Meal Planning

Time for weekly meal planning.  I want to buy a cabbage, so there is a lot of planning around that.  Here is what I'm making:

Potstickers
I think I need to come up with something else to make this a full meal.  Or maybe I'll just make them and toss them in the freezer for lunches since Sim is leery of anything resembling stir-fry ever since that one store-bought sauce made her sick.  I'm really just making these because I like them and they will use up the last of the cabbage.

Chilli-Garlic Noodles

Vegan Irish Sausages and Colcannon (The No Meat Athlete Cookbook, pg. 164)

Saag Paneer and Vegan Methi Chicken Curry and Naan and Basmati Rice and Carrot Halwa
Friday night dinner.  Or maybe Thursday.  It'll use up the last of the paneer in the freezer.  I normally do a dal, but the methi chicken is also a protein and sounded good, and I just saw soy curls at our local grocery store for the first time and had been wondering what they could be used to make, so it seemed like kismet.  The carrot halwa is a recipe from a vegan kickstart app, and I'll already be using my salad shooter to grate a bunch of carrots and cabbage anyway, so I might as well use it for these cups of carrots too.

Vegan Grilled Cheese with Pesto and Tomato Basil Soup
I don't foresee using fresh tomatoes on the soup unless I just have some to use up.  I'm going to get a large can of fire-roasted tomatoes and a tiny can of tomato paste and just figure it out from there.  My basil plant also needs pruning, so this will be a good way to use some of its leaves.  As long as the lite coconut milk in the fridge is still good, I'll dump it in there too.  I prefer a smooth bisque to a rustic tomato soup, so I'm only using the recipe as a jumping off point. 

For the grilled cheese, I can't find a recipe that looks like what I want (a plant-based sort of homemade cheesy spread made from beans, veg, and nutritional yeast), so I'll use the vegan cheese sauce I like, maybe with some hummus or pureed white beans stirred in to thicken it so it doesn't just pour out of the sandwich.  I'll use the vegan pesto already in my fridge, some arugula for crunch, tomato for texture, and maybe avocado for added creaminess.  My plan is to dry toast it in my nonstick skillet it so it's more like a panini than a buttery grilled cheese.

We also have more veg hot dogs and ravioli in the fridge.  Those will work well for weekend meals.  My weekday meal plan feels overly ambitious, between the amount of prep work and the number of new dishes.  It'll take some forethought and a whole lot of chopping one day while Sim is at school.