Meatless Menu Week 1
I've been eating meatless for quite a while now! I think it was during my sophomore year in college that I was trying all sorts of different diets just to see how my body responded, and I definitely felt my best eating a full vegan diet. However, it was hard. Very hard! And I never really got used to it or got into a routine; it was always a struggle. So a few months ago I decided to test out a simple vegetarian diet and it's been wonderful. I got a lot of fantastic feedback on Instagram about it as well. A lot of you are trying to eat less meat for a variety of reasons and I've loved assisting you all in that. It was suggested to me that I share everything that I eat in a week as a sort of reference book, so to say but that seemed a little overwhelming. Maybe we'll get there eventually but for now, let's just do a basic Monday-Friday menu.
A few notes:
We left out the curry powder. Matthew's least favorite thing in the world is curry! How? I don't know, it's delicious. But I've made a million recipes that call for curry powder and have just left it out 😂 For this one, it worked!
Also, I doubled the sauce because the recipe makes just enough to cover the salad, and I wanted the option to drizzle a little over the top after being served. I served them in romaine lettuce leaves and I think that's the way to go! Otherwise it feels like a side dish.
This works well with shredded chicken, for those of us feeding people other than ourselves!
Tuesday:
This dinner was so quick and so easy. Like a total of 20 minutes prep, assemble, and cook quick. The only things I changed was cooking the mushrooms. I tossed them on a skillet with oil, salt, and pepper and then added them to the quesadilla. I also tossed some corn on our tortillas because I had a head of corn from the farmer's market that I didn't want to go to waste- and it tasted amazing! I also used shredded chicken leftover from yesterday to put into Matthew's quesadillas.
This was perfect for a quick meal night!
Wednesday:
Okay, listen here 😂 This recipe took about half of the cooking pots/pans/utensils that I had in the kitchen and almost 3 hours of the evening. The recipe says it will take one hour, so I'm not sure why it took me so long, but it sure did. I tried to get multiple steps rolling at the same time because there were quite a few of them, and it still ended up taking a while! Apart from that, the recipe was fun. I didn't change anything because there was just too much going on and I was scared to! Of course I promised Matthew that I'd add chicken, and forgot. Ugh! So I scattered (words you should not use when describing your recipe 😅) a few pieces of shredded chicken throughout the sauce that lays in the bottom of the pan....I'm so embarrassed to admit that! All in all, the flavor of the lasagna roll was not worth using every utensil in the kitchen and three hours of our evening together-time. Make it if you're in the mood for an odd, complicated recipe! (I'll admit is was fun to turn cauliflower into a sauce)
Thursday:
We loved this! Once again I forgot to add in chicken somewhere for my man. That poor guy asks me for one thing! But he ended up just adding shredded chicken (again) to the top after he served himself. The only thing I altered about this recipe was adding more spinach! It's a super easy step to gauge whether or not to keep adding spinach and I just kept going until I liked the balance of spinach to everything else. Also, last quick note, it seems like you could leave out the lemon zest/juice while you're making it but the end result with that taste in there is fantastic. You can tell the lemon really makes it! (Recipe does say how much lemon juice to use toward the end- I squeezed half a lemon and let maybe 1 tsp out)
Friday:
It seemed that doing two butternut squash recipes in a row would be too much, but it really wasn't. And since each recipe took about half of an average sized squash, it made a lot of sense to do these recipes in the same week and not waste half of a squash.
For this recipe I only used one jalapeño instead of two and there was still plenty of spice for me. Also, at the end of the recipe you let it simmer for 25 minutes to help break down some of the squash and allow for the soup to get creamy. This could go by much quicker if you mash about half of the squash after roasting it and before adding it to the soup. Still simmer for a while and stir every few minutes. I topped it with a little squeeze of lime because that sounded delicious to me!
I hope you all enjoy your meatless meals this week! I'm already working on next week's menu and it's a delicious one 😍 If you have a recipe that you absolutely love, let me know. I'd love to try it! Thank you for reading!
Comments
Post a Comment