Day 1: Roasted winter vegetables with polenta (with golden beets, parsnips, and butternut squash), Frozen fruit smoothie
Day 2: Sweet potato, carrot, and apple stew, Homemade pretzels
Day 3: ♥ Heart-shaped ♥ Homemade pizza, Coleslaw
Day 4: Vegan Shepherd’s pie
Day 5: Penne pasta with pesto (frozen supply) and sun dried tomatoes, Orange and apple slices
Day 6: Hummus platter with pita bread, carrot sticks, radishes, and olives
Day 7: Potato leek soup (hold the bacon), Pumpkin date muffins
Notes: Veg Week
Happy hump day everyone! Hope you are enjoying your February. We are at least knee deep in snow here in Wisconsin and dealing with the coldest temps we’ve had in a while. No better time like the present to declare this veg week.
Now you may be asking if every week is veg week? Perhaps so, but I’m asking all my readers to really commit to planning your meals around produce and grains this week. That means cutting back on animal products. Whether you choose to go completely vegan (no animal products allowed) or just dip your toes (fingers?) into a vegetarian cuisine (eggs and dairy included), it is entirely up to you. I’ve provided a meal plan of what my family will be eating this week to use as a jump start. You will find mostly vegan fare with a bit of eggs and cheese sprinkled in, but there are plenty of substitutions to eliminate all animal products and most of my recipes will give you those options. If you can conquer veg week smack dab in the middle of winter, you can do it any time of the year!
Why am I eliminating the delicious bacon from my potato leek soup? Well, there is new research showing that it is impossible to make meaningful environmental progress without reducing our reliance on meat and dairy in our diets. Raising animals requires a huge amount of water and land. Not to mention all the pesticides/fertilizers used and soil degradation that happens when growing animal feed. Additionally, the animals themselves create a significant amount of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. The study specifically calls out ruminants (beef, sheep, and goats). So even if you only reduce your consumption of red meat and dairy, you will have a positive impact on the environment. To read the full report, You can find the study abstract from Science here or check out this very interesting interview with one of the authors here.
Eating vegan is the single biggest way that you can reduce your impact on the planet, including more than cutting back on car and plane trips. – Poore et al. Science; June 2018
Want to learn more? Here is an article I wrote a while ago titled “Animal or Vegetable?”
