Multicultural Meal Plan: A Half Vegan, Half Omni American Family on the East Coast

We are so pleased to announce a new feature, Multicultural Meal Plan Mondays. In keeping with the popular trend, each Monday a different blogger with present his or her family’s meal plan for the week. We hope you enjoy getting a peek into someone else’s kitchen and find lots of wonderful new dishes to try from around the world.

This week’s post comes to us from Melissa of Vibrant Wanderings.

My husband and I are both culturally American, from the Southwestern United States. He was born and raised in Texas, and I was born in Arizona, but spent most of my growing up years in Colorado. We have since done a good bit of traveling, lived the island life on Guam for a few years, and settled on the East Coast near Washington, DC. I’ve been vegan for about a decade, and he has slowly become perfectly happy eating vegetarian most days, but is still very much an omnivore. This means that our kids eat vegan when alone with me, and mostly-but-not-completely vegan when their dad is around.

Thanks to geography, the husband and I have a shared love of good Mexican food. He grew up on Tex-Mex, and I on something slightly different, so our vegan “Mexican” meals are not exactly authentic, but we love them. Stints abroad and a thirst for culinary adventure also have led us to mix it up here at home, with recipes originating in many other corners of the world, too. Indian cuisine, with its wonderful way of bringing out the best in a variety of vegetables, is something our children have been growing up on, too. What we eat in a typical week can vary widely based on what’s available, what we’ve been into lately, and how much spare time we have, but the below is our most recent meal plan. I tend to plan for Monday through Friday only, as the weekends are my husband’s time to cook.

Monday

Breakfast: Sourdough waffles with sliced banana

Lunch: Chickpea Salad Sandwiches

Dinner: Tempeh Cashew Noodles

Tuesday

Breakfast: Sourdough waffles with peaches

Lunch: Tofurky Sandwiches (turkey for the husband)

Dinner: Bengali Special dal and basmati rice (recipe from The Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

Wednesday

Breakfast: Cinnamon Raisin Granola with almond milk

Lunch: Leftovers (dal)

Dinner: Black Bean Chocolate Chili with avocado and corn muffins

Thursday

Breakfast: Cinnamon Raisin Granola with almond milk

Lunch: Quinoa and veggies

Dinner: Spicy Peanut Butter Tofu (chicken for the husband) with kale and carrots

Friday

Breakfast: Scrambled tofu and sourdough toast

Lunch: Quinoa and veggies

Dinner: Sourdough pizza with roasted vegetables

Vibrant Wanderings

Melissa is a writer, mother, and lifelong learner who lives and dreams just outside Washington, DC with her husband and two children. She is passionate about many things, but chief among them are gentle, respectful parenting and the Montessori method of education. She writes about both topics at Vibrant Wanderings and is also a contributor to the Natural Parents Network. In real life she’s working to advance peace through education by bringing Montessori to the children in her neighborhood. You can find her on Facebook.

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Melissa Kemendo

Melissa is a Montessori guide and mother of three children six and under living just outside Washington, DC. She is passionate about nurturing children in an environment that gives them the time and space to be themselves, while learning to love, appreciate and care for the world around them.

Latest posts by Melissa Kemendo (see all)

Modeling Language Learning: Hidden Benefits - August 29, 2016
Taking Learning Outside with Language Games - April 27, 2015
Multicultural Meal Plan Monday: A Half Vegan, Half Omni, American Family on the East Coast - March 9, 2013