142: Making Incredibly Delicious and Plant-Based Meals, Fast

In this episode, we’re digging into fast, whole plant food cooking—because eating healthy shouldn’t feel like a part-time job.

We’ll chat about batch cooking as your secret time-saving weapon and how to stock your fridge with ready-to-go convenience foods (no processed food required). I’ll share how I use grains, sauces, soups, and dressings to throw meals together during the week without the stress.

Eating whole-food plant-based food doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated. It’s all about meeting yourself where you’re at and building meals that work for you.

• Start a free trial to Meal Plan Club
• Plant Fueled Meal Plans: Follow Along for Five Nights of Flavor
• Mother of All Plant-Based Batch Cooking Resources
• Rainbow Crunch Topping (Salad mix topping)
• Basic Grains from Scratch
• Basic Beans & Legumes from Scratch, or use from the can
• Drop It Club: Plant-Powered Weight Loss
• Join Recipe Club for just $12 a month

Transcript (auto-generated, may have errors) 

Molly Patrick (00:01.398)
Hey there, this is Molly and welcome to the Clean Food Dirty Girl podcast. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. So today’s topic is all about just very fast food and not fast food, fast food, like fast food. So not like going through the drive-through fast food, like making fast food. So if you

are in a place in your life where you’re like, know what, I just need simple. I don’t have it in me to get complicated or to follow meal, know, follow complicated meal plans. So our meal plans, we have almost 500 of them. Actually, we might have 500 of them by the time you’re listening to this, which is crazy pants. And we have over 5,000 recipes in our Clean Food Dirty Girl portal.

which is insane to me. These are all handcrafted by me and my team. And, you know, we started out with one meal plan and one recipe, and that was a long time ago. So I can’t believe that we have this amazing vault of whole food plant-based meal plans and recipes that’s so good, so yummy, so vast, so many different.

types of recipes and types of food and different types of cuisines and I mean just all the whole food plant-based yums. And we have, so for our meal plans we have gourmet versions and for, we still need to do about 30 simple meal plans to go with our gourmet versions. And so what’s cool is if you are new to whole food plant-based cooking or if you’re new to Clean Food Dirty Girl or new to cooking in general,

We suggest to start with a simple plan and then to work your way up because the simple plans only have five batching recipes and then it’s kind of easier. They’re simple. They’re simple versions. The gourmet versions are a little bit more labor intensive, but they’re really restaurant quality. We go all out and there’s all the little extras and little things that kind of take the meals over the top. There are both versions to choose from.

Molly Patrick (02:22.094)
which is an awesome thing. We didn’t always have that. And so this has been great for people who don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen or desire or who are new to this. Now that said, I know that there are some people who are like, I don’t even want to follow a meal plan. I just want to eat this way and not have it be complicated and not have it take a lot of time. And to that, mean, okay, so I always say that batch cooking is a really great time management tool.

And the only reason I can put together food quickly throughout the week and like under 10 minutes is if I batch cook. Like I’m not going to cook all of this stuff from scratch every single meal and be able to get food together in 10 minutes. I just wouldn’t. And so this is all about making your own convenience foods. That’s really what this process of batch cooking is. You’re taking the raw ingredients and you’re

cooking them and batching them so that you have convenient food during the week to pull together and just to heat up. Now, some people are like, okay, I don’t wanna batch a meal plan, but I’m just gonna prep a few things. For me, it’s kind of the same thing. Like if you are following one of our plans, let’s just say the simple.

There’s five batching items and those batching items are going to probably be a soup, a dressing, a grain, some kind of sauce and a bean, right? Because we’re talking whole food plant-based. So we’re talking veggies, beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds, some fruit, right? These are the categories. And so really it’s going to be, you know, those five things.

are gonna be the things that are gonna be helpful for you to make meals throughout the week. Now, if you don’t wanna think about it as batch cooking, you definitely don’t have to, you could think about it as prepping, but whether you follow one of our meal plans or one of our simple plans or gourmet plans or whatever, or you just wanna make a few recipes or a few batches of things on the weekend so that you have food later in the week, it’s basically the same thing and it’s gonna save you time during the week.

