dinner when I plan on them. If instead I plan for something from scratch every night, I’ll probably be serving up peanut butter sandwiches while my kale droops in the back of the fridge.
Another key principle here for me is to not put too many new recipes on the menu for a week. I like to mix things up, but the reality is that anytime I make something new, it takes longer because I’m unfamiliar with it.
Busy night green light. Simple, tasty, healthy. Nothing to write home about:
Danger, Will Robinson. This plan might get abandoned on a crazy weeknight:
2. Pick one thing to prep for the week
Sometimes we get stuck in the mindset that we are either have to be a prep-everything-on-the-weekend hero, or we just show up at the dinner hour and hope for the best. Not so!
Pick just one category and try putting in the 10-30 minutes it needs on the weekend. Maybe that’s measuring out all your spices and mixing up sauces for the week. Maybe that’s chopping up all the vegetables for dinners. Maybe it’s measuring out all your dry ingredients for muffins/pancakes/cornbread you have on the menu. Or cooking up a batch of brown rice and a dozen sweet potatoes.
Who knows? You might get hooked on it and become one of those weekend meal prep heroes. But even if you just make the rest of the week a bit smoother, you’ll be glad!
It’s much more efficient to pull out and put away spices once per week.
3. Make The Dinner Decision by kitchen cleanup the night before
I plan my week (actually month!) of dinners ahead of time, so I know I have ingredients on hand for a certain list of meals. However, life happens and plans shift and change. We have more or fewer leftovers than I anticipated, meals get shuffled around, maybe I didn’t get to the grocery store when I planned… and I start to get a vague sense of unease when I think about dinner.
What will I make for dinner? Hmmm… let’s see…
I postpone the decision. The unease grows. Suddenly it’s coming up on 6 o’clock and I’m desperately checking my meal plan to see if any meals miraculously take 10 minutes to pull together with zero prep work. (Spoiler: Not many.)
A wise mom told me years ago to decide the night before. Just call it. Maybe it IS off-plan and you’re going to serve cereal for dinner, or maybe you really do need to pay the piper and make that tricky dish you’ve been regretting buying ingredients for. But whatever the reality is, face it by dinner the night before. That brings so much more peace all the next day, along with these bonuses:
You have time to pull something out of the freezer, if you need to, and have it defrost gracefully rather than trying to rush it. (Been there.)
You have time to soak beans.
If you decide before the dinner mess is cleaned up, you can use that cutting board to chop up some more veggies and get a jump on the next night without extra mess.
You’ll know what time to start going on dinner the next day.
I can cook up noodles the night before while I’m already using the stove, rinse them and keep them in the fridge, turning this Asian noodle salad into a true 10 minute dinner the following night.
4. Check in with dinner at breakfast
While you’re already in the kitchen, think about dinner. Does something need to go in the crockpot or Instant pot? Do you have a few minutes while the microwave is running or the kids are finishing their bowls of oatmeal that you can use to measure out spices or pull out the boxes of pasta?
Getting started is a mental hurdle sometimes, and if you put 5 or 10 minutes towards it early in the day, it is so much easier to just “finish things up” later.
Homemade refried beans take 5 minutes to start at breakfast, 5 minutes to finish up for dinner.
5. Have a few “pantry meals” and “round-up meals” in your pocket
Planning is really only guessing. It’s fairly common around here to end up needing to come up with an extra dinner before we make it to the grocery store, or having some odds and ends of produce leftover after making all the planned meals.
“Pantry meals” or “shelf meals” are ones that you can make using only things you almost always have on hand. No fresh produce required, though I can almost always count on having carrots, celery, and onions because those keep so well. I have a half dozen pantry meal recipes I can pull together to stretch my meal plan until we can grab some more produce.
“Round-up meals” are ones that happily accommodate your extra produce so you can avoid food waste and clear the decks for a new meal plan. Think vegetable soup, stir fry, or curry.
This curry is great with broccoli, kale, mushrooms, cauliflower, zucchini, green bell peppers… almost anything!
Knowing you can use up that produce or come up with a healthy dinner when your fridge is mostly empty gives peace of mind and saves you from wasted food or extra trips to the store.
Meal plan prizes
There are no gold stars and rarely high fives for executing your meal plan well, but you will get more time to spend enjoying your people and an added measure of peace about how you’re going to fill their bellies with healthy food. Those are pretty solid rewards.
This magical time reading by the river was brought to you by my meal plan. Dinner was done and waiting for us after the sun set.
There’s the baby who screams and knocks the bowl of squash on the floor because she wanted bananas. There’s the toddler who won’t eat her beans because they’re touching her rice. There’s the grade schooler who really despises the sight and smell of broccoli and grills you to see if there’s any of it hiding in whatever dish you made. There’s the husband who wants his food spicier or (ack!) smothered with cheese. There’s even me, a fully grown woman who still doesn’t like beets after trying them dozens of times.
There’s something inherently exhausting about planning and preparing a plant-based meal and then presenting it to a crowd who doesn’t seem to appreciate it at all.
So what’s a mom to do? Of course we know that a child often needs to try something many times before they learn to like it, but what does that process look like at a real family’s table? And what happens if they refuse to try it? Or they have tried it and still don’t like it? (Me and beets!)
I have five children with a variety of food preferences and a foodie husband; we’ve been eating plant-based for over a decade. Here’s what I’ve learned to help picky eaters.
Principle #1: They’re Not Picky
We avoid the word “picky” around here when describing people. I use it in this article because it’s a popular term, but I think it pigeon-holes people into living up to the label.
I don’t refer to my kids as “picky.” Instead, I might say, “Potatoes aren’t your favorite, yet. Who knows, though? You might like them in this soup.”
