- Do you want to feed your family plant-based meals?
- Would you prefer to avoid processed food and expensive prepared meals?
- Does scrolling Instagram and Pinterest for dinner ideas exhaust and overwhelm you?
- Are you tired of spending hours in the kitchen every day?
- Do you fumble your way through unfamiliar plant-based recipes, only to be disappointed with the results?
- Would you like to help your picky eaters (children and adults!) expand their list of “OK” foods… without a fight?
- Are you sick of deciding “what’s for dinner?” on top of everything else you have to decide upon?
You know that meal planning and batch cooking are big parts of the solution…
but you just can’t seem to get started or stick with it.
It’s time for a change. Pick your battles.
You make a lot of decisions every day.
“What’s for dinner?” doesn’t have to be one of them.
Let me take meal planning off your hands.
I guarantee it will save you a ton of time and money.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE
VEGAN FAMILY
MEAL PLANS
a plant-based meal planning service for busy families
No more worrying about dinner recipes and shopping lists.
Sign up today to get one year of healthy plant-based dinner plans and all the tools and support you need to make it stick…
for less than $10 per month!
(including lifetime access to updates and support)
What is included in the Vegan Family Meal Plans?
Your subscription gets you a fresh 100% vegan meal plan delivered as a PDF file to your inbox every two weeks on Wednesday around noon, Pacific time. You can also access the meal plans on a private web site.
Each plan includes:
- 5 dinners per week (10 dinners per plan total)
- Featured seasonal ingredients
- Shopping list organized by section with corresponding recipes and amounts required
- Suggested substitutions to accommodate those with gluten-free diets, nut allergies… and really busy schedules!
- Easy-to-follow weeknight instructions you can leave on the fridge (great for those with bigger kids or cooking partners)
- Detailed instructions for a prep session, so that you can get organized ahead of time
- Ideas to help you feed hungry monsters (growing teenagers and construction workers included)
All meals can be deconstructed to familiarize picky eaters with new ingredients… without forcing adults to eat “kid food” all the time.
Who needs more than 260 dinner recipes?
The Vegan Family Meal Plans cover 5 dinner per week for a whole year. That’s why the yearly subscription is actually for your lifetime. Every year, I revise and update the meal plans to make them easier to use, fix typos, and improve recipes based on new things I learn. Sometimes, I swap a recipe in favor of a new, tastier one. I continue to send you the meal plans by email every other week, but I don’t create brand new recipes all the time. That would be exhausting, for me and for you too! In fact, I trust that you will be pretty happy to see old favorites return after a year.
Bonus: You’ll grow your plant-based cooking skills
After one year of cooking along with the Vegan Family Meal Plans, you’ll have become a master at cooking all the basic plant-based dishes there are: bowls and salads, noodle and pasta dishes, stir-fries, sauces, risottos, scrambles, and more.
My goal is that, when you “graduate” from that first year, you’ll be able to basically cook any of the meal plan dishes by simply looking at the title and list of ingredients.
You’ll also be able to substitute ingredients and improvise your own dinner based, using the meal plans for loose guidance.
You won’t have to decide “what’s for dinner?” anymore but, if you feel like it, you’ll have become an expert at giving a personal twist to your meals.
How much does it cost?
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Frequently Asked Questions
What about breakfast and lunch?
Subscribers say that they love eating leftovers from the meal plan’s dinners for lunch. For breakfast, I recommend sticking to simple favorites that do not require cooking. I will happily recommend a few breakfast solutions to you if needed.
We are in a rush at dinner time. Will this work for my family?
The plans include a combination of meals that will be entirely prepared ahead (simply reheat!), meals that you quickly cook on weeknights (often with components you prepared on the weekend – 20-30 minutes active time), and slow cooker meals (just eat!). If you are in a total rush every single night and are unable to dedicate 10-15 minutes to reheating the components of dinner… maybe this isn’t the right meal plan for you. (Seriously, if you can make whole foods plant-based eating work under such conditions… email me to teach me how!)
Do you use weird ingredients in your recipes?
The recipes are focused on whole grains and seasonal produce. I do suggest quinoa or barley every other plan, is that weird? Some recipes include nutritional yeast flakes or and vegan Worcestershire sauce. The latter can be found at dollar stores nowadays, so I guess I don’t hit too high on the “weird” scale.
How long do the prep sessions require?
With the Vegan Family Meal Plans, there is only one “big” prep session every other week. It can take from one hour (if you take all the shortcuts and buy some ready-made substitutes) to four hours (if you are new to batch cooking and insist on making absolutely everything from scratch… or if you are simultaneously trying to put a toddler down for nap time). On the “off prep week,” there are usually fewer prep tasks to do, like cooking a big batch of brown rice and mixing a sauce.
I need to lose 10, 20, 50 pounds, will the meal plans help?
My meal plans are designed with convenience, taste and nutrition in mind. They are not specifically designed for weight loss. Having a dinner plan, however, will definitely help you avoid oil-laden take-out and calorie-dense processed food.
We have food restrictions – can you help?