Molly Patrick (04:40.822)
The only difference is that if you’re following one of our meal plans, we’re going to show you exactly what to do with the items that you made over the weekend. Here’s how you’re going to incorporate them into the meals so that you don’t have to think about what to do with that cheesy sauce you made or what to do with that batch of quinoa that you made because we’re showing you what to do. And so that can be really helpful. Now,

That said, the more you do this and the more you cook this way, the more confident you’re going to get at putting things together in a yummy way that don’t require recipes necessarily. They require recipes, but maybe they don’t require a meal plan. Now, there’s some people who are like, nope, I’ve done this for years, but I don’t want to think about it. I just want to follow along and do it. And that’s why our plans are so awesome. For other people, they’re like, I just want to make a few compilations.

and kind of put some meals together on my own depending on what I have. That totally works too. So that’s why we have meal plans and we have access to all of our recipes as well because then you can just decide, you can search for cheesy sauces, you can search for soups, you can search for grains and all the recipes will pop up and you can decide what to make. So I wanna give you an example of

If I wasn’t following a meal plan, but I wanted to make myself some convenient foods for the week, this is kind of an example of what I would do. So I would definitely make a salad dressing because I love salads and I want to be able to eat lots of salads throughout the week. And if I make a dressing that I make it once, I can use it many times. I would make some

kind of a whole grain. Maybe that’s rice, maybe that’s millet, maybe that’s buckwheat, maybe that’s quinoa. I would choose one grain to make so that I could incorporate that in different ways. I would definitely make a cheesy sauce or some kind of a sauce because that’s gonna go well with lots of things. I’ll give you some examples, but a cheesy sauce is a really solid sauce. It’s very versatile. We have many cheesy sauce recipes in our portal.

Molly Patrick (07:05.09)
I would make a soup and ideally a soup that has beans and that has lots of veggies in it. So you’re getting a big like plant powered spoonful with every bite. And then I would make sure to either cook a batch of beans or to have canned beans in my kitchen. Cause that’s going to be really easy to top things with and to incorporate into your meals. And it’s fast once your beans are cooked.

then it’s super fast if you have canned beans and it’s just gonna take opening the can, rinsing them and then adding them. And then some veggies. You wanna make sure that you have lettuce and leafy greens and some cucumbers, maybe some zucchini, some carrots, broccoli, cauliflower. You wanna make sure that you have a nice variety of veggies. Even if you’re not necessarily putting those veggies in recipes, you wanna make sure that you have those handy.

What I always like to do is wash my veggies when I get home from the farmer’s market, because that’s one less thing I have to do when I’m prepping those veggies later in the week. And one thing that I really love to do is put together like a salad mix. And so I would chop some carrots, some celery and some cabbage and you know, maybe some cucumber, not so much, cause cucumber is kind of wet and

It can, so I like to chop the dry stuff. We have a really yummy recipe in the CFDG portal. And I think, think, think it’s on the blog as well. It’s a rainbow crunch topping that I really like to have. And so that would be a really nice addition to many different things, including salads, but making sure that you have that. And so those are kind of like the basics, like

So just to recap, a salad dressing, a grain, a cheesy sauce, a soup, some veggies and some beans. And that’s pretty quick. I mean, let’s say if I were doing this, I would put the grains in the instant pot. Boom. While that was cooking, I would probably prep the veggies. Then I would start on the cheesy sauce. Then I would make the dressing. And then

Molly Patrick (09:23.522)
I’d probably just use, maybe I’d use some canned beans if I was making it really easy for myself. I like to have a variety of canned beans. So chickpeas, kidney beans, any kind of white bean, black bean, pinto beans, any kind of, I’ve been really loving, there’s this Italian brand of canned lima beans that I’ve been able to get at my local health food store for a while. Those have been really yummy. I really love to cook my own beans as well.

but just having those canned beans work in a pinch and it’s a great addition. So if I had to choose one more thing to kind of make throughout the week, I’d do some marinated tofu. And that’s kind of another go-to staple that has a lot of variety. But let’s just stick with this basic list. Salad dressing, grain, cheesy sauce, veggies, and canned beans. So with that, you could…

throw together so many things. Make sure you have some potatoes, right? Some potatoes handy. So one thing that I did earlier this week was I put a bunch of Yukon gold potatoes in the Instant Pot. put a little bit of water, put the potatoes on the trivet, cooked them for 20 minutes, and then I put them in a bowl, mashed them, added a little bit of soy milk with a little bit of salt and pepper.

and I had these delicious mashed potatoes, heated up some of cheesy sauce I made, added some white beans and then some kale. And that was like this wonderful potato bowl. And it was so fast, you know, once I had those potatoes cooked. And you could even cook those potatoes on your batching day if you want to, that’s something, you know, because I work from home, I like to eat lunch at about 1230, so.

you know, at 11 45, I’m like, okay, well, I’m to cook those potatoes so that they’re ready at lunch. can just mash them, add in the soy milk, whip them up, heat up the cheesy sauce, put on the beans and put on the kale. And then that’s a very fast meal. So the other thing, sometimes I like to cook pasta and I’ll cook like a whole box or half of a box of pasta just as I’m preparing my, my food on the weekend.