“I know you prefer your tomatoes blended up, but they’re chunkier in this sauce.”
“My husband’s favorite foods tend to be ones with lots of spice and flavor.”
It’s totally cool to have food preferences. But being known as “picky” creates unnecessary tension.
In our home, we teach our children from a very young age to only say positive things about the meal (and our efforts to prepare and present it), unless they are specifically asked for their feedback.
It is basic etiquette to compliment and/or express appreciation at the beginning of the meal. Even if you’re served something you find disgusting, you can thank the person for making it. My experience is that when you teach this at a neutral time (not when you’re frustrated because they turned up their nose at what you just served them), kids are happy to learn how to be polite.
It can be a game to find ways to compliment something they think they may not like. “It smells exciting!” “Thanks for making this, Mom. I’ve never had pasta like this before,” they may say as you pretend you served them shoelaces with spaghetti sauce.
At the dinner table, I can often tell how everyone likes the food just by watching how they eat it. But if I’m looking for more feedback, I may ask, “What do you think of this new pasta sauce?” My kids know they can answer “It’s not my favorite.” We practice that exact response a lot when they’re young, and it pays dividends for years to come. I may press them for details, and they can say they wish it didn’t have mushrooms in it, or they wish it wasn’t so salty or chunky.
Because they are withholding any critical comments until pressed, it does a few foundational things for our shared meal experience:
They aren’t voicing (and therefore reinforcing) a negative first impression. If they loudly proclaim they hate something, it will be that much harder for them to admit even to themselves that they like it later on!
It is infinitely nicer to serve something to a chorus of polite comments, even if some of them seem a little creative. 🙂
Note: This also applies to adults. That means my husband models this even when he doesn’t love what I cook, and it means when he prepares the meal I’m all (sincere) compliments and appreciation unless he specifically wants to know how I like what he made.
Principle #3: No pressure trying
We typically serve the kids their plates, and I put a little of everything on them. Sometimes, I ask them if they want “a little or a lot” of a given thing as I serve up, but usually they just get what they get.
When I can, I try to do the following, though:
Have at least one thing in the meal I know they like.
I do not short-order cook different meals for different people, and I prefer to keep meals simple without many (or any sides). We eat plant-based, so vegetables are usually the main dish. Simple.
However, if dinner is mushroom stroganoff, for example, and I know one of my kids really doesn’t like mushrooms (yet!), I’ll chop up an apple or grab some grapes and put some on each person’s plate. That way the kiddo can warm up to eating by choosing something friendly, rather than be confronted with a plate of only something they really dislike.
A new soup is less threatening when paired with familiar favorites
Serve in such a way they can eat-around the less favored thing.In the example of mushroom stroganoff, I would ideally put a pile of noodles on each plate, then top them with sauce, rather than sauce all the noodles and then serve. That means there will be some noodles around the outside that are plain or less saucy. Many times I’ve seen kids start eating around the outside, discover they like the sauce after all, and polish off the whole plate.
Serve small portions to start, but ask them to finish before asking for seconds
I love this approach! It means serving a small amount (5 bites) of that dreaded (delicious) stroganoff, plus the part of an apple or a half a piece of toast. There’s no pressure to eat anything on the plate, but if they eat it all and are still hungry, they can ask for seconds. When the amount is manageable, my kids will often just polish off the previously offensive item without any drama at all. Depending on the meal, seconds may look just like firsts (in which case they’d probably opt to eat the grapes or toast and finish their meal there), or seconds could honor some preferences, like plain noodles, or less-saucy noodles.
Teach “polite bites” but avoid battles
We teach our kids that it’s polite to try something, but we don’t force it at the table.
In fact, we don’t force almost anything at the table. We try to keep things very positive and remind them of our policies in a cheerful or playful way. “I’d be happy to get you some more grapes as soon as you’re finished with what you were served first. We try not to waste food.”
Principle #4: Patience
We talk with our kids about not liking a food “yet,” because food preferences can change quite dramatically over time.
It would be wonderful if all our kids loved everything we made right away, but the best thing we can do is continue to make a variety of food and offer it with love (enforcing the atmosphere of appreciation as mentioned above).
I find that if my child doesn’t love what we had for lunch, he or she naturally eats more for dinner. If you’re offering a variety of healthy food at meals, having them not eat much at a meal is not a crisis.
The proportion of parents concerned about their kids not eating enough is far higher than the relatively rare situations where kids are truly not eating enough. If at their doctor’s checkup you see that their growth falls off their normal percentile, then that may be a cause for concern. Them not eating much of your lasagna? They’ll survive to eat another meal. Don’t feel like you have to cave and make an alternate dinner.
Principle #5: Hungrier kids are less picky
In a snacking-heavy culture, food is offered as a solution to any amount of temporary discomfort. But a kid who knows there’s a steady stream of granola bars and go-gurts available throughout the day is not particularly motivated to try the broccoli on their dinner plate.
If kids come to the table actually and truly hungry, they are far more likely to try foods and enjoy everything they’re served.
Consider limiting snacks in the hour or two leading up to dinner. And in our family, we limit snacks to mostly fresh or frozen vegetables, fresh fruit (1/day), or sometimes air-popped popcorn. My kids are usually more than ready to chow when I put a plate in front of them, even if something on it is unfamiliar.
Hunger is truly the best sauce!
Several More Tips
My kids love being able to choose what’s for dinner periodically. This has an added benefit of letting them see that their favorite might not be someone else’s favorite and that’s ok. They know we have a variety of preferences and so we eat a variety of foods.
