Remember in this post when I mentioned I wanted to start making my own buckwheat waffles/pancakes for breakfast? Well, I found a recipe that’s been working wonderfully, and I wanted to share it! It’s from Goop, though I made a few modifications.

Ingredients:
— 2 1/4 cups whole milk
— 2 tablespoons lemon juice
— 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
— 2 tablespoons maple syrup
— 1 cup buckwheat flour
— 2 teaspoons baking soda
— 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
— 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
— 1 teaspoon salt
— 3 seriously ripe bananas (I recommend they be pretty much black – mine sat on the counter for about a week and a half)

Preparation:
1. Mix all the wet ingredients together in a small bowl (including bananas – just mash them roughly with a fork).
2. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a slightly bigger bowl.
3. Add the wet to the dry and stir just enough to combine – be careful not to over-mix (that’s how you get tough pancakes).
4. Heat a large nonstick skillet or griddle over medium-high heat (we use our Griddler, which we love – no need to use any oil or butter, and you can make 4-6 at a time!). Ladle as many pancakes as possible onto your griddle.
5. Cook for about a minute and a half on the first side, until the edges begin to firm up and the surface is spotted with small bubbles. Flip and cook for about a minute on the second side.

My version is doubled, because I like to make a big batch then freeze them for a quick breakfast before work. If you’d like to freeze them, too, I recommend lining a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper, then arranging the pancakes in a single layer. Place the baking sheet in the freezer for about two hours, until they’re firm, then peel them off the paper and store in a gallon freezer bag. I cook two for about a minute in the microwave and eat with maple syrup or apple sauce!

Seriously, y’all, if you like bananas, these are AMAZING! So light and fluffy, moist, and just absolutely delicious. They puff up beautifully on the griddle and freeze really well. I actually find myself getting out of bed earlier in the morning because I’m looking forward to eating them :)

What do you eat for breakfast? Do you like banana things? I feel like bananas can be very polarizing – people either love them or hate them.

P.S. The photo above is not of these pancakes – it’s an instagram my friend Samantha took of her Sunday morning breakfast, and I appropriated it because I thought it was so lovely :)

Friends, thank you for your thoughts on part one! I heard from a few of you in the comments and in person that it sparked conversation, and I love that – not only because now you’re in the same boat as me (ha!) but because I think what we eat is a worthwhile thing to think and talk about. So let’s continue!

One thing that frustrated me about Forks Over Knives is that it included very little practical information – like, what a FOK-approved meal might look like. This post will be my attempt to fill in the gaps, at least relative to our life.

Let’s start with a few resources we’ve found helpful. Some of our favorite clean and whole recipes have come from A Couple Cooks, Naturally Ella, and A House in the Hills. We also like Pinch of Yum and Cookie + Katie. Since we’re looking for recipes that can be made for dinner on a regular weeknight when we get home from work, we need them to be both realistic and delicious, and these folks have come through time and again.

To get even more specific, I’ve sprinkled twelve of our favorite recipes throughout this post. More recipes we’ve liked are here, and recipes we have our eye on are here!

Greek pita sandwiches; sweet potato, kale, and corn chowder; broccolini fried rice; panko crusted fish tacos, spiced red lentils and rice, grilled sweet potato tacos with lime crema

There are a few foods we’ve had in heavy rotation during this transition. Number one is sweet potatoes. In addition to being really good for you, they are one of the best substitutes for meat in that they’re substantial, filling, and can take on lots of different flavors. They also take a long time to go bad, are inexpensive, and taste about the same year round. We eat them a LOT.

Almost every night we eat a salad with spinach, arugula, and sometimes kale. We often add cashews, pumpkin seeds, and sometimes cheese (feta for John, goat for me). I love our dressing – a basic vinaigrette we make (3 Tbs. olive oil, 2 Tbs. red wine vinegar, and 1 Tbs. mustard – shake it/store it in a mason jar).

