1Week Healthy Eating, Whole Food Meal Plan 1/4-1/10

I am starting my whole food 30 day challenge on Monday. I know a few of you are joining me. I have mapped out a week long menu to get you started. I have tried all of these meals and love them. I plan to do a post like this every week for the month of January. I’ll try to get the next one up sooner in the week. Sorry! All the meals qualify for my challenge and I have even included a printable shopping list.

I only included seven main meals, so you will have dinners planned. I tend to keep breakfast and lunch really simple. I usually have left overs for lunch, so if you make a yummy dinner, make enough for left overs for the next days lunch. I keep breakfast simple and I usually don’t eat a large breakfast. Here are the breakfasts I plan to alternate between:

-fruit with nut butter
-chia seed parfaits ( chia soaked in some kind of liquid topped with fruit and nuts)
-pan fried eggs over avocados with a little hot sauce (maybe sometimes I’ll throw some refried beans in the mix and make a tortilla-less Huevos Rancheros.)
-sweet potato hashbrowns
-unsweetened greek yogurt with fruit and nuts
-veggie scrambled eggs

Here is the meal plan of the week! Feel free to make them in any order, sub out meals for different meals, and alter the recipes to fit what you already have in your fridge.

For a Printable Shopping List, CLICK HERE and then just click print.

MEAL 1: LOADED SWEET POTATOES WITH CREAMY ROASTED RED PEPPER SAUCE from Edible Experiments

This dinner is simple, but flavorful. Make sure to plan yourself enough time to roast the sweet potatoes and red pepper and to soak the cashews for a couple hours. Other than roasting and soaking time, this recipe is very quickly thrown together. The sauce is made from raw cashews and roasted red peppers and can be made ahead of time. The sauce actually freezes really well, if you want to make a double batch for later. The recipe doesn’t call for it, but I like to add corn and green onions in addition to the avocado and black beans. This recipe makes great left overs, so bake a couple extra sweet potatoes for lunch the next day.

NOTE: If you have a high powered blender like a Vitamix, you can get away with not soaking your cashews. You only need to soak them to soften them if working with lower powered blender.

MEAL 2: CAULIFLOWER RICE LETTUCE CUPS WITH SRIRACHA PEANUT SAUCE by Veggie and the Beast

This is one of my family’s favorite recipes. My two year old eats at least three helpings. I reduced the agave in the sauce from 3 to 1 tablespoons and it still tastes great. If you can’t find brown rice vinegar, regualar rice vinegar is just fine. Adjust the sriracha until the heat level is to your liking. I like a little more than is called for. I find bell peppers to be a little expensive, so I cut down to one red and one green, instead of two of each and it was just fine. I also went ahead and used 8 oz. carton of white mushrooms because the shiitake mushrooms are a little more spendy. I’ll leave it up to you. You can also shred the cauliflower ahead of time to save work at dinner time.

MEAL 3: SWEET POTATO CHICKPEA BUDDHA BOWL by Minimalist Baker

This easy bowl is packed full of goodness. Roasted sweet potatoes, red onion, kale, broccolini, crispy chickpeas with a simple but flavorful tahini maple sauce. Its simple, but so flavorful. Everytime I have made this, I didn’t have broccolini on hand and used broccoli instead and it still tasted great.

MEAL 4: INDIVIDUAL VEGETABLE AND POTATO PIES by Veggie and the Beast

Comfort food at it’s healthiest! These pies are a mix between shepher’s pie and pot pies. They are full of veggies and a hearty thick gravy and topped with mashed potatoes. If you don’t have individual oven proof dishes, just put everything together in a larger dish. It would also be delicious with a cauliflower potato mix. To make mashed cauliflower potatoes, just half the potatoes and add 1/4-1/2 head of cauliflower. Visit the recipe for Cauli-mashed potatoes on my blog HERE. To make this recipe “challenge friendly”, I leftout the butter, milk, and feta from the mashed potatoes and just used some of the potato water or coconut milk and salt to taste. I also used light coconut milk in the veggie gravy instead of cows milk and left out the butter when sauteing the veggies. The called for oil was enough.

MEAL 5: VEGETARIAN KORMA by Life Made Full

This korma is bursting with veg and full of flavor. I served it over cauliflower rice instead of regular rice to up the veggie content even further. To make the crushed cashews, I just pulsed a handful of raw cashews in my blender (you could probably get away with just leaving it out, too). I used light coconut milk in place of full fat without any trouble. If your potatoes are on the large side, I would only use two so that they don’t overwhelm the dish. I also used water to deglaze the pan when it started sticking while cooking.

MEAL 6: SWEET POTATO AND MILLET FALAFEL from Oh My Veggies

This falafel recipe is unique because it has sweet potatoes and millet inside in addition to the chickpeas. It also uses dry chickpeas that have been soaked for 24 hours, but not cooked, so plan accordinly to get them nice and soft. You kind of do need a food processor for this one. A blender might work, but I would still go for a food processor. I chose to pan fry them and they were delicious. Instead of stuffing them inside a pita, we put them on top of a greek salad made with romain lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, olives, and feta cheese. I also made a tzatziki ranch sauce to pour over the whole thing. The dressing is found on Keepin It Kind (CLICK HERE). The buffalo falafel on that blog looks amazing, too, and I will definatly be making it at some point. I included ingredeints for the sweet potato falafel, greek salad, and dressing in the shopping list.

NOTE: The recipe calls for a little bit of chickpea flour and baking soda to use only if the falafel mixture is too wet. I didn’t end up using this because my falafel mixture was just right. I didn’t put it on the list because it could potentially be an unnessary purchase of an ingredient that many people don’t use that often. If you do end up needing it, just grind some dry chickpeas in a high powered blender until it becomes powder, then sift it to remove larger pieces. Or you could probably just use normal flour. If you would like to purchase chickpea flour, you will need to add it to the shopping list. You can get Bob’s Red Mill brand at most grocery stores or a big bag for cheap at an Asain or Indian market.

MEAL 7: SAVORY ROASTED PUMPKIN (OR BUTTERNUT) SOUP WITH MUSHROOMS by Edible Experiments

I am putting this recipe on the meal plan because I still have a little pumpkin hanging around from Halloween. It works wonderfully with a butternut squash, too. So you choose whether you want pumpkin or butternut. The recipe on the blog lists a vegan option. Follow the directions for the vegan option to make it qualify for the challenge. If you are not doing the challenge, either way works great.

TIPS:

• Two recipes call for Cauliflower Rice. Make both batches at once and save one in the fridge or freezer until ready to use. I will also be posting a tutorial on cauliflower rice on tuesday, so watch for that!
• You could also roast all of the sweet potatoes for the week at once and reheat them when ready to use in the other recipes.
• You will probably have left over feta cheese, so save it an I will post a recipe to use up the rest in next week’s meal plan. It will last awhile.
• Don’t forget to add things to the list for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Lots of fruit, veggies, nuts, eggs, avocados, etc.

By Edible Experiments