Don’t shy away from condiments. If you’ve got relatively healthy condiments that are fan favorites (think salsa, hot sauce, soy sauce, mustard, and the like), let them join the table. My husband will reach for the hot sauce if he finds my curry too mild, and I have a couple of kids that think salsa solves anything.
We didn’t spend very long in the “baby food” phase, and never actually bought baby food. Generally, we just gave our babies whatever we were having for a meal. I believe that not sticking with bland and pureed foods helped our kids develop a taste for stronger flavors and a variety of textures early on.
Connect kids to the food. Plant a garden. Go pick your fruit in a field or orchard. Bring your children to the grocery store and have them help you pick the biggest head of kale or decide whether to get big or baby carrots. Let them count out the sweet potatoes. And of course, if you can brave them in the kitchen, do it! If you’re looking for more guidance and structure in having kids in the kitchen, we took a fun online course that teaches kids step-by-step knife skills, measuring skills, etc. for all different age levels.
Remember that food preferences are totally normal! You’re not a worse parent because your child is particular. Continue to offer a variety of healthy foods with love, and everyone wins.
Special Challenges when Transitioning to Plant-Based
It can be very intimidating to consider removing many (all?) foods your kids like from the menu: cheese, chicken, their favorite spaghetti sauce, processed snacks, pepperoni pizza, etc. That’s a big deal!
The great news is that kids are much more adaptable than we give them credit for. Their palates can change pretty quickly given the right environment.
When I switched my diet (as an adult who was fully on board with the health benefits), I disliked all vegetables but two: raw baby carrots and corn on the cob. I gave myself space to eat lots of food I already loved that were plant-based, and time to try new things. That meant oatmeal for breakfast (Related: Serve Oatmeal for Breakfast if at all Possible) and some variation of black beans daily. I found that removing the junk food from my diet did something pretty wonderful: The flavors of whole foods started to come alive. Fruit was sweeter. Broccoli wasn’t bitter anymore. As I tried new recipes that sounded good, I naturally expanded the number of foods I enjoyed. Within six months, there was hardly a vegetable I didn’t like!
Shredded zucchini with a guest
Although our children have always eaten plant-based, we have hosted many children in our home through the Safe Families for Children program and we’ve always been able to find plant-based food these kids liked to feed them at first as they settle in, and we’ve expanded from there so that within a week or so, they are munching on fresh fruit and veggies between meals, and sitting down to meals they would had turned their noses up to when they first arrived.
These kids do have the benefit of positive peer pressure as they watch my other kids chow on what I served, so be patient with how the process unfolds at your house.
Some suggestions to start: black beans (of course!) and rice, black bean soup, spaghetti sauce and pasta, refried bean burritos, and tomato bisque. For other meals: nut butter with whole grain bread, vegan whole grain waffles, fruit smoothies and muffins.
Vegan Tomato Bisque
If something you like can be easily adapted to be plant-based (like simply leaving the cheese off), that’s a good place to start. If you love chili, it’s easy to find a new and delicious plant-based recipe. But, for older kids and adults, I recommend steering clear of “substitutes” like vegan mac & cheeze at first (note the ominous “z” in cheeze). Stick with common ground that doesn’t have to be the same as before in order to be appreciated. Later, after palates have changed, it might be fun to experiment with adapting old favorites to be plant-based.
Have empathy when it comes to your choosy family members as you make different food for them. Change is hard for all of us!
Soup is just a good idea, but to make the cut around here it has to be delicious, healthy, and relatively easy to pull together.
We’ve been eating plant-based for over a decade, and here are the recipes our family comes back to again and again.
1. Seriously Simple Black Bean Soup
No kidding, this yummy soup is 5 pantry ingredients and comes together in less than 10 minutes. We make it monthly, which is saying a lot!
2. Creamy Vegan Tomato Bisque
Everybody loves a creamy oil and dairy-free soup, right? This one tops the list of several of our kids, freezes well, uses pantry ingredients, and is non fussy because you end up pureeing it at the end!
3. Fast White Bean Stew
This stew comes together in no time. It’s simple, delicious, and gets plenty of leafy greens into our bellies.
4. Vegan Split Pea Soup
The cook time is longer for this soup, but it’s very hands-off and forgiving. So it’s a great choice to pull together early and have it waiting and warm come dinner time. Mmmm.
5. Our Favorite Vegan Chili
6. French Lentil Soup
Perfect for autumn, this is a unique (but not weird) soup that’s vegan and very satisfying. I bring it to potlucks, and it gets devoured!
7. SWEET POTATO, RED LENTIL AND APPLE SOUP
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This recipe has just five ingredients and it's incredibly delicious. Once you've made it a few times, you won't need a recipe! It'll be in your back pocket for when you need it.
Add the onions with the pepper and a bit of salt, to a medium hot pan. You can use olive oil here, but it's not necessary. A dash of water will do if the onions stick. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until onions are soft and golden, 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove lid and increase heat to medium then cook, stirring until onion is golden brown, 5 to 10 minutes more.
Simmer lentils in broth, covered, adding more broth if necessary for 20 to 25 minutes. They should be tender but not falling apart. Remove from heat and set aside.
Meanwhile, boil a big pot of water. Cut out and discard the stems and center ribs from the kale. Chop the kale coarsely and add it to the boiling water until just tender, 5 to 8 minutes. Drain into colander *reserving* the water.
Combine lentils, kale and onions.
Return the water to the pot and bring to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente. Drain and reserve 1 cup of pasta-cooking water.Add pasta to lentil mixture and toss, adding in reserved water if necessary to moisten. Add salt and more pepper to taste.