Molly Patrick (11:44.812)
just so that then when I’m ready to eat the pasta, I’ll have to do is put it in the microwave or I can put it in a bowl, the cooked pasta in a bowl and then pour boiling water over it and then put it through a strainer. So there’s a couple of ways to heat it. If you don’t have a microwave, there’s other ways. And then just heat up some cheesy sauce, steam some broccoli or cauliflower and add some beans in with the pasta. Super, super easy. You could even add some

arugula, that would be a great addition. And you already have the cheesy sauce made, you have the pasta cooked, you could just steam some broccoli or cauliflower and then literally put the hot pasta in a bowl with some beans, with some arugula, with the steamed cruciferous veggies, put the cheesy sauce on top and then boom, like super, super easy to throw that together. Very, very simple. Doesn’t require too much planning, but again, making sure you have that.

cheesy sauce, that’s a big one, because the cheesy sauce, once you make one batch, you can use it all throughout the week. You’re not going to be using it one time, which is why it’s so handy. Another thing with the cheesy sauce, could do like having some corn tortillas, just heating those up, putting some cheesy sauce on those, and then doing just some pinto beans and then a bunch of lettuce and tomatoes.

super, super, super easy. And we could do baked potatoes. I I talked about mashed potatoes, but you could also bake some potatoes while you’re cooking your stuff, right? While you’re making your grains and your salad dressing and stuff, you could just put some potatoes in the oven and you could put like five of them in there so that you have potatoes throughout the week. And if you have a cheesy sauce and some veggies and some beans, then you’re gonna have a loaded baked potato really quickly.

for lunch and dinner throughout the week. Another one, so just a soup. mean, seriously, there’s nothing easier than taking soup out of the fridge, heating it up, and then eating it. I mean, really, you’re just heating up soup. It would take more time to, I mean, it would take about the same amount of time to open a can and heat it up, right? So you’re really creating the ultimate convenience food with soup. And again, you know, put in lots of veggies, lots of beans.

Molly Patrick (14:10.316)
If you search like veggie soup in our portal, so many will come up and you can just choose one that looks good to you. And if it doesn’t have beans, you can just add beans. And if you’re doing a grain, you can like put some grain, some heated up grains in the bottom of your bowl so that that soup becomes even more nutrient dense and fiber rich, right? By adding the grains in there and it’ll fill you up for a long time. So I

you’ll never find my fridge without a soup. Like I will have soup all the time because it’s really fast, easy and nutrient packed. Again, the more veggies and beans, the better. So sometimes I have blended soup, sometimes I have chunky soups. mean, this is the ultimate fast food really. And then…

So we have, and then the grains. basically grains are really handy to add to soup, to add on top of salads and just to do bowls with. So you could do a heated up grain, heated up beans. You could do some of that rainbow veggie mix that I was talking about and then some cheesy sauce and that’s delicious and so, so, so fast. So grains are great for bowls and for just topping things with.

topping salads, putting in soups. And then a salad dressing. so salad dressings are great obviously for big salads. I mean, I’ve written about big salads a lot. I’ve talked about big ass salads on the podcast a lot, but really salads are just a great way to, know, salads that are like a meal. So they have lots of different veggies and definitely beans. Some baked tofu would be great.

rains and then plenty of salad dressing on top. also like to do some toasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds with a little bit of soy sauce to add that nice little salty crunch on top that just kind of takes it to the next level. But having a dressing, I mean, if I make a dressing on the weekend, I will eat more salads. That’s all there is to it. If I don’t have a dressing, I won’t eat as many veggies. But I also like to have salads. Like, okay, for example,

Molly Patrick (16:33.066)
If I was doing, maybe I would do a grilled cheese. So if I had some of that buckwheat bread that I love to make, or even if I had a store bought bread, then I could make a quick grilled cheese sandwich with the cheesy sauce. And on the side, I could do like carrot sticks and celery sticks and some cucumber, right? And then I could just drizzle that with dressing or dip those in a salad dressing. So that’s another.

