Resources for Plant-Based Living

Bluedot Living participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

As a parent in a plant-based family of six (read my column Finding the Plant-Based Path), I am regularly approached for advice on how to eat more plants (and fewer animal products). It’s fantastic that people want to eat more plants! But it’s a shame many find it difficult, restrictive, or just plain sad. But it doesn’t have to be hard (or sad). We have found that the fear that eating more (or even only) plants will be terrible contrasts with the reality of it being delicious, satisfying, and even fun.

Below are some suggestions for eating more plants. Nothing preachy or shocking. Just lessons learned from a plant-based family doing their best. 

Tips for Eating Plants

• Start: Now! Like, with your next bite. This is the most important part.
• Keep it to yourself: Like strangers offering parenting advice, everyone considers themselves an expert on food and nutrition. But what you eat is an evolving, private journey. You do not need to explain or apologize to anyone. 
• Stock the kitchen. Having great options at home is hugely important. Then 90% of your meals are things you love, and there’s little reason to panic. The other 10% doesn’t really matter and may fall to 5% or less over time. No stress. Surround yourself with plant-based foods you like to eat and you will eat more plants. 
• Drop perfection. Be incremental: Make your next bite a bite of plants. Gradual change will lead to the formation of habits and mindless plant eating. So if the restaurant your friend chose has terrible options, don’t sweat it. You will eat again.
• Nom nom nom: Focus on what you are eating instead of what you are not eating. The goal is to eat more plants. Are you eating more plants? Great!
• Check in: After a few days — or even one meal! — check in on how you feel and sleep. Any better? Remember, eating plants helps not just you, but also Earth and the animals.

Tips for Learning

Once you step into the world of plant abundance, you may become curious about topics you never considered. If so, read on. 

• Research, don’t wonder: Food is emotional. Facts are not. I found it extremely empowering to read, listen, and watch a lot of fact-based media that helped me understand food, our food system, and its health and environmental consequences. Do your own research, draw your own conclusions, make your own plan. 
• Look at your habits: I read Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, but anything on habits will do. The important part is separating needs from habits. Do I need meat at dinner every night? Or is that just what I do? 
• Contemplate protein: Americans are totally obsessed with protein, and most consume much more than they need. So before you fret over protein deficiency when faced with eating more plants, consider this: The animals we eat consume plants, and nutrition we get from eating animals comes from the plants the animals eat. So why not skip the animals and eat the plants? Plants are full of protein! Eat plants, get protein. 
• Solve supplements: B12 is the only thing you cannot get from plants grown in soil, and that’s because we’ve depleted the soil of B12. If you’re strictly plant-based, take a multivitamin. If you still eat some animal products, don’t worry about it. As for omegas, fish are high in omegas because fish eat algae, so you can take an algae-based omega supplement or eat some seaweed. 

Tactical Tips 

Some want or need more specific guidance, meaning, tell me exactly what to eat! If that’s you, see below. 

• What should I eat? Michael Pollan summarized this perfectly, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” That sounds vague, but if you consider that plants contain everything you need to thrive, then all you need to do is eat plants. Start with plant foods you know and like; avocados, sweet potatoes, peanuts. Then consider trying something new. Mushrooms? Kimchi?
• Not specific enough? Do the following things:

1. Go to the farmers market: Buy whatever looks good. Notice how food tastes when it’s fresh and how what’s available changes with the seasons. It’s actually quite exciting. And colorful.
2. Prep a batch of greens: When they are ready to eat, you can more easily make a salad, stir them into grains or beans, roll them into wraps, tuck them into sandwiches, stir-fry them with leftovers.
3. Cook a grain: Brown rice, oatmeal, quinoa, etc. — and keep it in the fridge so meals are easy.
4. Cook a pot of beans: Cooking beans from dried versus canned is the equivalent of cooking pasta at home versus eating it from a can (gross!). The extra hands-free effort of simmering at home is totally worth it. So try this, just once: 

• Buy dried beans in-store or online (Rancho Gordo are truly delicious). 
• Dump the dried beans into a big pot at night and cover them in water. 
• In the morning, simmer them for 1 to 2 hours or until soft and creamy (but never mushy). They’ll be extra delicious if you add a hunk of onion, some carrots, and a big handful of salt.
• Eat a warm bowl of beans with olive oil and salt. Stir them into pasta. Pile them on salad. Mash them with vegan mayo or pesto and slather them on toast.
• Tip: Always keep the beans covered in water, whether soaking, simmering, or storing in the fridge.

5. Store all pantry items in glass jars, either leftover from things you buy or buy some Mason jars: This gets rid of plastics in your food, keeps everything SUPER fresh, and makes it easy to spot something delicious to eat/cook.

A Plant-Based Shopping List

This is a pretty comprehensive list of ingredients as well as what you can do with them, including some recipes.

Fruits and Veggies

• Any/all — raw, roasted, steamed, blanched, blended. Go wild. 

