Meal Plan Recap + Grocery List (June)

Jun10

Happy Sunday! As promised, here’s a recap of this week’s 3-day meal plan! If you’re tuning in for the first time this week, here’s what’s happening: A few months ago I did a 5-day plan where I started with one set of ingredients that worked into 5 consecutive meals. A lot of you wrote me to say that it was helpful, so using that same inspiration – meals that share similar ingredients but do not all taste the same – I came up with this week’s plan:

Here are the main ingredients:

Mangoes: because they’re so juicy and refreshing for summer.

Cucumber: again – refreshing.

Green Cabbage: because I always need multiple uses for a head of cabbage

Black Beans: because I don’t often finish a whole can at once.

Avocados: because everyone loves avocado!

Rice: Since we got back from our trip to Japan, I’ve been on a rice kick. And when I make a big batch, I have extra.

Other: Limes, tamari, pickled ginger, sriracha, avocado mayo – for overall flavor boosting. I generally have these things on hand at all times.

And here are the recipes! (click here for the Grocery List).

1. Mango & Black Bean Ginger Rice Bowls

I’ve been on this sweet-savory-crispy bowl kick lately – it’s packed with SO many refreshing veggies, making this a perfect meal for summer. The sauce – a tamari-lime vinaigrette is light but full of punchy flavor. Also – these bowls are quite large and some readers have commented that it made enough for lunch the next day.

2. Mango Cucumber Nori Wraps

This is veggie sushi for people like me who don’t want to spend time rolling maki. I’ve been a fan of this avocado-cucumber-mango combination ever since I made it for this sushi recipe. I love the juicy texture of the mango next to the crisp cucumber. It’s delicious wrapped with seasoned rice and yummy spicy mayo. For this recipe, I used up the rest of my rice and the 1/2 leftover cucumber from recipe #1. If you’ve never used nori at home – now’s your chance! Sea vegetables are so good for you and it’s an easy pantry staple to keep on hand. (Tip: if you can’t find nori, make lettuce wraps).

3. Spicy Mango, Black Bean & Avocado Tacos

If you’re like me, your meal cravings rotate in this circular pattern: 1. salad/bowl-type-meal 2. sushi 3. tacos… and repeat. So naturally, recipe #3 here is to take everything leftover – that chunk of leftover green cabbage from recipe #1, leftover black beans, the last mango, the remaining 1/2 avocado, and the yummy spicy mayo that was leftover from recipe #2. This recipe was the quickest to put together but – yum yum yum.

So that’s it! CLICK HERE for the Printable PDF Grocery List.

Let me know if you find this kind of post useful and if you’d like to see more of these!

Meal Plan Day 3: Spicy Mango, Black Bean & Avocado Tacos

Jun08

vegetarian / main dish

I don’t care if it’s taco Tuesday, taco Wednesday, or taco Friday… to me, any day is a good day to stuff things into tortillas! Some people buy a loaf of bread every week as a grocery staple – I buy tortillas. So naturally, my on-hand tortillas came in handy as part 3 of this week’s meal plan. Here are the ingredients that I started with:

from the Mango Black Bean Ginger Rice Bowls:
– a chunk of green cabbage (always trying to find a use for leftover cabbage!)
– black beans
– mango
– avocado

from the Cucumber Nori Wraps:
– the last 1/2 of an avocado
– mango
– spicy mayo

With those ingredients plus tortillas, a bit of cheese, cilantro, and a serrano pepper, I made these tacos. I tossed the cabbage with lime juice and salt to made a quick slaw. The beans got pepped up with some lime juice and chili powder.

What makes these especially tasty is the spicy mayo that I had leftover from the nori wraps. If you don’t think of mayo as a “healthy” ingredient, I recommend trying out Sir Kensington’s Avocado Oil Mayo – it’s life changing-ly delicious and made with really high quality ingredients. Of course, if you’re vegan – just use vegan mayo here. A little bit goes a long way.

So that’s a wrap on this week’s 3-recipe plan! I’ll post a grocery list on Sunday so you can make all three very easily and efficiently!

Meal Plan Day 2: Mango Cucumber Nori Wraps

Jun06

gluten free / vegetarian

Meal #2 this week: Nori wraps!

If you missed Monday’s post, I made these Mango Black Bean Ginger Rice Bowls as part of this week’s three meal series showing how ingredients from one meal can work into the next, and then again into one more. I did a similar five part plan a few months ago, and many of you wrote to tell me how helpful it was… so here we are again! At the end of the week, I’ll recap it all with a full grocery list.

For this recipe, I started with these ingredients that I had on hand from Monday’s mango bowls:

– Leftover rice
– 1/2 of a large cucumber
– an extra mango
– 1/2 an avocado
– pickled ginger and sesame seeds

I basically wrapped all of that up into nori squares and made some spicy mayo to go along with it. If you’ve never tried nori – now’s your chance! Sea vegetables are so good for you 🙂 and the crispy nori is so delicious wrapped around soft rice and juicy mango. If you’re still not convinced, these would also be yummy as lettuce wraps or collard wraps (if you use collards, blanch them briefly to soften the coarse greens).

