Vegan meal prepping for lazy people

If you’re like me, vegan meal prep—not to mention planning—sounds like WAY too much work.

I’m not a gourmet chef. And unlike Elana, I don’t even enjoy cooking that much. I don’t love the idea of spending hours planning and cooking meals for the week, and I’m not someone who loves four-day-old leftovers.

But your vegan meal prepping doesn’t have to be complicated or take hours each weekend!

Like most things in life, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to meal prepping (or, for that matter, veganism – but that’s another post). The best starting point is to decide which kind of meal planner you are: do you crave variety or love routine?

With a solid game plan going in, you can easily transition to a consistent routine of plant-based eating, with minimal stress or time spent in the kitchen.

1. Crave Variety? Use a Meal-Prepping Template!

Did you know that veganism lends itself beautifully to flying by the seat of your pants?

Give yourself permission to wing it.

You can build a satisfying, healthy meal simply by throwing together ingredients from your pantry. Start with a template that sounds reasonable to you. Many use the “grain, green, and bean” approach.

For example, “grains” include rice, quinoa, couscous, and bread. “Greens” are shorthand for veggies; you might choose literal greens like spinach or kale, or whatever vegetable sounds good to you. “Beans” include chickpeas, lentils, and of course, beans.

Get creative! This template has limitless possibilities but still feels easy. You might throw together:

• Burrito bowls with brown rice, corn, and fajita veggies, topped with black beans or vegan taco meat and guac
• Stir-fry with sautéed veggies and oven-baked tofu, served over rice or noodles, topped with teriyaki sauce and sesame seeds
• Whole wheat pasta with seasonal veggies

Once you have your options, optimize your vegan meal prep by getting stocked on the weekend with grains, greens, and beans that appeal to you (or are in season). You can then cook a big batch of rice, bake tofu, and roast veggies to have on hand for easy combining on the day of.

Voila! A system that’s easy, varied, and takes very little planning upfront.

2. Love Routine? Have a Meal “Uniform!”

On the other end of the spectrum are the people who would gladly give up variety just to have an easy routine.

If this sounds like you, give yourself permission to have an eating uniform.

Remember how Steve Jobs was famous for wearing the same outfit every day? The same can apply to eating! As long as you’ve got a solid nutritional foundation, there is nothing wrong with deciding on your uniform and sticking to it.

For example, you might have hearty oatmeal each morning. Your lunches might be giant salads with fresh greens, seasonal chopped veggies, beans, and a homemade nut-based dressing. For dinner, you might eat the same recipe weekly on its designated night of the week, like veggie fajitas on Tuesdays, loaded baked potatoes on Wednesdays, and vegan pizzas on Fridays.

Or, if you want to mix it up a bit, you could have category nights, like taco Tuesdays, soup Wednesdays, stir-fry Thursdays, and so on. Then, select new or favorite recipes for each category when you sit down to plan your meals for the week or month.

Having a uniform makes meal planning much less daunting. And your vegan meal prep becomes a breeze when you know exactly what you’ll eat each week. The task can become routine if you prep the same (or almost the same) foods every weekend.

And as we all know, practice makes perfect.

And if you’re looking for an easy-to-use meal planner, you can steal our Trello template here!

Final Thoughts

You don’t need to build a complicated menu or spend hours chopping and cooking each weekend. If you’re lazy (like me), meal-prepping might mean preparing your pantry and fridge so you can throw together a meal that you’ve planned for in advance.

Once you determine whether you’re the kind of person who craves variety or loves routine more, you can choose your approach, and the rest falls into place.

Chop those veggies, cook that rice, make maybe one freezer-friendly meal ahead of time, and you’re well on your way to an easy week of healthy eating!

Which approach sounds more like you? Do you fall into another category entirely? Let us know in the comments below!