Notes
If you are transitioning to a plant-based diet (and you don’t have heart disease), you may want to cook the onions in a tablespoon of oil. It will add richness to the dish for sure, but it’s not strictly necessary. None of the ingredient quantities need to be exact. The caramelized onions are key, though, so don’t skimp on those!
No dairy, no oil, no fuss. This is a crowd-pleaser and I'm posting a scaled up recipe because it makes great (and freezable) leftovers. Don't worry about chopping perfect veggies because you puree the whole thing at the end!
3/4 cupcashew butter, or cashews blended upsee instructions
Instructions
Dump everything in a pot, except for the cashews or cashew butter. Stir and bring to a boil
Reduce heat and cover. Cook at a low simmer for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until carrots are plenty soft.
Either use an immersion blender to puree the soup, adding the cashew butter. OR add your cashews to a high-powered blender like a vitamix and ladle some hot soup in there to blend that up until creamy. Re-add it to the pot and use an immersion blender to finish (or keep ladling hot soup into the blender if you don't have an immersion blender. Be careful!)
Notes
If you don’t have Italian seasoning blend, use 2 tsp basil, 2 tsp oregano, 1 tsp rosemary, 2 tsp parsley, 1 tsp thyme. Make up extra for next time you make the soup!
One of the biggest hesitations people have when considering changing their diet to whole plant foods is, “Aren’t all those specialty foods expensive? I’m on a tight budget.”
Nothing could be further from the truth!
I think people envision themselves shopping at Whole Foods and adding ancient Himalayan superfoods to their cart that are priced like they are infused with the elixir of life itself.
A whole food plant-based diet can be at least as affordable as a SAD (Standard American Diet). I’m willing to bet that meat and cheese are two of the highest priced items on your grocery lists. Those are going to be replaced with things like black beans, brown rice, and sweet potatoes.
Plus, most Americans are actually paying much more for groceries than they need to. Most of these strategies will work on ANY diet. Though if you’re a die-hard couponer and sales shopper, you may find yourself a little out of your element with a whole food plant-based diet. After all, you’re trying to avoid the processed food that usually has coupons! No worries, there are lots of tricks of the trade.
How important is recipe choice?
Many people search for frugal recipes, but I would argue that frugal strategies are going to be far more helpful to your grocery budget. You can take those strategies and apply them to any recipe, and you will have the confidence to decide if a recipe is frugal for your unique situation.
Rather than needing a “cheap recipe” to make, we need frugal habits of meal planning, shopping smart, storing food, and reducing food waste.
How important is recipe choice?
I know, I know, before you even see how much I spend, you’re already thinking that you live in an expensive area, or you have special allergy needs that make things more expensive! You don’t have time to meal plan or cook from scratch. You don’t have a big pantry or room in your freezer.
All our circumstances are unique, but I will say with some creativity you can work around just about anything.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
How low your grocery budget is does not reflect your success in life! It seems silly to say so, but I think lots of us walk around feeling sort of sheepish about our grocery bill. Maybe we recognize how impulse buys or lack of planning have increased it, or how we’re consistently throwing out fresh produce we bought with the best of intentions. We’ve all been there! But if you’re looking to slim it down going forward, you’re in the right place.
It may be that a higher budget reflects your values because you prefer to buy organic or support small businesses when you shop. That’s cool too. The lowest price tag may not be what you’re going for, but the right habits will save you money regardless.
That being said, our family spends about $115/person per month on groceries. That doesn’t include things like diapers or dish detergent. It’s just (mostly) conventionally-grown food. It also doesn’t include going out to eat, which we do every few months. It does include boatloads of fresh seasonal fruit, frozen berries, loads of whole grains, beans, lentils, leafy greens, sweet potatoes, nuts, plant-based milk, and more.
In medical school and residency, we kept it lower, but we’ve loosened up a it and more frequently indulge in “extras” now.
Putting a grocery budget in perspective
Anyone who is in poor health can tell you that good health is priceless. A hundred million Americans pay for prescription medication to treat the symptoms of a poor diet. Type II Diabetes is reversible with a plant-based diet and costs tens of thousands of dollars of care over a lifetime, yet we still tend to balk at the price of the produce at the grocery store that would reverse it. Why is that?
I think the bell peppers and kale feel optional, whereas a medical bill feels mandatory. Yet, it’s often the opposite way around! So many medical bills become non-existent when we eat more vegetables.
Meal Planning is Key
I wish it wasn’t so, but thinking ahead about what you’re going to eat solves so many expensive problems: Last minute take-out, spoiled food that you bought without a plan, leftovers that went bad because you winged it again, individual servings bought when you could save buying in bulk, extra last-minute trips to the grocery store with their accompanying impulse buys, the list goes on.
The good news is that meal planning can be much less painful when done just once a month, and I have a whole walk through on once-a-month plant-based meal planning here.
Do you already meal plan but have a hard time executing the plan? Read my post on Meal Planning lynchpins here for help.
Shop at the Right Store(s)
It turns out that even keeping your grocery list the same, you might pay wildly different amounts of money depending on where you shop. Of course we joke about Whole Foods being called Whole Paycheck, but even the other grocery store chains vary widely in their prices. And since you’re eating a plant-based diet the things you buy the most may not match up with their weekly circulars. I highly recommend creating a Price Book to help you choose which stores to patronize regularly. It takes some extra time on your first few shopping trips, but in our case, this one simple activity has saved us a thousand dollars a year ever since!
Here’s a complete primer on creating a Price Book, and a guide on buying bulk food.