There are some *very* optional ingredients here: strips of baked tofu (for protein) and a dab of umeboshi paste (salty pickled plum) that I always have on hand to enjoy with my rice.

This is a fun sushi-like dinner when you don’t feel like making actual sushi rolls (if you do want to make sushi rolls, check out this post). For these wraps, just prep all of the ingredients and assemble each wrap as you’re ready to eat it so that the nori stays crisp.

These wraps are a nice light summer dinner (or a tasty lunch). Depending on your appetite, you could certainly make more rice and/or add additional toppings into the mix if you like.

Stay tuned for the final recipe in the series on Friday!

Meal Plan Day 1: Mango Black Bean Ginger Rice Bowls

Jun04

main dish / vegan / gluten free

Welcome to another meal planning week! About a month ago, I wrote a 5-part series that was all about my basic approach to meal planning. This was the plan: I started the week with a set amount of groceries and ideas for 5 meals, each meal utilizing the ingredients from the day before. The “plan” was not set in stone, so that my dinners would be somewhat flexible if I got a new idea mid-way through the week. If you missed that series, check it out here 🙂

I got such a wonderful response to that series, so I thought, let’s do it again!

I chose this particular week because it’s summer(!) which means that we’ve been spending more time outside, more evenings strolling our neighborhood, and more time eating out. I love to eat out, but after awhile, I’m ready to start eating in again.

So here’s the first recipe for the week: these super refreshing Mango Black Bean Ginger Rice bowls. These are basically burrito bowls with asian-ish flavors.

If you’re a fan of our cookbook, you’ll recognize the sauce/dressing here – it’s a light tamari-lime vinaigrette, similar to the one that I poured over the Brussels Sprouts with Coconut Rice on page 63. I’m crazy for this dressing because it’s so simple but seriously flavorful. It’s also very flexible because it makes any rice bowl so delicious.

I made these bowls with mango, black beans, shredded cabbage, and a few crunchy veggies – blanched snap peas, sliced cucumbers, and carrots. The interesting pops of flavor come not only from that dressing, but from the pickled ginger, sliced basil, and a combo of toasted peanuts and sesame seeds. (If you’re nut free, skip the peanuts and just go for the sesame seeds).

This bowl is everything I want to eat in the summer, it’s light, crispy, crunchy, and herby with a light sauce and a great pop of sweetness from the mango.

This week, I’m planning 3 recipes based on these ingredients – at the end of the week, I’ll post a recap along with a grocery list. Stay tuned Wednesday for the next recipe!

A Simple Saturday Morning

Jun02

breakfast / at-home

This post is in partnership with Simply Beverages.

It’s spring(!) and our Saturday mornings are feeling so much happier and brighter now that the sun is shining and there’s finally not any snow on the ground. I love Saturday morning, I love not leaving the house until at least 1pm, and I love watching TV until we run out of things to watch. Somewhere in there, I’m also making a healthy breakfast (or brunch). Here’s a peek at what an ideal Saturday looks like for us:

First things first, we wake up next to this cute face:

… that is – until “cute” turns demanding. What you’re not seeing in the video below is the part where Jack howls back. A he-says-she-says (with Annie the dog) howling match goes on for a good 20 minutes until Jack ultimately loses and he gets up to feed the pups.

Our roles are simple: Jack feeds the dogs, and I feed us. On this particular day, I had some great things stashed away in my fridge. Some really fresh farmers market asparagus, pea shoots (from this post), among other ingredients. I usually make breakfast tacos or some kind of scrambled eggs, but this time I folded lots of fresh veggies into simple omelets.

This “recipe” isn’t much of a recipe: scramble 2 eggs (per omelet), swirl the eggs into the bottom of a skillet, and fill with pea shoots, peas, tomatoes, and feta cheese. Fold and plate once the eggs are set.

I simply cooked, seasoned, and plated some asparagus in a separate skillet and felt good that our day was getting off to a very green start.

Of course, everything’s just a little better with some avocado toast:

In my opinion, coffee and orange juice are MUSTS for a leisurely Saturday breakfast. I really love the new Simply Light Pulp Free Orange Juice. It has a wonderful light, delicious taste.

Of course, the typical Saturday usually entails errands, book recipes, or family activities after breakfast. But since this is the ideal Saturday, that means lingering around the breakfast table, maybe watching some TV, and heading off to the farmer’s market to get inspired for the week to come!

Also, trying to repeat this on Sunday 🙂

This post is in partnership with Simply Beverages, thank you for supporting the sponsors that keep cooking!

Love and Lemons

Healthy, Seasonal, Whole Food Recipes Blog

Meal Plan Recap + Grocery List (June)

Meal Plan Day 3: Spicy Mango, Black Bean & Avocado Tacos

Meal Plan Day 2: Mango Cucumber Nori Wraps

Meal Plan Day 1: Mango Black Bean Ginger Rice Bowls

A Simple Saturday Morning