Weekly Vegan Meal Plan Week 1 (Free)
Vegan Prepper’s Weekly Meal Plan
Here is your ultima free meal plan to get you started on meal prepping.
| Day | Lunch | Dinner |
| Monday | White Bean Kale Salad with Tahini Dressing | Lentil Mushroom Walnut Balls with Hummus Mashed Potatoes |
| Tuesday | My ultimate South African Hummus with Veggies Sticks | Zucchini Noodles with Spinach & Pinto Bean Sauce |
| Wednesday | Pearl barley with garlic-dijon vinaigrette | Vegan Meatballs with Marinara Sauce |
| Thursday | Leafy green salad with Lentil Mushroom Walnut Balls with Tahini Dressing | Quick coconut curry |
| Friday | Strawberry Arugula Salad with Balsamic reduction | Chili sin Carne with Pinto Beans and Leftover Veggies |
You will find yourself doing a bit of cooking on Thursday night and on Friday night in order to effectively use up all the leftover veggies and leftover dishes. If you see that you have quite a bit of leftovers from the individual dishes, I recommend skipping the Friday night dish all together and doing leftover day instead.
What to do on Meal Prep Day
| Fully Prepped on Prep Day | Partially Prepped on Prep Day | Prepared on Eat Day |
| Lentil Mushroom Walnut Balls with Hummus Mashed Potatoes | My ultimate South African Hummus with Veggies Sticks | Srawberry Arugula Salad |
| White Bean Kale Salad with Tahini Dressing | Zucchini Noodles with Spinach & Pinto Bean Sauce | Chili sin Carne with Pinto Beans and Leftover Veggies |
| Vegan Meatballs with Marinara Sauce | Pearl barley with garlic-dijon vinaigrette | Quick coconut curry |
| Leafy green salad with Lentil Mushroom Walnut Balls with Tahini Dressing | ||
What’s to do on prep day with the partially prepped meals?
| Dish | Prep Step on Prep Day | Steps on Eat Day with Time Estimate |
| My ultimate South African Hummus with Veggies Sticks | Prep hummus. | Cut veggies of your choice (7 minutes) |
| Zucchini Noodles with Spinach & Pinto Bean Sauce | Prep pinto bean sauce. | Spiralize zucchini (3 minutes) or use store-bought ones (o minutes). Incorporated zucchini into sauce and stir to combine and warm up (3 minutes) |
| Pearl barley with garlic-dijon vinaigrette | Prep pearl barley. Prep seeds mixture. Prep vinaigrette. | Cut veggies (5 minutes). Mix ingredients (1 minute) |
Prep Day Action – Assembly Line Style
Be aware that in order to proceed quickly, you will be needing quite a lot of dishes. But trust me, it will save you lots of time working like an assembly line in your own kitchen. Assembly line style means that you will be using one “machine” e.g. colander, food processor etc. in one step processing ingredients for various dished setting them aside until they are needed again.
As the required amounts of each ingredient vary depending on the amount of people you cook for, I don’t put them in the checkboxes. Simply click on the link provided in the headline to see how much of the specific ingredient you need to put when finishing a dish.
Once your food processor has done the job, you will have lots of onion, garlic and so on. So, in order to add the right amount at each step of the list, keep in mind the following:
- 1 medium-size clove garlic equals 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic, this is around 5 g / .18 oz. So for 2 cloves you should add 2-3 teaspoons.
- A small onion should weigh around 4 ounces, should fit pretty easily in your hand, and should yield about 1/2 cup once chopped.
- A medium onion is about twice as big as a small one, weighing it at roughly 8 ounces and yielding 1 cup once chopped.
- Large onions are three times larger than small onions (12 ounces), and should give you about 1 1/2 cups of chopped onion.
You might feel that there will always be a little to much left of certain ingredients, but an extra ounce or two of onion isn’t going to ruin your soup or balls or whatever. Extra onion never ruined anything. The same holds true – even more so – for garlic.
Roasting: The macadamia nuts are roasted while you are busy draining and rinsing. So, let’s get the easy part done first and spread out evenly on a baking tray lined with parchment paper: Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. Don’t forget to set a timer to go off in 4-5 minutes/ 15 minutes/ 20 minutes.
Roasting
Save
Print| macadamia nuts | |
| veggies of your choice if you want to eat roasted veggies with hummus or any salad for about 20-25 minutes | |
| pinto beans (your required amount for vegan meatballs for 15 minutes) |
Draining and Rinsing: Grab your colander and drain and rinse
Draining and Rinsing
| Canned lentils | |
| Canned chickpeas (save the liquid) | |
| Canned pinto beans | |
| Canned white beans |
Peeling: Grab a potato peeler and peel
Boiling
Use a stovetop pot to boil according to package instructions. Set a timer to remember taking down from the heat and draining once they are fork-tender.
Boiling
| Pearl Barley (about 20- 30 minutes) | |
| Potatoes (about 20- 30 minutes, then place back into the pot over medium heat until the moisture comes out of the potatoes and they appear dry, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat.) |
Finishing part of a prep dish: Balsamic reduction for Strawberry Arugula Salad
Balsamic reduction
| In a small saucepan, bring the vinegars to a simmer over medium heat. Once the vinegar starts to simmer,reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 6 to 10 minutes, uncovered, until the vinegar thickens, and reduces in volume by half. |
Food processor:
Let’s effectively chop everything that needs to be chopped and do it in an order that keeps cleaning the food processor out to a minimum. Following the order specified below you can just process each ingredient after another, filling one ingredient aside in a separate dish and continuing with the next one on the list.
