Sometimes life is better in the flow. But some people prefer to know what to buy and cook, and it avoids food waste. Use with an eco meal planner.
Plant-Based Meal Prep is a beautifully designed book of over 60 recipes for breakfasts, mains, snacks and designs, with tags for allergies and get-started guides to walk you through the basics.
The easy meal plans take the guesswork of what to make, and there is nutritional info throughout.
Read up on food safety for people & pets (many human foods are unsafe around animal friends).
Recipes include:
- Creamy pasta with broccoli
- Lentil and black bean nachos
- Buffalo Sauce
- Satay sauce
- Mustard balsamic dressing
The book also feature Prep Day Duos, where you make two meals each day, to serve later in the week:
- Rice and beans (and red curry with lentils and potatoes)
- White bean burgers with sweet potatoes (and Mexican quinoa)
- Creamy tofu and rice (with tofu satay)
More Simple Vegan Meal Plans
The Veg Space is a super recipe blog by a trained chef, who also offers a free four-week meal plan, complete with printable shopping list. Just print it off (at the library if you don’t have a printer) and enjoy a whole month of budget-friendly family meals. Recipes (all on her blog) include:
- Creamy wild mushroom one-pot gnocchi
- Tuscan bean stew
- Vegan sausage casserole with beans
- Vegan cottage pie with colcannon
- Creamy courgette curry
- Vegan stew with ale & pearl barley
- Black bean & jalapeno burger
- Vegan toad-in-the-hole
- Chipotle black bean chilli
- Speedy spicy chilli bean burritos
- Chickpea & butternut curry
- Vegan moussaka
Home-Cooked Roots offers several vegan meal plans based on number of people and budget, with full cost savings. Full of Plants offers a good e-book, packed with easy recipes and shopping lists.
Veggies Don’t Bite offers a super-simple 7-day meal plan with all the recipes on one blog post, so you can just print and cook and eat. No need to sign up to newsletters or visit different pages to find the simple meal ideas.
Subscription Plant-Based Meal Plans
Rainbow Plant Life offers meal plans, from one of the world’s most popular food bloggers. Rather than simple boring meals or greasy take-outs, these meal plans are designed around the same base ingredients so you have no waste, and with seasonal weekly menus, grocery lists and one-day-a-week mini preps, to save time during the week.
The plan includes easy swaps for allergies and short-cut emergency meal ideas, when life goes awry and you can’t stick to the meal plan, for whatever reason.
The plans work for all-size households and cost less than the cost of a latte per week. So if you order takeout once a week, this pays for itself in no time.
Meal Mentor has a free trial, then sign up for an affordable plant-based meal plan with shopping list. Created by a best-selling cookbook author, she has stripped everything down to make it simple for anyone.
These meals are extra healthy with all nutrient information and you can just enter your portions (one to four people) and it generates a shopping list that you can print and pop in your bag for the store.
You can also swap out recipes for others in the app, or customise to suit personal preferences or dietary needs (many meals can be made soy, gluten and nut-free). And a portion from each membership donation goes to elephant rescue!
Easy Vegan Meal Plan offers a good online plan by Sam Turnbull, one of the world’s best-selling cookbook authors, who always specialises in affordable simple meals that anyone can make.
Beautiful Meal Planners (on recycled paper)
These eco-friendly meal planners are printed on recycled paper, to plan all your favourite plant-based meals and recipes and shopping lists. They’re also beautifully illustrated and sent in plastic-free packaging.
Before cooking, read up on food safety for people & pets.
The meal planner chart (with optional magnet for the fridge) covers all three daily meals, with
52 tear-off pages and a generous A4 size. The bold stripe design makes a lovely gift to students or busy parents.
The smaller A5 meal planner pad has a shopping list function too, and again is sold with an optional magnet, to stick on the fridge.
The pink and red meal planner has 50 tear-off pages and a shopping list, to help reduce food waste.
The weekly grocery shop pad has 50 tear-off pages, and six sections to take with you to the grocery:
- Fruits & Vegetables
- Bakery
- Chilled & Frozen
- Canned & Cupboard
- Health, Beauty & Cleaning
- Other
Reusable Magnetic Fridge Planners
These reusable magnetic weekly fridge planners are ideal to plan your week for busy people and families. In various sizes, these can be used over and over again, and the fun colours add joy to your plans. Choose from weekly, monthly, block and to-do planners.
Made from a flexible magnetic material, these planners sit seamlessly on your fridge or any other magnetic area, and are designed to last for years.
Use with any wipeable or dry-erase marker pen (not included, then wipe clean with a cloth to start afresh. Designed and printed in the UK. Sent in plastic-free packaging.
