My Meal Plan for the Week of April 13, 2025

As seen on Instagram Stories :)

My meal planning for April is a combination of proactive and reactive planning inspired by April's menu suggestions. Since we're mostly in cost savings mode in our house I took a first go-to approach for economy and efficiency. That means I took a look at what we already had on-hand in order to plan with minimal grocery shopping needed.

Anyone who knows my husband and I knows that although I can scrimp, my husband is active and needs enough filling, hearty meals. He'll typically eat 2-3 servings of most lunches and dinners. That means my meal planning can't be as simple as just planning a quinoa bowl every day. I originally recorded this meal plan in my notes app (nothing fancy) before going grocery shopping. I took about a half an hour out of my Sunday (or it may have been Monday!) to take a look through my kitchen while making this list. It was worth it for the peace of mind. Getting too hungry without a plan equals last minute expensive, less nutritious decisions and going out to eat. Here's what worked for us this week! Monday:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal with Bananas

• Lunch: Left over Moe's wraps or bowls, PBJ

• Dinner: Pasta, tomato sauce and plantbased meat crumbers, greens (On Monday night I made my "make aheads" while preparing the pasta since I was busy on Sunday)

Tuesday:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal and banana

• Lunch: Chickpea salad sandwich and greens

• Dinner: Leftover pasta, tomato sauce and crumbles or chickpea curry and rice

Wednesday:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal and banana

• Lunch: PBJ and orange + greens or side

• Dinner: Leftover chickpea curry and rice or (pre-packed) dumplings, rice, peppers and tofu

Thursday:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal and banana

• Lunch: PBJ and greens + side (such as the "made ahead" sweet potato soup)

• Dinner: Leftover dumplings, peppers and tofu or Tofu wrap (Veggies, beans, rice, onions, tofu & hot sauce) + soup

Friday:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal and banana

• Lunch: PBJ and greens + side

• Dinner: Tofu wrap (Veggies, beans, rice, onions, tofu & hot sauce) + soup

Saturday:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal & banana

• Lunch: PBJ & greens (or any leftovers)

• Dinner: Plantbased (pre-packaged) wings or wings wraps

Sunday (packing ahead for a day out with family):

• Breakfast: Oatmeal

• Lunch: PBJ

• Dinner: Amy's Lentil soup and bread

Sides and Things to Make Ahead:

• Sweet potato coconut milk soup (I accidentally opened too much coconut milk last week and had to use it)

• Tomato coconut curry with zucchini, tomatoes and chickpeas + other protein of choice

• rice, baked tofu

• Note: (Chickpea salad was already leftover from last week but is otherwise easy to also make ahead.)

Snacks for the Week: (I always try to plan to make sure we have enough in the house) so that we aren't running out and getting tempted to buy expensive last minute snacks.

• Crunchmasters sesame crackers and Chao cheese

• Berry smoothies

• Chocolate (+ walnuts and dates)

• Almond butter and apples

• Fresh pineapple

  
  

  

  
  

Update: A few adjustments during your week are usually inevitable! This week we ended up skipping some of the PB&J lunches and having leftover pasta and veggies for lunch because I accidentally made too big of a box of pasta. (Oh, darn;). It's Wednesday as I write this and we'll probably have more adjustments as the week goes on. That said, this set a good healthy-ish foundation for the week. Note: Another approach to this type of meal planning if you don't want to or think you need to grocery shop at all (I knew we had to this week anyway to stock up on husband's must-haves) is to use your favorite AI to imput what you have in your kitchen and ask it to spit out a meal plan for you! In my experience the results are usually pretty impressive!

"I'm new to learning about plant-based eating. How did you get enough protein for the week?" In this week's meal plan proteins included tofu, chickpeas, almond butter, walnuts, black beans, peanut butter and beefy plant-based crumbles too.