We’ve cut out a LOT of pasta at home, substituting brown rice noodles, homemade vegetable noodles (just ribboning carrots, sweet potatoes, or zucchini with a peeler), or brown rice.

We’ve also switched or added a few specific products:
— Tropicana OJ has been replaced by the Whole Foods 365 brand 100% Florida orange juice thanks to this article.
— Coconut oil often replaces butter (though not always).
— John’s twice daily Coke Zeros are now Honest Fizz root beer, a can of Steaz, or water.
— The only ingredients in our peanut butter are now peanuts and salt.
— I’ve switched to KIND granola bars as a snack.
— I do drink some whole or 2% milk; it now comes from a farm in the next county over – the same one where we go for ice cream (I’ve even taken a tour!). It’s available at our Whole Foods.

We definitely have more changes we’d like to make (for example, I often eat buckwheat waffles or granola for breakfast, and I’d like to start making both myself), but it’s a process.

Also, just as a reminder, we are still eating sugary and processed things on occasion! Our belief is that if we feed our bodies a regular diet of the good stuff, it can (sparingly) handle the bad stuff. Because sometimes the bad stuff is delicious :)

Black bean tostadas with avocado salad; spicy peanut sauce with brown rice noodles; garlicky kale and white bean stew; carrot noodles in peanut sauce; black bean soup with cumin and jalapeno; sweet potato burritos with avocado salsa verde

One question Whitley asked on my last post that I wanted to address was this: “I think one of the things that scares me most about “clean” eating is the perception that it’s more expensive. Have you found this to be true?”

I’m glad she asked, because I have a few thoughts about this! First, though the amount of our food budget has not changed dramatically in this transition, I would not have been surprised or particularly upset if it had. For other things I care about, I expect to pay more for quality, so naturally, I wouldn’t be surprised if better food cost more. In the long term, when taking quality of life and healthcare into account, I expect it to be far less expensive than other ways of eating.

Michael Pollan also points out in The Omnivore’s Dilemma that the percentage of the average household budget allocated for food has steadily decreased over the past few decades, at the same time as food has generally gotten less nutritious. We’ve become accustomed to getting more for less, but in order to pay for the things I care about (happy animals, sustainable and Earth-friendly farming practices), I am willing to pay more (and readjust/make room in my budget accordingly).

As someone who truly believes in the power of free market forces, I believe that we are casting a vote with every beep of the supermarket scanner. With my dollars and my choices, I can tell Whole Foods and Walmart and every brand they stock what I want to see more of. The thought almost makes me giddy! :)

However, even though important, I know that’s probably not what Whitley meant, and so I’ll answer the other way, too. Our biggest expense has always been and still is wasting food – letting meat go bad before putting it in the freezer or using it, leaving lettuce to wilt, or buying a jar of something and only using a teaspoon before it expires. Sticking to a weekly meal plan greatly helps with this, as does regularly taking stock of our pantry and refrigerator – and keeping both neat and organized so that things don’t get shoved to the back and forgotten.

Second, though we do about half of our shopping at Whole Foods (most of our vegetables, and packaged food we can’t find elsewhere) the rest is done at Walmart. We’ve found that many (though hardly all) brands we could buy at WF are available at Walmart for less, including Stonyfield, Annie’s, and Kind. We also tend to buy bananas and root vegetables like garlic, potatoes, and onions at Walmart because the quality is comparable (unlike more perishable things like fruit or tomatoes). So, being smart about where we buy helps keep our costs down. The 365 brand at Whole Foods also offers some great savings.

It’s not new advice, but things tend to taste better and cost less when you buy them in season and, if possible, when you pick them yourself. Berries, of course, are the perfect example – we love picking strawberries in the spring and blueberries in the summer, both of which we can do ten minutes from our house.

Since we only eat meat about once a week now, we can afford to buy happy animals and still have some savings left over to soak up other new expenses. Depending on what your current diet is, some of those expenses might be new oils, spices, or other ingredients you haven’t used before (like coconut oil and tamari for us!).

