A WEEK'S MENU FOR A VEGAN

This was first posted in 2013 and started out as a weekly menu, but I've since added to it. I need to update this, since I try to follow Dr Greger's Daily Dozen, and my lunch routine has changed considerably.)

Breakfast:

Porridge – made with water - is probably the healthiest breakfast. Combine it with blueberries, strawberries or whatever suits your fancy.  I like mine with blackstrap molasses – although I no longer draw faces and yachts on the porridge as I did with treacle when I was younger! (Still do with the grandchildren on occasion! :-) )

My wife has hers with sultanas (soaked overnight) and banana. (Ugh!)

I only have porridge about once a week - my usual breakfast used to be spicy fruit naan, slathered with mashed banana.

However, since I'm rarely hungry in the morning, I skip breakfast these days, except for the once a week porridge when my wife and I have a Sunday lie-in.

Lunch:

Bowl of fruit - berries, couple of stewed prunes and stewed apricots + flaxseeds, sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds and flaked almonds, all ground together.

Salad - handful each green lentils and either red kidney beans or butter beans, beetroot, dessertspoon balsamic vinegar, homemade hummus and oat milk (to moisten). With 1/4 tsp each turmeric and cayenne, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and mixed herbs + 1 dessertspoon nooch. Small handful walnuts.

Puree made with kale, wild rocket, dates, banana. 4 dsps of this with some oat milk makes a good smoothy.

Open faced sandwiches, with Marmite, peanut butter, hummus and sliced tomatoes – I have this often. I'll include slices of seitan if I have some around.

Socca wraps with hummus and tomatoes/mushrooms (lightly fried first)

Leftover pizza (link below)

Beans on toast

Dinner:

Rich ragu sauce with pasta

Chilli non carne (with the leftover ragu sauce)

Vegetable curry

Lasagne (using the leftover ragu sauce. This recipe uses slices of cooked potato instead of pasta - and it's absolutely gorgeous)

Thai red curry

Pizza

Curried lentils and cabbage (Savoy’s my favourite!) (Link to come)

Lentils and rice with mushrooms and cabbage (ready in 30 minutes)

Lentil curry in a socca omelette

Desserts

Crepe Suzette (a simple flour and water pancake with a homemade marmalade sauce and Benedictine with soya cream - just gorgeous!)

Chocolate cake (an 8" - 20cm - cake made with 5 ingredients which cost in the region of 70p!)

[More to come - and I shall link to all the recipes (except perhaps the beans* on toast! 😉 )]

(Oh, I dunno, I make a mean pot of 'baked beans' using red kidney beans…)

I've practiced some form of Intermittent Fasting for the past 8 years or more - currently I do a weekly 24hr fast where I eat lunch on one day and don't eat again until 24hrs after I've finished eating. When I began I did the 5:2 version - eating 1/4 of a day's calories on a Monday, say, did the same on a Wednesday, and ate normally on the other days. I lost about 24lbs over about 8 months on this, without even knowing I had any weight to lose - I thought a middle-age spread was normal! 

I'm mentioning this because, at the time, I posted a load of 5:2 recipes. Being plant-based, it's so easy to keep to the guidelines - I mean, on there you'll find a tasty curry for less than 100 cals! I can still reel off the calorie counts of many of my favourite veg - celery, 8 cals per 100g, etc.😀

There's also a link to my experiences with Intermittent Fasting.