Autumn (Fall if you're from US😅) Meal Prep!
Vegan, budget-friendly, for one person. You can double or triple ingredients depending on your needs. Buy more seasonal fruits and vegetables to keep it budget friendly.
Disclaimer. In the morning, I usually eat overnights oats with frozen berries and/or crushed nuts. Here, I prepared food for lunch and dinner.
baked vegetables: brussels sprouts, carrots and zucchini
salad: arugula, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, grain of your choice (mine was buckwheat)
0. Preheat the oven to 200C.
1. Marinated mushrooms prep. It takes time so let's start with mushrooms. Cut 7 white button mushrooms in quarters and slice 1 medium red onion. Add dry rosemary, smoked paprika, and 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar. Mix well and put it aside to get it marinated for 15-20 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, cook buckwheat (or grain of your choice) according to the instructions on the package.
3. Buckwheat is being cooked; mushroom are being marinated; time to bake vegetables. Cut the pumpkin and brussles sprouts in halves, 1 eggplant, 1 zucchini, and 1 carrot like on the photo below. Put vegetables in the preheated oven.
4. Marinated mushrooms cooking. Fry mushrooms with onion in the frying pan for 10-15 minutes.
5. Keep an eye on vegetables in the oven. Small pumpkin needs approx. 35-40 min. Remove vegetables from the oven once cooked. Brussels sprouts are shy as they don't look good in photographs like carrots and zucchini🙃 ok I forgot to take a photo of them.
6. Eggplant spread. Put the roasted eggplant, 2 tbsp tomato paste, black pepper, and salt in the blender and mix to get the smooth spread.
7. Salad. Mix grain, arugula, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans of your choice. I cooked frozen green beans. I mixed mustard, soy sauce, sriracha, and maple syrup for the dressing. Everything is to your taste. I add the dressing to the salad when I am ready to eat it to keep the salad fresh.
Meal prep is done. As I said, my go-to breakfast is overnight oats, and lunch/dinner is different combinations of what I cooked above, e.g., baked pumpkin and the salad, sandwich with the eggplant spread and vegan cheese, baked vegetables with tofu or canned chickpeas, fried mushrooms on toast, etc. Note: it's not everything what I ate during the last week but this meal prep helped a lot when you're hungry and don't have time to cook everything from scratch. I also are different fruits, berries, nuts, vegan yogurt.
I hope it gives you more ideas. I want to make more posts like this, i.e., meal prep, and additionally food haul with prices. Like/repost if it's helpful.