To finish, I wanted to note that one thing we are excited to explore more is buying local. The pastoral section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma really inspired me on this point, with its description of Joel Salatin’s farm (which some of you might remember from Food Inc.). A few weeks ago we bought a chicken at our town’s farmer’s market that had hatched, was grown, and then processed the day before about ten minutes from our house. We bought it from the person who did it. Joel suggests this site and this site for finding other local sources for sustainably raised food (in addition to farmer’s markets!).

Whew! I’m glad we’re at the end of this post, because now it’s your turn: I would love to hear your go-to resources and recipes for clean, whole, and easy recipes! Thank you in advance :)

I know meal planning is something that a lot of people my age struggle with (I get a lot of emails about it), so I thought I’d share the system we use. It is, like most things, contained in our Simplified Planner, and it’s pretty simple!

On Saturday mornings, John and I sit down and plan out our meals for the week (Sunday to Saturday). Since our default is to make dinner at home, we first look at the calendar and figure out whether there are any days we know we’ll be dining out (maybe dinner at a friend’s house, or a day where we’re running around and don’t have time to cook). We also check to see whether we’re expecting guests any night. Once those are marked on the planning doc, we start filling in meals for the other nights. We pull ideas from Pinterest (meal boards here + here), from our collection of cook books, and from our accumulated meal plans (we have them going back to when we moved to NC, more than four years ago!!). We do tend to have seasonal favorites that show up often — including, as you can see below, BLTs when tomatoes are summer delicious :)

As we put together a week of menus, we also take into account the weather. (Is it going to be hot or cold? Might make a difference in the kinds of meals we want to prepare.) One other really important consideration for us is the leftover situation. John and I both take leftovers to work for lunch every single day, so we need to have a balance of meals that create leftovers and are easy to pack and reheat… and meals that do not (so we don’t end up with too much food).

Once we have our meals planned, they go on the meal planning doc. (Feel free to download your own copy here!) Sometimes I’ll jot down a page number or website next to the meal so we can find it again easily. Then, we put together a shopping list. We generally shop at two places every week: Whole Foods and a Walmart Neighborhood Market (basically a Walmart with only groceries and a very small home and pharmacy section). If our schedule allows, we go to one store on Saturday, and one on Sunday, which makes it seem pretty manageable. I split our list by the stores: below, Walmart is on the left, and Whole Foods is on the right. We generally shop at Whole Foods for most vegetables and fruit, dairy, and WF brands/brands that aren’t available elsewhere. Don’t mind the shorthand :)

We generally don’t decide in advance which meal we’ll have on which day — we kind of play it by ear, taking into account the leftover situation and which ingredients spoil the fastest. Thankfully, John does the cooking in our house, so once the meal planning is done, my job is complete! (Until the dishes call my name…)

I know everyone’s situation is very different, so I would love to hear: Do you plan your meals out for the week? How many nights do you eat in vs. out? Does your significant other play a big role, or not? I hope this was helpful!!

The other day, I brought chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese leftovers to lunch for work (because I am a grown-up). To help legitimize myself, I will say that the mac was Annie’s (add plain yogurt!), and the nuggets were homemade, and baked. Whenever anyone hears about these nuggets, they always want the recipe, so I thought I’d post it for y’all to enjoy! You can find it here. I’d recommend following it exactly, except that we bake the panko for about half the time she recommends. They’re delicious, and it’s so nice to know (if you’re going to eat chicken nuggets anyway, as obviously I am), exactly what’s going into them!

Martha Stewart

Speaking of lunch, I would love to hear: What do you bring every day? And when did you start making your own lunch? My sisters and I still feel disadvantaged because our parents made us pack our own lunches starting in second grade (which means I ate a granola bar and a cup of apple sauce for about eleven years, and was very jealous of my friends’ brown bags).

Now, John and I eat leftovers from the night before almost every day for lunch. We cook dinner six nights out of seven, and actually plan our meal schedule for the week based on which recipes make leftovers or are easily packed and which do not! (More about meal planning soon, if you’re interested.)

How about y’all?