We try to minimize our shopping trips because we love the time and money savings when we do. So, we shop every 7-10 days. After creating our Price Book, we determined where we want to do our big monthly shops (Winco and Costco, in our case), and where we like doing our mid-month produce runs (Winco, the farmer’s market, or Safeway).
This means we stock up on our applesauce, whole grain pasta, dried beans, and more at Winco, but when we just need fresh veggies and fruit and don’t want to drive across town, we can just stop in at nearby Safeway and pick up some basic produce plus whatever produce is on their weekly special.
Identify Your High-Ticket Items
Zero in on the things that make the biggest impact on your budget, either because you buy so much of them or because they are individually more costly. Here are some of ours and how I address them:
Nuts and Seeds
Because I’ve made a Price Book, I know that nuts and seeds are spendy. We enjoy them, though!
– We rarely just snack on them. If I left them out on the counter for free grabbing, we’d have to significantly increase our grocery budget!
– We recognize that pinenuts are twice as expensive as pecans, which are twice as expensive as walnuts, which are three times as expensive as sunflower seeds. That means that if a salad calls for pecans on top, I’ll frequently toss some walnuts or sunflower seeds on instead. We’ll save pecans for dishes where they really sing.
– We buy pecans, almonds, and walnuts at Costco because they’re a better price. We buy pinenuts there because they are fresher. We store any nuts we won’t eat in a month or so in the freezer so they stay fresh.
– We buy “pieces” when it comes to cashews, because we don’t really need whole cashews and pieces are cheaper.
– I recognize that any dish that calls for a large amount of nuts, such as in a creamy sauce, will be a pricier (and richer) dish so I make it less frequently.
Spices
We love flavorful food! Spices can really add up if you cook from scratch a lot and buy the little jars at the store. Here’s what we do instead:
– We buy spices at ethnic stores. Mexican and Indian markets in particular tend to have big bags of spices for much less money.
– We buy spices in bulk at Penzeys. Their stores are great but they also regularly offer shipping deals so you can catch them online without paying extra. Years ago I bought these tins in 4oz and 8oz sizes and we just fill those up from Penzey’s bulk bags. The quality of the spices is fantastic, my cupboard stays neat and I don’t have to keep paying for bottles every time.
– You can keep spices in your freezer to extend their life, but we don’t do this and just buy enough to last a year or two at a time and it works out great.
Berries
We love berries! They are nature’s reward for eating plant-based. But they can really be pricey! Here are some ways we enjoy them year-round:
– We pick our own in the summertime. There are lots of blackberries growing wild where we live, and we eat our fill for more than a month, then frequently put several bags in the freezer. We go to U-pick farms for blueberries and strawberries.
– We buy a big bucket of strawberries and one of raspberries every year through our local Rotary Club sale. When it arrives, we bag most of it up into quart size portions and freeze. We’ll defrost these throughout the year to eat on pancakes or waffles.
– We buy frozen berries and cherries at Costco (because it’s the best price!) and have one morning a week where we eat steel-cut oats and berries or cherries. Besides the frozen ones we eat on waffles or pancakes, we don’t eat fresh berries in the winter time. They are much more expensive and much less delicious.
Other fresh or frozen fruit
We buy fresh fruit as follows: Always bananas, and always lots of apples, pears, and/or oranges as long as they are sitting around $1/pound, grapes if they’re $1.50/lb.
The kids can have 1 piece of fruit every day as a snack year-round.
We eat lots and lots of fresh fruit in season (pomegranates in the fall, watermelon, cantaloupe, and peaches in the summer, apples and pears in the fall and winter), but fall back on our standard fruit otherwise. We also have frozen fruit for smoothies (Costco!), canned pineapple and jarred unsweetened applesauce.
Dried fruit
Here again, the source really matters. We buy most of our dried fruit from the bulk bins at Winco. We order a whole case of raisins or date crumbles and save an extra 5% that way, plus the hassle of scooping out sticky stuff into bags so often.
We don’t often snack on dried fruit, saving it just for eating for breakfast in oatmeal and muesli.
We buy date crumbles instead of whole dates for this, because they’re half the price. We save the soft, whole dates for when they’re really awesomely deliciously needed, like in these cupcakes and their frosting:
Plant-based milk
Cheese and Meat Substitutes, prepared vegan food
Identify your highest ticket items (for us, it’s nuts and seeds and spices), berries and other fresh/frozen/dried fruit.
Don’t Waste Food – plan your meals so you aren’t buying stuff you don’t have a plan for eating, store things appropriately, use your freezer, set yourself up for success so you don’t bail on making a meal and order take-out instead, get creative with the odds and ends
Minimize trips to the store because every time you walk in the door it’s costing you extra money. Just the gas to get there, or the impulse buys are enough to drive up your grocery bill. (meal planning, substitutions, pantry/shelf cooking, have meals in the freezer, keep a well-stocked pantry)
Know your lower-cost substitutions. Walnuts for pecans
Make it yourself (when it makes sense) – You can have a make it yourself or do without rule. But investing in an instapot, for example, saves us hundreds every year. It is truly so easy to make your own beans.
Become a pro at reading price tags. (shredded broccoli slaw in a bag was cheaper per pound than the heads of broccoli were… broccoli was really in 5 different places at the store). Oats in the health aisle vs the breakfast aisle.
Find a place to buy in bulk. Walnut example. The baking aisle at the store.
Be a little flexible (kale vs. chard comparison) . Sweet potatoes vs. winter squash.
Coupons won’t help you as much when you stick to the produce section most of the time, but you can be flexible when it comes to seasonal sales on produce. Shift your diet so that your everyday munching fruits and vegetables follow seasons.
