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I’ve ummed and ahhed about writing a post on vegan meal prep, because, er, I don’t really meal prep. I also don’t meal plan. I mean, I obviously plan my meals for the week, but then I don’t stick to it AT ALL. So on brand.
Still, I’ve got lots of ideas for vegan meal prep, and whole pinterest board dedicated to it on Pinterest.
You’re welcome.
I’m desperate to become one of those people that’s super organised with meal prep because 1)I love being organised and 2) I could really do with shifting a bit of weight. I’ve done yoga every day this year and my abs WILL POP by summer. I think that if all my meals are planned and prepped it’ll be easy. Lol lol lol.
In the interests of elongating this blog post, I’m going to tell you my current excuse for why I can’t meal prep, and it’s this: the dog we’re currently walking is fucking insane.
If you weren’t already aware, Dave and I go to our local animal shelter every week and take a dog out for a walk. It’s so much fun and has been the highlight of my week for the five years we’ve been doing it. Arnie is a German pointer and he’s the cutest dog ever. He’s not massive on people so we make sure to take him to quiet places. When we first met him we were very respectful of his personal space, but now he’s quite the lapdog. He’s so quiet in the car that we can go quite a distance – a couple of weeks back we took him to the beach and he went absolutely wild.
Whilst I adore Arnie and love walking him he’s SO STRONG on the lead because he’s extremely excited.
Long story short, the Monday afternoons that I would use to meal prep, are in fact spent napping because Arnie has worn me out.
ONTO THE MEAL PREP TIPS
Meal plan
Pretty obvious I know, but you need to know what you’re going to be having in order to prep it. This video from Jess Beautician is a great demo of how to plan your meals and use stuff up. Otherwise, you end up having to eat a whole can of sweetcorn, jackfruit (or whatever) or waste it.
Pick a time to cook it
Sunday afternoon is popular for obvious reasons. I’m considering doing mine on Thursdays (when I work from home) because I’m usually fairly healthy early in the week, and end up getting lazy towards the weekend. I also work 12 hour shifts on Friday and Saturday, so having something to take to work would be handy af, and would stop me from buying onion rings and hash browns from the coop at 9.30pm, which is becoming quite the habit.
Don’t go mad on containers
I know, I know, one of the main reasons we all want to meal prep is to get a super instagrammable fridge, but please don’t go out and buy shed loads of plastic containers. Repurpose what you’ve already got (margarine tubs, jam jars etc.), get glass containers, or just divide it into bowls you already have and cover the tops with a plate.
Go shopping
I like to online shop, because the man brings it the house. Especially since he brings it to the house on a Saturday night when I’m at work, so when I come home the fridge is full of food. It’s the best feeling ever.
Theretically, if you’re meal prepping, your shopping should be pretty cheap, because you’re not bothering with ready meals and stuff.
Actually, never mind. One of my meal prep recipes is a homemade pasta salad (this is the recipe- it’s delicious) which contains pine nuts and CHRIST they’re expensive.
What to prep?
This really depends on how organised you were and how likely you are to stick to a meal plan.
If you’re super organised, cook everything and divvy it up into containers. If you’re not the kind of person that can plan that far ahead, just prep a few different things. The idea of meal prep is to make the prepped food the easiest thing to grab.
Here’re a few ideas to get you going:
- Grains – whatever you like. Rice, quinoa, pasta. Cook it, cool it, and whack it in the fridge
- Veggies – I like to cut up salad veggies – red onion, tomatoes, cucumber. You could also do carrot and celery sticks for hummus, julienne veggies for stirfry – leeks, courgettes, peppers etc.
- Roast veggies – roasting veggies for meal prep is extremely popular, so I thought I’d better mention it, though if I’m honest it’s not something I do a lot. I roast sweet potato, garlic, peppers (and whatever else I have lying around) with seasoning (salt, pepper, smoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder) and oil, for about 30-40mins.
- Smoothies – a lot of people recommend freezing all the ingredients in bags and then adding liquid on the day, but I hate frozen greens. Instead I prep all the seeds I’m going to use, by adding a few cups of each to a big jar. That way I just need to grab a couple of scoops from one jar rather than four or five.
- Oats – measure out your oats and toppings for the week so that all you have to do is put the liquid in (either in the morning if you’re having it hot, or the night before for overnight oats) and assemble in the morning
- Protein – you could bake tofu, marinade tofu or tempeh, or even Quorn chicken pieces.
Anything else?
If you’re a vegan meal prep QUEEN (or KING) plz leave any ideas below. Even if you’re just an average pleb with a cool idea for making dinner quickly, please let this pleb know.
Looking for meal prep inspo? Have a look at Jess Beautician and Pick Up Limes‘ YouTube channels – they’re great. I also love Rachel Ama and Madeleine Olivia
Hopefully you found this helpful. Hopefully I find this helpful, get my rear in gear, and actually meal prep.
It would be so easy! I was jealous of one of my old rabbits when she was on a diet because she couldn’t cheat – because her caregiver (me) controlled her food.
This is kind of the same, except I will have to exercise some form of will power.
And the discipline not to nap my Monday’s away or convince myself that Thursdays must be spent surgically attached to my laptop.
I’ll keep you updated.