really great way to use dressing as well. And I also use dressing for like mayonnaise on a sandwich. So if I’m doing like a big veggie sandwich, I made a really delicious, very quick like chickpea mash the other day that had mashed chickpeas and then some red onion and some celery and some shredded carrots. And I had some miso tahini dressing in the fridge and I just put some of that in, mixed it up and it was this great like chickpea mash filling that I put on top of my salads. I also made tacos with them.

super super easy especially if using canned beans. I do like to simmer my canned beans in water for a little while just because especially chickpeas and it depends on the brand but I like really soft beans. I don’t want to have like al dente beans. I want my beans to be nice and soft so if I open a can and I try one and it’s not super soft I’ll just simmer them.

in hot water for like five minutes to soften them up. That’s a little aside, but a little tip there. And then, oh, with the cheesy sauce, it’s so, so easy. You could just do some steamed veggies, like some steamed broccoli, cauliflower, celery, carrot, and like snap peas. Just do a mix of those, put them in a steamer basket, steam them for like, I don’t know, seven minutes or until they’re soft to your liking, and then put some cheesy sauce on top of those. Like that’s…

so easy, so good. And you could even do that with like a side of soup, for example. And that could be really hearty. And you could even add some beans to that. there are so many ways. hummus is another great one. Just having a thing of hummus, you could put hummus on salads, you could make tacos, you could make sandwiches, but having hummus around is very helpful as well. those are just…

Molly Patrick (18:55.094)
some things that if I wasn’t going to follow one of our meal plans, but I just wanted very basic, easy food, those are some ideas. I’m bringing this up because, so with Drop It Club, this is our plant powered weight loss membership, which is doing so well and people are getting amazing results and the group is just so heartwarming and…

full of love and support. And I’m so glad that I decided to create this program and to do this program because it’s really been just a joy. But people ask a lot, you know, on our connection calls or in the private Facebook group, or we’ll email in and be like, okay, what’s the simplest, most simple meals? And we’re actually working on a good resource for that to give to people. But we’ve had that question so many times that I wanted to jump on here because I thought, well,

If they are curious and interested to know, then I’m sure that other people would be as well, right? Because I think that people have this idea that whole food plant-based eating has to be really complicated. And like it can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. And just doing basic stuff is totally fine. I do suggest having, you if you don’t want to follow the meal plans, we do have Recipe Club.

the Clean Food Dirty Girl Recipe Club for just $12 a month and you have access to all of our recipes. And one really cool thing that you can do is when you open a recipe, you can scroll down to the bottom and you can actually see what recipe or what dishes or what meals that recipe was used in and what meal plans. But if you don’t have access to the meal plans, that won’t really matter. But like, okay, so for example,

I’m just gonna do it right now. So if I go to this cheesy sauce, I made the fast food style cheesy sauce over the weekend. And if I scroll down, I can see all of the recipes that it was in. So here’s a smashed potato cheeseburger bowl. Here’s cheesy smashed potato bites, right? Here’s a double cheesy mac and cheese with crispy cauliflower. Here’s an insanely cheesy

Molly Patrick (21:15.626)
or insanely easy broccoli soup. Here it is in a Baja cheesy penne pasta bowl. Here it is in burritos. Here it is in nachos. So you could kind of get some ideas with how it’s used actually right within the portal. And you could kind of get inspired that way as well. So I often do that and that’s a pretty cool feature. So I wanted to give you a few ideas and give you a little bit of inspiration to, you know, just eat all the plants. However, that

Like I always say, gotta meet yourself where you’re at. And there’s different seasons in our lives. And sometimes we’re like, you know what, following meal plans is gonna be very helpful and it’s going to save time. And I really need somebody else to do the thinking for me. And other times we’re like, hey, I just wanna make a few components and then I’ll figure it out myself, right? And both are good. And there’s other ways to do it too. There’s all the ways. And so meet yourself where you’re at. And if you’re not,

necessarily needing to follow meal plans, don’t be afraid just to make a few things over the weekend so that you have that convenience food ready to go during the week and putting together just very simple combinations. Again, it doesn’t have to be complicated. So take this, go eat some plants, go make some plants, don’t spend too much time on it. And yeah, I hope that this was helpful. Okay.

I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.