Organic or not? There’s also buying in season, buying local, gardening…. organic snack food is not really healthier. If you want to do that for ethical reasons, by all means, but don’t let that excuse keep you from embracing a healthier diet. There are lots of ways to help the environment (use reusable grocery bags, buy in bulk and cook your own, take fewer trips to the grocery store, etc.) but one of the very BIGGEST is stop eating animals and their products because it’s ruining our planet to have those farms.
I’m serious about this. Oatmeal is such a beautiful intersection of cheap, easy, healthy and delicious. If you’re shooting for a whole food plant-based diet, or just improved health, start with oatmeal for breakfast most mornings.
If you think oats are gloopy or boring, please keep reading. I’ll solve both of those problems for you.
If your kids don’t like oats? Trade them in for kids that do. Or, just keep trying with the kids you’ve got. They’ll come around eventually.
You’re going to save so much money over any kind of prepared breakfast food (bars, boxes of cereal, etc.), you’ll ditch the added sugar, and oats will keep you all full longer. There are even great hot weather options!
Getting the Oats Cooked Right
The first thing you need to know is that an intact oat is called an oat groat. Ok, you didn’t need to know that, but it’s helpful. An oat groat looks like a grain of wheat.
Steel-cut oats are simply oat groats that have been sliced up into a few pieces. Rolled oats, however, are oat groats that have been steamed and then rolled. Instant or quick oats are hardly worth mentioning here, but they’ve basically been pre-cooked, then dried, then rolled, and are processed beyond recognition. If you are judging oat potential by the little packets at hotel breakfasts, you are missing out.
Note: Some toppings you’ll want to cook in the oats, and you’ll add those when you add the oats. Some you add after. Be sure to scroll down for all the topping tips.
Option 1: Rolled Oats
Rolled oats are quick and easy to make in the microwave in a single portion, and they don’t dirty extra dishes… but my husband finds the texture off-putting. I make these for my kids often, and it’s easy to make my husband a bowl of matching muesli (see Option 3) at the same time.
Here’s the rolled oats microwave version:
1 cup of rolled oats
1 1/2 cups of water
Microwave for 1.5-2.5 minutes (just keep an eye on it so it does not boil over. Once you know the right time for YOUR microwave, you won’t have to watch it.). You can also cook it at 3/4 power to prevent an eruption.
You may find that you prefer 1 3/4 c. water, instead. It will thicken as it cools!
You can also make rolled oats on the stovetop:
2 cups of rolled oats
4 cups of water
Bring the water to a boil, add the oats and lower the temperature. Stir and simmer for about 5 minutes.
One cup uncooked oats is a standard portion size around here. That is the caloric equivalent of 3 of those lame little instant oat packets, but far less mushy.
Option 2: Steel-cut Oats
First, I need to advise you not to buy the steel-cut oats in the little metal cans at the store. They are heinously overpriced. If you plan to eat steel-cut oats on a regular basis, you need to find a reasonably-priced source. I pay less than a dollar a pound.
The texture is far superior to rolled oats, and the flavor is nuttier and tasty. They’re a win all around, except they seem more intimidating to prepare, until you know the secret!
The easiest way to cook steel-cut oats, the night before:
The night before, simply boil your oats on the stove for one minute. Give them a stir, turn off the heat, put the lid on. That’s it! In the morning your oats will be ready to warm up and eat.
Ratio:
3.5 cups of water
1 cup of steel-cut oats
For one meal, I’m making about .5 cups of steel-cut oats per person.
The easiest way to cook steel-cut oats, the morning of:
I don’t like standing at the stove stirring things. Usually my kids keep me hopping while I’m pulling breakfast together, so having to babysit something on the stove leads to spillover, burnage, or both.
Here’s the hands-off way to perfect steel-cut oats in the morning:
Boil the water.
Add the oats and turn down the heat until they’re barely simmering.
Simmer unsupervised for 10 minutes.
Turn off the stove, stir once, and put a lid on them. Come back in 20 minutes.
Stir and enjoy!
Again, here your ratio is:
3.5 cups of water
1 cup of steel-cut oats
For one meal, I’m making about .5 cups of steel-cut oats per person.
Option 3: Muesli
In Switzerland and Germany this is very common for breakfast, but for some reason few Americans have figured out this excellent oatmeal alternative.
Basically, at our house muesli is rolled oats (or a rolled multigrain blend), plus dried or fresh fruit, plus plant-milk or juice.
That’s it! You can (optionally) soak your fruit in the liquid overnight and then add the grains in the morning, but we usually just throw this together the morning of.
Option 4: Overnight Oats
This is basically muesli, but made ahead so everything is ready to go when you wake up in the morning. You can eat it cold or warm, and I’ll bet you’ve seen it made in cute individual mason jars on many blogs.
I made it once in cute little mason jars and then realized that cleaning out a half dozen individual mason jars was not worth the cute factor for me! You do you, though, and you could probably make up a batch and then scoop it into bowls the morning of pretty easily. Googling “Overnight Oats” will give lots of topping ideas, and I thought it worth including as an option.
Did I say cheap?
Saving money on your grocery budget is a high priority for many people, right up there with enjoying better health.
We buy both rolled oats and steel-cut oats from our local Winco Foods for $.75/lb. We can make 5 BIG, belly-filling servings of oats from one pound of dry oats. That’s 15 cents a serving, leaving plenty of wiggle room for spices and fresh fruit to put on top.
If you don’t have a good source locally, look online. If you were to order a 25 lb bag of steel-cut oats from Bob’s Red Mill online, you would be getting 125 servings of breakfast for $28!
