Some Healthy Meal Inspiration for Your Family

In last week’s blog, I talked about the importance of avoiding a food rut, and trying to vary the meals we serve our families each week.

This week, I wanted to share with you just a few of the recipes that feature regularly on our family’s meal rotation.

With some of these recipes, we tweak them to include more whole grains (for example, brown rice instead of white, or wholemeal pasta instead of white) or exclude the oils (it’s just as easy and almost as tasty to saute in water rather than oil, or to dry roast spices rather than cooking them in oil).

This recipe for Mexican fried rice is easy to cook up and includes ingredients that most of us have in the kitchen already. It is great as a base to put in wraps, along with other ingredients such as chopped tomatoes, lettuce, refried beans, and even vegan sour cream. We like to make it in bigger batches and have leftovers the next day.

Forks Over Knives have some great recipes using whole foods and fresh ingredients. In fact, the Forks Over Knives documentary was one of the reasons my family began eating plant based a number of years ago. We use their recipe app on a regular basis. Their corn chowder is a naturally sweet tasting and hearty meal which can easily be made in bulk and freezes well. They have some wonderful recipes for stir fries and noodles, such as this stir fried noodles with veggies recipe, which our kids just love. My wife regularly makes their Mexican 10-layer dip to take when we go to family functions. She always gets asked for the recipe, and it gets gobbled up without fail.

We eat a lot of potatoes in our family. It was good enough for the Irish and it’s good enough for us! They are cheap, packed with nutrition and are a fabulous base for a range of dishes. This vegan cheesy sauce is a great way of getting legumes and vegetables into the kids. It’s great served over potatoes or sweet potatoes, or even with pasta or rice. This vegan gravy, created by the Brand New Vegan blogger, is just as good, if not even better than regular artery-clogging, fat-filled gravies. I love it served over potatoes and vegetables, and it’s easy to make.

One of the more recent additions to our meal rotations is this red lentil dahl. Lentils are cheap and filling, and a great source of protein. We omit the chilli from this recipe so the children won’t find it too overpowering, but it has a wonderful combination of spices which make it delicious! It’s great served with some brown rice. We have added grated zucchini and sweet potatoes to the recipe to add in a few extra vegetables.

Another recipe that we serve alongside some steamed rice is this delicious sweet potato curry. My kids love it (again, we tone down the spice level for them) and it is great with some chopped zucchini or mushrooms. It is yet another recipe that’s perfect for making in bulk and freezing for a later meal.

While there are now many different plant-based burgers available from the supermarket now, they are usually highly processed and filled with oils. This sweet potato black bean burger is the perfect alternative. It holds together well and doesn’t fall apart, and tastes great on a bread roll with some hummus, lettuce, onion, tomatoes and cucumber.

Sometimes, we like to treat ourselves to something a little sweet. When our kids have a birthday coming up, this sweet potato chocolate cake recipe is our go-to. It looks like a regular cake, tastes delicious, and you’d never know that one of the main ingredients is a vegetable!

When it comes to muffins, there are two recipes we come back to again and again. These apple puree muffins are tasty and refined-sugar free. These sweet potato muffins are also easy to make and really tasty. We often make both recipes in bulk and freeze them for a later day.

When we have to bring a sweet dish to a party, these vegan rice krispie treats are AMAZING. Think LCM bars, but totally free of refined sugars or animal products.

With so many wonderful recipe sites online, and a little bit of planning, it’s easy to keep variety in your meals. At the same time, you will be eating tasty food, high in nutrients, to keep your whole family healthy.

Some Healthy Meal Inspiration for Your Family

Comments 1

Leave a Reply Cancel reply