Reasons You’re Not Plant-Based Meal Planning

No one needs to tell you planning your meals is a good idea. Trouble is, actually doing it can be a challenge. It’s one of those things that gets put in the “I should do this, but I probably won’t” category in the back of the mind. Coincidentally, that’s also where “writing thank you notes” and “flossing every day” usually end up. (Once a week is fine, right? Right??)

It’s easy to think of all the reasons you can’t plan your meals. But do they hold up? We’re going to break a few of those reasons down and let you know how we can help. Plant based meal planning can be simple, accessible, and quite possibly your new favorite thing. Let’s get to it.

Modern life is busy. Most of us are balancing careers, significant others, friendships, chores, exercise, a pet or two, hobbies, and hopefully, some time for self care. If you’re a parent, that load is doubled, tripled, quadrupled… Add plant-based meal planning and cooking every night, and you’re looking at a recipe (see what we did there?) for S T R E S S.

Meal planning won’t make laundry fun or help you remember to call your mom, but it can relieve some of the mental load and answer the ever-present “What’s for dinner?” question. 

Setting time aside to figure out the week’s food means that the task is done, and you don’t have to think about it again. You can make your own meal plan from scratch, or you can choose one of our meal plans to follow, and we’ll plan your dinners for you. Plus, we feature two plans every week, one gourmet and one simple so, so decision fatigue can take a hike. Just adjust your servings and follow along. Our meal plans include grocery lists, a batch cooking list (we’ll get to that in a bit), recipes, and instructions for a week’s worth of incredible plant based dinners.

Need to add breakfasts and lunches? Use our Magic Meal Planner to plan every meal.

Groceries ain’t cheap, friend, and inflation is real. Those moldy peppers in the fridge have never seemed so judgmental. But meal planning can help. By planning your meals, you’ll:

1. Only buy what you need
2. Use what you buy
3. Avoid last-minute trips to the grocery store
4. Save money on last-minute takeout picked up on the way home

Our plans are designed to utilize most ingredients across multiple meals, and when you change your servings, the grocery list is adjusted automatically. Everything is mobile-friendly so you can use your phone to refer to the list and check things off right in the aisle.

Read about how just the act of batch cooking helps save money. Maybe you’ve heard that plant based eating is expensive. Not when you focus on whole plants and minimally processed ingredients. One of our team members feeds her family of five for an average of less than $6 per person per day.

Setting aside time to plan your meals each week means you’ll know exactly what’s for dinner every night and exactly what to buy so your shopping is more efficient.

You’ll save even more time using our meal plans because everything is already planned for you. But the real game-changer is batch cooking. Batch cooking is when you dedicate a chunk of time to cooking the bulk of your food for the week, usually over the weekend. It’s similar to meal prep, but doesn’t usually include the assembly of full meals.

Team Dirty is all about batch cooking, and we’ve been singing its praises for a long time. Molly Patrick, our co-founder, has written about why people batch cook, and all of our meal plans include a batching list that’s designed for maximum efficiency. 

Batching is totally optional, but if you want to pull together delicious, healthy, plant based meals in a fraction of the time it would take to cook from scratch each day, then batching is where it’s at. Every minute you batch cook is a minute not spent in your kitchen later.

Meal planning can open up a world of food possibilities. It lends itself easily to cooking on a theme, one of the best ways to try new foods. Our recipe developer’s (AKA Wizards) full-time job is to create new delicious recipes to keep your tastebuds happy.

Cooking with plants is accessible, affordable, and a fantastic vehicle for trying new spices and seasonings. Want to dive in to Indian or Cuban food? Explore texture, a single veggie, or the world of plant based sauces? Or maybe you’d like to celebrate a special occasion? There are hundreds of meal plans in Clean Food Dirty Girl that can help. 

Clean Food Dirty Girl is like a plant based digital cookbook with new yums constantly added. 

By following a meal plan, you’ll come across a technique you’ve never tried or an unfamiliar ingredient you need to learn to prepare (looking at you, jackfruit). Meal planning can give you the confidence to tackle these head-on and before you know it, you’re cooking without oil and shredding jackfruit like a pro. Hell, you might even skip measuring spices after a few months as you become a plant based baddie who can eyeball a teaspoon on the spot! 

Learning new things can be intimidating. We include clear step-by-step recipe instructions and short ingredient prep videos in every meal plan. Plus, help articles, an incredibly supportive community, and the best customer support team out there are all within reach.

The last thing you’re probably considering is nutrient diversity when the only dinner option is takeout at 6:59 pm after a crazy busy day. It’s a lot easier to make sure you’re eating a wide variety of plant foods and maximizing the health of your diet when you’re planning meals.

What’s even easier? Having us do that for you. There are some nutrients that every plant based eater must be mindful of, but overall, the key to a wildly healthy plant-based diet is nutrient diversity. The best guarantee of nutrient diversity is eating a wide array of colorful whole plant foods. Our meal plans are designed with this in mind, so you don’t have to sweat it. If you’re the type that likes to track things, our recipes also include nutrition information. Easy peasy!

Making a meal plan may not seem like a very adaptable way to get food on the table, but with a few considerations, it can absolutely help. One of the most flexible ways to meal plan is to focus on mix-and-match components. Instead of deciding in advance exactly what you’ll eat every day, pick a few staples that play well together: a soup, a grain, a salad dressing, and something you can make ahead to serve in a couple of different ways, like baked tofu. 

Then, decide on a few additions or extras, like salad ingredients, veggies for roasting, tortillas, salsa, etc. From there, you can decide what works each night and prepare it. This approach works especially well with batch cooking. Once your staples are in the fridge, throwing meals together on the fly is a cinch. 

Flexibility is built into Clean Food Dirty Girl. 

• Adjust your servings
• Remove individual components from meals (for those days when you want the entree but not the side)
• Make more of a specific recipe (always have extra of your favorite salad dressing)
• Add custom items to your grocery list
• Use the Magic Meal Planner to mix and match meal plans  
• Make notes on recipes and meal plans
• Recipes are adaptable, so you can make substitutions that work for you
• Recipes that freeze well are labeled, so when last-minute plans come up, you can confidently pop things in the freezer to enjoy later

So, are you ready to try plant-based meal planning?

So maybe now that you’ve seen just how helpful planning your meals can be and how easy Clean Food Dirty Girl makes it, you can move meal planning from the dusty corner in the back of your mind to the “Wow, this is actually damn amazing” category. But you don’t have to blindly trust us. Try plant-based meal planning with a free 10-day trial and see for yourself!  No credit card or perfection required.

Sign up and choose one of these beginner-friendly plans to get started. Future-you will thank present-you.

Now we’re going to go floss our teeth. 😁

Xo

Team Dirty