Many of the meals are accidentally gluten-free, or they will be if you use gf pasta or the suggested grain substitutes. I occasionally put home-made seitan on the menu, in which case the gf group is encouraged to use tofu or a gf commercial meat substitute instead. Nut-free substitutions are always highlighted. I use soy products like tofu or edamame on average once per week in the plans; the soy-free people can go for chickpeas instead. If you struggle with multiple allergies and sensitivities, I feel your pain, and hope my meal plans can still inspire you… but perhaps you need a customized meal plan designed by a registered dietitian.
Do your recipes include oil?
You are free to use a small amount of oil – or not – to sauté and roast. If you choose not to, the usual oil-free cooking strategies apply (have a little water or broth at hand when sautéing, mist veggies before roasting…). I never include recipes that actually require oil to work.
What if I sign up between two meal plan delivery dates?
Within 24 hours of subscribing, you will receive the most recently released meal plan. Then, you will receive the next meal plans on schedule. You can also access the current meal plan on the private web site at any time. Yearly/lifetime subscribers can access all the meal plans all the time.
My husband/kids/partner/cousin is/are not vegan, can you help?
You will not find meat or other animal products in my meal plans. However, you should know that my husband only recently transitioned to all-plant-based, yet has been enjoying dinner consistently since the beginning. If you follow the Vegan Family Meal Plans, and also batch a bit of meat for a reluctant family member in order to avoid starting a food war, I will not call the Vegan Police on you. You can expect the occasional tip to help push animal products off the plate.
What about “hangry” monsters, athletes and construction workers?
The recipes in the meal plans are intended for a family of 4 with two little people, and generally create enough leftovers for a lunch or two. Smart cooks often double batch to have (even more) extra to freeze, and soon you’ll be doing it too. Are you trying to satisfy growing teenagers or appease every-hungry husbands? Every meal plan includes tips to increase meal size and make the meals more filling.
Welcome to my Vegan Family Kitchen. My name is Brigitte and I have been helping families with meal planning since 2017.
My mom always said: “The worst thing about cooking dinner is deciding what to make!” I remember, as a kid, when she’d casually ask, sometime around 4 pm: “What does everyone want to eat tonight?” We’d all just scamper away quietly.
Getting dinner ideas wasn’t too much of a problem for me until 2014. That’s when I committed to cooking only plant-based dinners at home. At that time, I had a 2-year old at home and another child on the way, so nutrition was a top concern. Plus, my husband and I were foodies. A meat- and cheese-lover raised on a farm, I had never given a lot of thought to where my food came from. But now I was bothered by the environmental impact of what we were eating. Plus, everything I learned about health and ethics pointed toward adopting a plant-based diet. I enjoyed cooking as an omnivore, but transitioning to vegan had me stumped: what was I going to feed my family now?!?
My meal planning routine ground to a crawl. Every weekend, I spent HOURS browsing cookbooks and various blogs in search of dinner recipes that would hit all the spots:
- nutritious and filling to cover the needs of growing children and athletic adults,
- delicious and diverse, so that my husband would not revolt against my newfound love of plants,
- and familiar dishes that were easy-enough to make without too many weird ingredients.
Finding my bearings in that new-to-me cooking universe took me about two years. In 2016, using my project management skills, I developed a system that made it easier for me to create seasonal meal plans and compile shopping lists quickly, while making sure to use what I already had at hand to avoid wasting food (and money!). Then, I figured out what batch cooking steps I should be taking on weekends, when I was less stressed and tired, to make weeknight cooking a breeze. In 2017, I decided to share everything I had learned to help others eat more plant-based dinners cooked at home, mostly from scratch. The Vegan Family Meal Plans were born.
You have to know that I am not a dietitian or a nutritionist. I actually have a Ph.D. in sociology of education, which is a fancy way of saying that I know a lot about how people and societies learn and change. Adopting a vegan lifestyle and a plant-based diet is a big change for anyone who’s been omnivore their whole life! And maintaining the change, day after day, can be a challenge – especially if your whole family is not totally on board.
My understanding of this transition, and of the challenges of maintaining a vegan lifestyle and raising children on a plant-based diet in a world of meat eaters, help me develop tools that will work for you too.
You may think that’s funny, but I really believe home economics can change the world. Vegan home economics, that is! Following carefully-crafted meal plans and eating deliciously designed meals will help you and your family stick with a plant-based diet by cutting back on all the stress and headaches associated with deciding what to eat and making meals appear on the table. If living and eating this way is easy and appealing, then you can do it, and invite others to do just like you!
I have two children, aged 8 and 5. I care deeply about helping them grow strong and smart. It would be great if my husband and I also stayed healthy into old age. The dinners on the meal plans are the same meals we enjoy at home. I am constantly reading more and furthering my education about nutrition, and my meal plans are a practical application of what I think of as the most reliable knowledge of the day.
There is nothing I enjoy more than conversing with other home cooks who want to feed their families more plant-based meals. Email me anytime with your ideas, concerns, or questions, and I will write back to you as quickly as I can. Meal plan subscribers also get my WhatsApp number so they can text me anytime when they have questions while grocery shopping or cooking.
Important health notice
The meal plans dinner recommendations are created with convenience, taste and nutrition in mind. They do not constitute health advice and can only be considered one piece of your nutritional puzzle. Also keep in mind the plans cover dinner; you also have breakfast, lunch, and snacks. If you require more specific health advice due to any specific health condition or circumstances, please consult a registered dietitian in conjunction with your physician(s).