There is a common misconception that eating vegan food means a lot of planning and takes a lot of time, neither of which is true! It does however take a little while to learn what meals are quick and what you can use to replace your old favourite meals. I’m currently sharing lots of vegan alternatives and recipes on my new blog – www.livingonleaves.com – so do check that out if you are looking for some advice on being vegan. I have also shared lots of vegan meal planning posts over there.
Although it is totally possible to rustle up quick vegan meals, sometimes even a quick meal is too much effort and all you want to do is reheat something, this is when having a freezer full of meals is really useful. If ever I make a large pot of certain meals then I always put the leftovers in the freezer so it all builds up, another option is to spend a day a the weekend batch cooking and freezing so you have a full freezer for the week. This would be a good option if you work because I can completely understand why you wouldn’t want to cook after coming in from a long day at work.
I work from home so tend to just cook in the day but even then sometimes I just can’t be bothered come dinnertime and just want to pull something out of the freezer.
So my favourite meals for freezing are..
Bolognese sauce, this is such a good one to freeze and you can pull it out in the morning to defrost by teatime or just microwave it, then all you need to do is boil some pasta. I make one with soya mince, one with mushrooms or one with lentils on rotation. The lentil one is great if you don’t have much shopping in as the ingredients are just basic ones that we always have in our cupboard. I will be sharing my recipe soon but you can find loads of others on Pinterest.
Vegetable curry, there are loads of different curries you can make. I freeze dahl and vegetable curries then all you need to do is cook some rice.
Tomato sauce, it’s so easy to make tomato sauce. You just simmer some tinned tomatoes with garlic, herbs, a tsp of sugar and some oil then blend it up. You can then freeze it for pasta dishes or pizza. You can buy pizza bases ready made or you can make a batch and freeze them too.
Soup, I’m the only one that likes soup in my house so I always freeze the leftovers after making a batch. My favourite is spinach and rocket. I just add it to stock with some sweet potatoes, nutmeg and salt and pepper then blend. So simple but so tasty!
Lasagne, I personally haven’t done this as you would have to cook it just to freeze as oppose to just freezing leftovers like I usually do but if you were batch cooking at weekends and had leftover Bolognese sauce then making a lasagne and freezing it in portions would mean you could easily grab one out the freezer when you felt like it. Then all you would need to do is make a salad and heat up some garlic bread to go with it.
Obviously a large chest freezer from Alexanders Direct would be great for all of these meals to go in, we only have a fairly small freezer but if I had a chest freezer then I would fill it with all kinds of things! One day 😉
‘Collaborative post’