Proteins

• Lentil, pea, and chickpea pasta
• Beans of any/all types: Use chickpeas, black, white, edamame, and lentils, and always cook from dried (see above). Top salads; toss with EVOO, salt and pepper; stir into pasta; smash onto sandos; blend into hummus; smash with mayo/tahini and diced pickles and onions for “tuna.” 
• Tofu: Drizzle silken with soy sauce and green onion; roast firm with Bragg’s and use in a stir-fry with yuba noodles; use any type in ramen.
• Tempeh: Tasty in stir-fries, and roasted with Bragg’s and nutritional yeast as bacon in sandos.
• Peas: Use fresh, frozen, and freeze dried.
• Siete almond flour tortillas: These are amazing toasted in a hot pan.
• Greek-style yogurt: Use on a salad, in a curry, and to make a briney pasta. We like almond-based and cashew-based yogurts.
• Nut and seed butters: Try different ones like peanut, almond, cashew.

“Meat”

• Impossible and Beyond
• Daring Chicken
• Tofurky deli slices
• Gardein corn dogs (trash, but delicious)
• Bake tempeh or eggplant bacon with Bragg's + liquid smoke

Grains/Starch

• Whole wheat pasta
• Whole grain and seed breads of all types, from a local bakery (our fave is Oat Bakery seed bread) or make this life-changing seed bread.
• Tamari rice cakes with avocado
• Steel cut oatmeal: Cook 1 batch per week and keep refrigerated for an easy breakfast. Microwave with flax seeds, frozen blueberries, almond butter, etc.
• Brown rice and wild rice
• Sweet potatoes and red/purple potatoes

Quick Toppers (and Snacks)

Chuck on yogurt, sandos, salads, etc.

• Roasted chickpeas (crunchy and delicious) 
• Freeze-dried peas (sweet and crunchy)
• Roasted/toasted nuts and seeds

Flavor Bombs 

Add to everything!

• Roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers
• Sauteed garlic, onion, and shallots
• Pickles, olives, capers, hearts of palm, kimchi
• Sun-dried tomatoes
• Nutritional yeast (sounds a little weird, but it’s kind of like flaky grated Parmesan)
• Avocado
• Chopped green onions and chili peppers
• Miso (thinned with water and lemon)

Sauces

• Tahini: Sesame paste is good on/in everything; Whole Foods 365 brand is our fave.
• Bitchin’ Sauce: extremely savory and good on everything
  • Make your own oil-free nearly identical batch with this recipe.
• Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
• Pesto (here’s a versatile recipe)
• Vinaigrettes (endless variety)
• Chili crisp and sriracha
• Mayo like Sir Kensington’s Classic Vegan Mayo
• Hummus: Red lentil hummus is our fave or store-bought 

“Cheese”

• Rebel Cheese smoked cheddar and brie 
• Oat Bakery truffled cashew cream cheese or check into your local plant-based cheese options
• Kite Hill ricotta, chive cream cheese, tortellini and ravioli (Whole Foods)
• Treeline soft-style cheese (Whole Foods)
• Parma original or make your own with this recipe
• Parmela Creamery cheddar
• Nutritional yeast and Vegemite (😲) 
• Violife provolone slices for sandwiches
• Miyoko’s cheeses

“Dairy”

• Forager Project cashew yogurts or Kite Hill Greek-style yogurt
• Oatly milks and ice creams
• Silk Unsweetened Organic Almond Milk
• Miyoko’s butter substitute

Snacks/Dessert

• Walnuts, pistachios, baru nuts, and almonds (maybe toast right before eating)

• Mary's Gone Crackers
• Chia crackers you can make
• Fruit! Fresh, dried.

• Bananas “nice cream”: Blend frozen bananas with cacao and frozen fruit of choice and a splash or two of oat milk in a Vitamix. (Blend, stop, manually mash, blend, stop manually mash; repeat until ice cream consistency is achieved.)
• These DIY energy bites (endlessly flexible) and these brownies (with or without ganache)
• Pitted dates filled with peanut butter and frozen (turns into a caramel truffle)

Media Resources

• Listen to this fascinating podcast from Dr. Zach Bush on GMO’s, glyphosate, and healing the gut.
• Watch the documentaries Forks Over Knives and Kiss the Ground.
• Use NutritionFacts.org, a science-based, nonprofit, vegan-friendly resource to answer specific nutrition questions.

Food Sites 

Sources for super-easy plant-based recipes

• Bluedot Living includes many plant-based recipes online and The Bluedot Kitchen magazine.
• The Post Punk Kitchen
• Minimalist Baker
• 101 Cookbooks
• Green Kitchen Stories (read this post to elevate the way you cook veggies with little effort!)
• My New Roots
• Grateful Grazer
• Occasionally Eggs
• Olives for Dinner
• Vegan Mama (@thevegansix) House of Citrine