30 Missions

Mission #22: Weekly Meal Planning

Dear Vegan at Heart,

Today your mission is to schedule a time every week for meal planning.

Remember that lovely feeling of coming home to nothing in the fridge? With a little planning, this will happen less and less often. And it doesn't take much time to plan. In fact, you'll end up saving yourself time (and money) in the end. This habit comes in handy especially when newcomers to plant-based living are confronted with a fear of scarcity. With a little forethought and preparation, you'll feel more abundance.

1. Schedule a time every week for meal planning…starting this week! (I usually do it the evening before I go to the store.)

Here’s one way to plan your meals:

1. Go see what you have in your fridge or cupboard that you want to use and search for the ingredients, either on VegWeb or in the index in the back of your favorite cookbooks.
2. READ THE RECIPES so you’re not hit by any surprises (this recipe takes 7 hours and requires a candy thermometer and a cheesecloth? No way!)
3. If you’re on VegWeb, add the recipes to your recipe box and print out a list of ingredients.
4. Put the ingredients on your shopping list.
5. If you’re using a cookbook, take some scrap paper and bookmark the pages you’ll need. I like to write the name of the dish on top of the bookmark.
6. Put your canvas shopping bags out where you will see them and remember to take them to the store…or pack them in your work bag if you’re going shopping after work the next day.

A little note on canvas bags: not only are canvas bags easier to carry but they won't leave permanent toxins in the environment. Not many people realize that plastic molecules NEVER BREAK DOWN in the environment! They become a toxic part of the life cycle and can find their way into the food chain, concentrating in the fatty flesh of cows, pigs, chickens and fish and even in human breast milk. Awesome.

Happy meal planning!
Marisa

 

How helpful is this mission? Rate it now!

weekly meal planning I like this one. I've tried to do it before, but I haven't built up my herbs and spices very well yet. Just some basic ones. I have my canvas bags in the car, right next to me. And I NEVER remember to take them into the store!! Maybe I need to put them on top of my purse before I start the car.

Judy (Sat, 4th Apr, 2009)

This is great I just bought a new phone with a calendar and everything so I marked out Sunday Evenings to sit down and plan my meals for the week. You are right that it makes such a difference to be prepared. I think what I will do is, with my calendar, put exactly what I will need to buy and on what day. That will be part of my planning. I will shoot for buying a week in advance if I can carry it all."

David (Tue, 9th Sep, 2008)

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