Always different, always delicious
Just because you have oatmeal most mornings of the week does not mean it needs to be boring. In the colder months, we have cooked oatmeal 3x/week and muesli 2x/week, and we tend to flip that ratio around to favor muesli when the weather is warmer. It’s easy to change up the toppings so breakfast is yummy all year.
Here are 11 favorites to get you started:
Every Monday, we have steel-cut oats with (usually frozen) berries or cherries. I like to streamline our menu plan and it’s nice to not make a decision for Monday mornings.
Pro tip: I scoop a cup of berries or cherries in each bowl when I put the pan of water on to boil. By the time the oats are done the berries are partially thawed, so stirring a cup of piping oatmeal into each bowl makes it a perfect temperature for digging right in.
Once a week, we add apples, raisins, cinnamon, vanilla, and walnuts to either oats or muesli.
Pro Tip: I like to cook the raisins with the oats so they’re soft, but add the apples in afterwards. Try it both ways!
I also sometimes have this combination in a muesli made with apple cider instead of plant-based milk. Mmmm.
Most of us (my husband excepted) love banana, cinnamon, nutmeg, and walnuts in our oats. I mash up the banana with a fork and stir it in after the oats are cooked.
In the summer, peaches, cardamom and pecan with fresh blackberries is as close to heaven in a bowl as I can imagine.
Pear and crystallized ginger, again with the sliced almonds.
Date crumbles, unsweetened coconut, sunflower seeds, and cinnamon
Fresh fruit muesli with grapes, apples, oranges, and (optionally) bananas
Chopped dried apricot with pumpkin seeds (AKA pepitas)
Applesauce and cinnamon. One time I invented “applesauce muesli” out of desperation and it’s become a steady favorite. I just stir unsweetened applesauce into rolled oats, add some cinnamon and flax and voila. Happy kids.
Blueberries, lemon zest and sliced almonds
Pumpkin, sweet potato, or winter squash – If I have some in my fridge already cooked, I’ll add it along with cinnamon and some date crumbles.
Oatmeal. Make it your next breakfast!
And, if you have kids and they’re starving and the oatmeal is still too hot to eat, serve it spread out on a plate.
It’s less attractive but still every bit as yummy, cheap, easy and healthy.
If you are ready to start shifting your family’s diet to include more whole plant foods, you’re in the right place. Rather than tell you which step you should take first, I’m going to lay out ten possible steps and encourage you to start with one that feels both doable and impactful.
After all, if you only rarely drink soda, giving it up would be pretty easy, but it also wouldn’t improve your diet much!
When you’ve got your stride a bit with one step, pick another one from the list and keep up your momentum. Change is hard, but this change is good.
Tackle Breakfast
We are priming our taste buds for the rest of the day when we eat breakfast. A great breakfast will mean you don’t have to think about food again until lunchtime, and making it a deliberate healthy choice will build momentum.
Here’s why I recommend oatmeal if at all possible, but you can also grab some fresh fruit and toast with avocado or nut butter on it. Keep it simple, but for sure swap out the cold cereal*, toaster pastries or bacon. Ack, sorry for mentioning bacon. You won’t miss it forever, promise!
*Eating a good-sized bowl of “healthy” cold cereal meant my kids were getting as much sugar for breakfast as a butterfinger candy bar has, and they were still hungry! So, I had to break up with cereal from a box.
One whole food plant-based dinner this week, two next week.
There is a fun trend for “Meatless Mondays,” but we don’t want to stop there. So often I see the meatless dish being full of cheese! Or I see that people feel they’re practically vegetarian now they’ve had a meat-free meal. That’s not doing your health any favors. Have a legitimate, whole food plant-based dinner once a week, then add a second dinner next week, and build from there. Here are my easiest, yummy soups to give you some ideas.
Tip: Remember to eat plenty! You can eat a lovely large amount of whole plant foods because they tend to be high in fiber and low in calories.
Get rid of one dairy item, then another
Cheese is harder for some people to give up than smoking. Maybe start with yogurt? Or stop drinking cow’s milk by the glass? Or give up string cheese or sprinkling cheese on dinner by default?
There are absolutely substitutes for dairy that are vegan, but I usually don’t recommend trying to use them right away. If you choose a vegan mozzarella “cheez” and compare it to a dairy-based cheese, I’m guessing you’ll be disappointed. There are so many delicious plant-based foods that don’t try to masquerade as meat and dairy. Start with those and if you circle back to a vegan sour cream, yogurt, or even “cheeze” later, you’ll be more receptive and enjoy them more.
I do recommend trying some plant-based milk. A good starting point is unsweetened soymilk. It can be used just like dairy milk in baking or splashed into oatmeal or muesli.
Meatless before dinner
There’s a group of people who eat “vegan before 6,” meaning they avoid animal products before dinner. One approach is simply to ditch meat for breakfast and lunch. No more lunch meat or bacon! Adjust to that, find a new groove, then move on to your next step.
Eat a baked sweet potato for lunch with black beans and salsa or a squeeze of lime. Have a veggie sandwich with hummus. Wrap up refried beans and shredded lettuce into a simple burrito. Go for tofu scramble instead of egg scramble for breakfast. Eat crackers with your tomato soup instead of grilled cheese. With a little creativity, you can find alternatives to what you’re currently eating.
Ditch the fast food
Your plant-based options are going to be limited at fast food restaurants.
Consider why you are turning to fast food in the first place. Are you wanting to feed your family without fussing with dishes? Are you grabbing dinner while running between activities? If you can identify the problem that fast food is currently solving for you, I’ll bet you can solve that problem in a different way.
It may come down to: using paper plates once a week, using the crockpot, packing “lunch for dinner” on that night you are going between activities, or it may be a different solution entirely.