Finishing a dish: Tahini Dressing
Lemon Tahini Dressing
| Whisk together 1/4 cup tahini preferably toasted juice of 1/2 lemon 1 tbsp red wine vinegar 1 tsp soy sauce 1/2 garlic clove pinch of pepper. Stir in water, starting with 1/4 cup and adding more as needed. |
Finishing a prep day part of a dish: Garlic-dijon Vinaigrette and seed mixture for pearl barley salad with garlic-dijon vinaigrette
Finishing on Garlic-dijon vinaigrette
| Add the garlic clove, apple cider vinegar, grapeseed oil, lemon juice, dijon mustard, sea salt, pepper, and maple syrup into a small food processor or blender and process (or blend) until smooth. Adjust to taste, if desired. Set aside. |
seed mixture
| in an airtight food container mix together the pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds |
Finishing a dish: Macadamia Hummus
Finishing on Macadamia Hummus
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Add the chickpeas to a food processor or high speed blender and add 5 tablespoons of the saved liquid/water if it’s not enough can liquid. |
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Add the tahini and 1 cup of the slightly cooled, roasted macadamia nuts to the food processor, followed by the garlic. Roughly chop the remaining 1/4 cup of nuts and set aside for garnish. |
Finishing a dish: White Bean Kale Salad
White Bean Kale Salad
| Add drained beans to a small mixing bowl and add lemon juice, olive oil, sea salt, and fresh parsley. Toss to combine. Set aside. | |
| Add kale to a large mixing bowl with lemon juice, olive oil, maple syrup, salt, pepper and minced garlic. Use your hands to massage the kale and break down its texture a bit, and to season the salad. |
Finishing a dish: Vegan Meatballs
Vegan Meatballs
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Heat a large (oven-safe) skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add water (or oil), garlic, and onion. Sauté for 2-3 minutes, or until slightly softened, stirring frequently. Remove from heat (and keep pan for later use). |
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Add pinto beans to a food processor along with garlic, onion, sea salt, oregano, red pepper flake, and fennel and pulse into a loose meal being careful not to overprocess. Then add cooked and completely cooled pearl barley, vegan parmesan cheese, tomato paste, fresh cilantro, and Worcestershire. Pulse to combine until a textured dough forms (being of a semi-tacky texture). |
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Taste and adjust flavor as needed. |
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Scoop out heaping 1 1/2 Tbsp amounts (I love my ice cream spoon to do so but a tablespoon will also work) and gently form into small balls using your hands. Add to a plate and refrigerate or freezer until cook day. |
Finishing a prep day part of a dish :
Pinto Bean Sauce for Zucchini Noodles:
Prepare the pinto bean sauce according to the steps listed below. I recommend stopping before adding spinach and sundried tomatoes because spinach is a vegetable with high amounts of nitrates. These nitrate rich vegetables when heated again can turn toxic, releasing carcinogenic properties, which are generally cancerous in nature. Moreover, spinach contains high amount of iron, hence heating and reheating spinach may oxidize the iron present in spinach.
Pinto Bean Sauce
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Place the cooked and drained pinto beans into the food processor along with 1 garlic clove, lemon juice, cumin or garam masala and vegetable milk. Process until it forms a homogeneous puree. Set aside. |
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Chop the onion and remaining garlic cloves. Place the onion in a non-stick pan with 1-2 tablespoons of water (or vegetable broth or olive oil). Simmer until translucent (3-4 minutes), stirring frequently. |
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Add the chopped garlic and continue to cook for another 2-3 minutes. |
Finishing a dish: Lentil Mushroom Walnut Balls:
Lentil Mushroom Walnut Balls
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Add the oil to a large pot and turn heat to medium. Add chopped mushrooms to the pot along with minced garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir until combined. Sauté for about 6 to 8 minutes, until the water from the mushrooms cooks off, reducing heat to low if necessary to prevent burning. |
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To the processor (no need to clean it out!), add the rolled oats. Process the oats until they’re finely chopped and resemble coarse flour, about 30 seconds. |
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Add the drained lentils and walnuts to the processor bowl with the oat flour. Pulse the mixture, stopping to check on it every few pulses, until it’s coarsely chopped. Be sure not to overprocess it into a paste as you still want a lot of texture and crunchy walnut pieces. Set aside. |
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To the pot with the mushrooms and garlic, add the herbs and sauté for 30 seconds until fragrant. Stir in the kale, then turn off the heat. |
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Stir the psyllium husk fibre and water together in a small cup (no need to let it sit). |
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Now add all of the food processor contents, vinegar, and psyllium husk fibre mixture to the pot. Stir until thoroughly combined. The dough should be heavy and dense. Add salt and pepper to taste. |
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With lightly wet hands, shape and roll about 14 to 15 balls, roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons of dough each (I use a big ice cream spoon to do so). Refrigerate or freeze until use on cook day. |
Finishing a dish: Mushroom gravy:
Mushroom Gravy
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In a large skillet and heat oil over medium heat. Add in chopped onions and garlic and sauté for about 5 minutes. |
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Add the sliced mushrooms and sauté for about 12 minutes longer, stirring as necessary. Now stir in the rosemary, nutritional yeast, and tamari. Cook for a few minutes. |
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In a small bowl, whisk together the broth and cornstarch until clumps are gone, and then stir into the mushroom mixture. Cook for another 5-6 minutes or so, until slightly thickened. |
Finishing a dish: Hummus mashed potatoes
Hummus mashed potatoes
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Mash the potatoes with a potato masher. Mash in the hummus and oil, followed by the salt and pepper, to taste. |
Comprehensive Shopping List for Meal Plan Week 1
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