Planning meals /vegan

Hi there,

Can anyone recommend an app/book/method of planning healthy meals?

Food is an area I struggle with, the whole process of choosing meals, buying ingrediants and cooking.

I struggle with cook books as there is too much choice and they just don't work with my brain.

I think the change 4 life app is amazing as it does a random meal planner for you, you can change the meals it gives you if you don't like them and it adds the ingrediants to your shopping list.

Problem is, I have a lactose allergy and a lot of the meals contain milk or cheese.

Also, I want to go vegan to get a healthy diet. I want to eat more than just 5 a day.

But I cannot find any way of organising myself to be able to make and eat tasty vegan meals.

What apps/methods do you use for meal planning?

  • Hi, I'm not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but i do try and eat a lot of veg. And a couple of the FB pages i read are ........ Plant Based Recipies, and ........ Plant Powered Kidneys

  • Hi, I'm vegan too! For most of my inspiration I will search 'vegan recipes' or 'vegan meals' on Pinterest, Tiktok or Instagram. My favourite cook books are BOSH! (any of them).

    Before I do a food shop I will choose a few recipes where the ingredients overlap so it means you can use them in more than one meal and reduce food waste.

    Making fresh smoothies and soups are a really good way to introduce lots of fresh fruit and veg into your diet and aren't too time consuming with quick results. Another really easy way to include lots of veg is to blend them into a pasta sauce!

    If you're finding it tiring making lots of meals then you can always batch cook and refrigerate/freeze leftover portions for you to reheat another day :) 

  • Not a direct answer, but I cook for 4 fussy/food intolerant people (including myself - no yeast-containing things, spinach, pineapple or potatoes for me!) and the constant wracking my brains in coming up with meal ideas was getting me down. I wrote an exhaustive list of all the meals I know how to cook, and stuck the list to the fridge-freezer. If I try something new, or just think of something, I add it to the list. Now most of the time I just choose something from the list and go through less mental agony.

  • Hi,

    I don't use any apps except the one for monitoring nutrition.  I write a blog on vegan food found here. I don't know if it will help you though.

  • I'm mostly vegetarian and what I tend to do for easy meals is to have variations on a few basic recipes.  Pasta stir throughs, pizza tray bakes, spicy rice dishes, soups and vegetable chillies.  Most of these will last for more than one meal.  To make things more special I might scatter roasted pine nuts or jalapenos on top.  I also have a recipe book just for wraps so I have a few variations on these too - incl. seeds, sprouted seeds, nuts, salad, houmous and beans. 

  • Hi Kelly, Glad these ideas were of interest to you. I used to make a very tasty nut loaf too. Only trouble was all the meat eaters kept wanting some of it because it was so delicious! 

  • Thank you :) seems a lot of people just eat the same thing all the time. Maybe it's best I find a number of recipes and just cycle through them. Freezing them is a good idea too. My mum always suggests I cook stuff up and freeze it but I never know what to actually make. Curries and stews are a good idea, thank you.

    I eat a lot of nuts (again in phases lol) I think they have B vitamins in them

  • Thank you for the advise, I'll check that out.

    And me too, I had an egg fried rice recipe with stir fried veg that I ate daily for 3 months until I got sick of it.

  • Hi Kelly 

    i was vegan for 4 years then relapsed into vegetarianism and then became an omnivore again. Feel a bit ashamed and I am planning to go in the other direction again soon.

    Do you have a freezer? If so making a big vegetable curry or stew and freezing portions can be a great way of eating a healthy varied diet. To be honest I just used to eat vegetable curry every day for a week (I'm not bothered about variety).

    An electric slow cooker can be really useful too. Cheap to run and it helps the flavours of herbs and spices to infuse, making everything really tasty if you like that sort of thing.

    Might be worth looking at Jack Monroe's recipes which are tasty, inexpensive and healthy. Some of them are vegan.

    Like Tom says, make sure you get all the vitamins you need. I used to eat Grape Nuts - a breakfast cereal which is as hard as nails but which has added B12.

  • Although it's not specifically a vegan cookbook I find Carol Vordermans Detox Recipes a really useful cookbook. There's a lot of vegan recipes that contain simple ingredients and they're store cupboard items.

    Like Tom, I get stuck in a cycle of eating the same foods over and over again. Black bean chipolata chill and potato cubes is what I'm mostly eating at the min. I sometimes add Carol's lentil and cashew nut dhal to the mix as well.

  • Thank you very much for sharing what you eat :) it's helpful

  • Hi Kelly,

    I was vegan for over 30 years.  Back-slipped a few years back and started to eat fish again.  I still avoid dairy and meat, though.

    I don't really plan for meals or use recipe books.  Never have.  I tend to eat a lot of the same stuff.  One of my favourite meals throughout the summer (and I still eat it 4 or 5 times a week now) is a special salad.  I usually buy the bags of prepared salad from the supermarket.  One bag is chopped and mixed stuff - carrots, cabbage, iceberg lettuce, etc - and the other is loose-leafed stuff like rocket, spinach, cress, etc.  I mix roughly half of each in a bowl then cut them up very fine with salad shears.  Add to that a tin of sweetcorn and some cooked chick peas.  Add to that some cold boiled heads of broccoli and chopped cold boiled baby potatoes.  Sea salt or garlic salt for seasoning.  Olive oil and some mild dressing.  Filling, delicious, nutritious.  Boring for some, though!  I do like raw food.  If I'm doing a cooked meal, though, it's usually again the staples: carrots, broccoli, cabbage, kale, peas, beans, etc.

    Today I had a pasta using chopped courgette, carrot, aubergine, tomatoes, onions and a tin of pilchards.  Cooked in about 15 minutes.  I also like stir-fry and will have one once a week, usually with lots of veggies and mushrooms.  I'm also a big fan of long-grain or short-grain brown rice.  A super-food!

    If you're thinking of transitioning to veganism, it would be worth getting a good book about nutrition so that you can be sure that you're getting the right mix of complex carbs, vitamins and minerals in your diet - especially B12, which isn't naturally synthesised in the body.  It doesn't fit well with everyone.  I've never had a problem with it - it's a very healthy diet if done correctly - but I have a friend who struggled because she's anaemic. 

    A decent wholefood shop should be able to provide you with information leaflets, books, etc.  It doesn't need to be too complex.  As I said, I've never followed recipes.  Just kept a sensible approach to it.  One book I did refer to a lot, though - it's got some excellent basic recipes and advice in it - is this...

    Eva Batt's Vegan Cooking

    Sorry... I don't really know of any apps, but I'm sure there are some.  Try Googling for vegan apps.

    Tom