In case it helps, our go-to when we want dinner in a hurry and don’t want to make it are vegetable fajita bowls at Chipotle. We load them with black beans, vegetables, brown rice, pico de gallo, lettuce and guacamole. But it’s at least a 15 minute drive from our house so it’s usually easier to just pull together a lazy plant-based pantry meal.
Ditch processed food
As a general rule, if it has a barcode and an ingredients list, don’t buy it. That’s the end goal, and to get there, you can swap one item at a time. Buy grapes and carrots for snacks instead of fruit-by-the-foot and graham crackers. Buy a whole grain pasta and a tomato-based sauce with real ingredients and ditch the blue box and powdered cheese packet.
Before you toss something in your grocery cart out of habit, pause. Commit to finding a new normal without it.
Get rid of soda
This one is simple to type and more difficult to do. We love Spindrifts on crushed ice. They have a squeeze of real fruit juice, but no sugar or fake sugar, so they don’t hold our taste buds hostage.
Stay the course and pay attention to why you’re reaching for soda in the first place. Is it stress? Just habit? Acknowledge the stress and cope with it in a healthier way. Replace the habit with something that serves you better.
Plan your sugar
Of course ditching sugar in your diet completely would be a home run for health, but for most of us that’s not sustainable. Instead, can I recommend planning your sugar? Decide in advance what treat you’re going to enjoy. And, then thoroughly enjoy it! Otherwise, automatically decline offered sugar.
Here’s an example: I plan on going out as a family to get a donut on Saturday morning. Yum! I’ll enjoy both the anticipation and the experience. And when someone brings donuts (or cupcakes, or cookies, or whatever) to Book Group on Thursday evening, I simply pass them by and grab some of the cut up fruit instead.
Planning your sugar is a deceptively powerful change because it means your self-control muscle gets a break. You aren’t looking at those cupcakes and cookies and wrestling with yourself. You’re just acknowledging there’s always an endless supply of treats in the world, but you’ve already decided which you’ll enjoy that day or week.
I pass up cigarettes without thinking about it every time I go to the drugstore, because I’m not a smoker. I’m also not a random sugar eater.
Next Book Group I may plan on eating a treat and that’s cool, too. But I’m not making those decisions in the moment when presented with gooey chocolate. I’m also not reaching for cookies at 11pm because I’m feeling restless, which I otherwise might be inclined to do. Ahem.
This particular gooey chocolate is a whole food plant-based treat, so that’s a bonus!
Leafy greens every day
There are so many ways to get some greens in your day, and just this one goal will have ripple effects in other areas of your diet. You might start throwing kale or spinach in your breakfast scramble, adding a green smoothie to your breakfast, stuffing shredded romaine or spinach in your lunchtime wrap or putting chopped kale or spinach in your dinnertime soup. Make your burrito into a salad instead by dumping all the filling onto a pile of crisp greens.
Look at your meal plan for the week (or for the next day if you tend to wing it) and see where you could get some greens in. I recommend starting with baby spinach (all washed in a bag or tub) because it’s convenient and it inconspicuous. But curly kale or romaine are both solid choices as well.
Only fruits and vegetables between meals
Snacks often get overlooked when we plan meals, but they count for a lot! In fact, two thirds of Americans are eating at least two snacks a day. We average 24% of our calories from snacks, and what we eat at snack time influences our appetite and taste-preferences when it comes to meals.
So often our kids turn up their noses at what’s for dinner because they’re not actually hungry! They whine before dinner so we hand them something to tide them over, which then prevents them from enjoying what we serve them.
What if we allow for as much snacking as we want, but limit it to fruits and vegetables? No, don’t dunk them in ranch dressing. Just fruits and vegetables. How would our appetite for meals be affected?
Currently just 1 in 10 Americans eats the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables each day. You are about to enter into a very elite group!
We love munching on snap peas, cucumbers, frozen peas, frozen edamame, carrots, celery, bell peppers, romaine lettuce, sweet mini peppers, watermelon, apples, oranges, bananas, pears, grapes, canned pineapple, and so much more!
(I do personally limit my kids to one fruit as a snack per day, unless it’s apple or peach season, simply because our grocery budget would be out of hand if they were given free rein. I also have them start with a vegetable snack. )
Ok, enough yacking. Time to get cracking! Pick an area of focus get started and remember any progress counts! Progress, not perfection, is the goal.
I’d love to hear how you’re doing with changing your family’s diet. Please drop a comment, so I can cheer you on.
Anne Bean
Feed Them Plants
You can find loads of lists online with “quick tips” to get kids to eat more vegetables, but what I’d like to do is walk beside you as you change your family’s food culture.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion in the popular press about what constitutes a healthy diet. So many trendy diets come and go (Atkins became paleo, which became keto! Macros! Whole 30! “Eating Clean” and countless more). Everybody loves controversy, so we click on articles that imply red meat is healthy after all, that coconut oil is the new miracle food, and that eggs aren’t as bad as we thought.
But here’s the thing: broccoli doesn’t have a very big marketing budget. Blueberries or lentils aren’t going to buy their way on to our instagram feed very often. When food is processed, it’s more expensive to buy and cheaper to produce, which leaves enough profit to invest in more flavor engineering and plenty of very targeted marketing.
My husband is a family physician and often has parents come in concerned about their children’s weight. These are great parents who are anxious for their children to have a great start in life. My husband often gently asks them about their own weight and habits with food as a starting point to the conversation, knowing that where the parent isn’t willing to go first, their children have little opportunity to follow.
Go ahead and consider the approaches and decide which one is the best fit for your personality and circumstance. 
