When Life is Chaotic, What’s For Dinner?

Lately, our lives have been so chaotic. We are doing some inside remodeling AND the backyard garden is yielding everything NOW.

During crazy times like this, there can be a temptation to just throw in the towel with my plant-based meals. But I don’t want my health to suffer. So, I just try to make easy meals & keep marching forward.

In this video, I show you 3 easy meals to put together when your life is chaotic.

Here’s the recipe for the Minestrone Soup:

• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 medium carrots, chopped
• 2 celery ribs, thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to
taste
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 3 garlic cloves, grated
• 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 1½ cups cooked white beans or
kidney beans, drained & rinsed
• 1 cup chopped green beans
• 1 cup chopped zucchini
• 4 cups vegetable broth or more
if more liquid is needed
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• ¾ cup small pasta, elbows, or shells
• ½ cup chopped fresh parsley
• Red pepper flakes 1/2 tsp

Instructions
In a large pot, add the onion, carrots, celery, salt, and several grinds of black pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8 minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften. Add a little veggie broth if needed to prevent sticking.
Add the garlic, tomatoes, beans, green beans, broth, bay leaves, oregano, and thyme. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
Stir in the pasta and cook, uncovered, for 10 more minutes, until the pasta is cooked through.

Season to taste and serve with parsley & red pepper flakes.

Checkout my FREE plant-based success document:

https://www.brendaworkmanspeaks.com/plantbasedsuccess

Need a motivational speaker for your next event? Send me your info here:

https://www.brendaworkmanspeaks.com/book-brenda

Need additional help on your plant based journey? May I suggest my Plant-Based 101 Course:

https://www.brendaworkmanspeaks.com/courses

I’d LOVE to meet you at my Wellness Weekend WV in the fall. Check out the details here:

https://www.brendaworkmanspeaks.com/wellness-weekend

When life is crazy busy, chaotic, what do you eat for dinner? I’m in that situation right now. We’re doing some construction inside our house and it’s been messy and it’s been chaotic. At the same time, our backyard garden is producing and vegetables are coming in. I picked uh green beans last night, so I have a big bowl of green beans sitting here in my kitchen. Uh, I have zucchini and baskets and squash and cucumbers and I’m very grateful for my garden, but it’s all happening at the same time. And so when it gets to be dinner time, you know, I could say, “Who cares? I’m not going to eat healthy. We’re just going to order out. Life is crazy.” But I do happen to have some leftovers in my refrigerator. And I just kind of wanted to go go through them with you so that you would understand how I make choices, how I put things together so that I do have a healthy dinner. So in my refrigerator, I happen to have some leftover sweet potatoes. I usually cook up several sweet potatoes at one time or Yukon Gold or sometimes I do both at the same time, bake them. These sweet potatoes were actually cooked overnight in my crock pot. And so I have uh a couple bowls of sweet potatoes. Sometimes I even eat them for breakfast if you can believe that with some walnuts and cinnamon on top. Um along with something else. Um sometimes it’s fresh sliced tomatoes. I’m weird like that. Anyway, have the the sweet potatoes. So hm could I do something with those sweet potatoes for dinner? Well, another leftover that’s in my fridge is this easy peasy uh black bean uh chili that I happen to have made earlier this week. And I have some leftovers of that. So, let me explain to you how I made this cuz it’s so easy. In your pan, uh like a stock pot, uh sauté some diced onions, diced peppers, and maybe a little garlic, couple cloves of garlic. If it starts sticking, add a little veggie broth. I don’t use oil in my sautéing. It’s not necessary. Any kind of oil that you use is 120 calories per tablespoon. I don’t want those extra calories. I don’t want the extra fat. I’m just going to use a little veggie broth or a little water to prevent it from sticking. Sauté those until they’re soft. And then you add three things. You add about a cup of corn, frozen corn. You could use um more if you want to. You use a 16 jar of salsa. I used mild. You might want medium or hot. Put that in there. And then a can of black beans or beans of your choice. When you go to drain them like you typically do, reserve the liquid from the can. And then go ahead and rinse your black beans or whatever kind of beans you’re using. Throw them in the pot as well. And then once you start stirring that mixture up, if it’s not quite as soupy as you’d like it to be, add a little of the liquid that you reserved from the can to give it a little more soupiness. Or you could add a little veggie broth or a little bit of both just to get the consistency that you want. So I have leftovers. That was a very good chili. I loved it. So what could I do for dinner? I could put the sweet potato, about a one big sweet potato in a bowl. I could put the chili on top of the sweet potato. I could warm that up. And then if I wanted to, I could add chopped green onions or I could add I have some cilantro. I could add some chopped cilantro on top of it. I could even squeeze a little bit of lime. I always keep limes in the house. Squeeze a little lime juice on top of it. Voila, I have dinner. So, h that’s a choice that I have for dinner. I also have some leftover minestrroni soup. In fact, I only have one serving left and I took it out of its container cuz I wanted you to see how beautiful it is. It has so many fresh veggies in it. So, I’ve got the recipe here and I’m going to put it in the description below so you guys can try this at home. Um, again, as with so many soups, I sauteed with veggie broth, little veggie broth, uh, onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. So, I did that at the beginning. And then this has diced tomatoes from a can. You could use fresh tomatoes if you have them coming in from the garden or from um, the farmers market. It’s got uh, kidney beans, but you could use your bean of choice. I used fresh green beans from my garden. And I used fresh zucchini from my garden. So, it has both of those. Veggie broth. You’re adding more of that because that’s the the liquid in this soup. And then you’ve got your spices, bay leaves, oregano, thyme. It’s got a little bit of pasta in it. Only 3/4 of a cup of pasta. I try to use 100% whole wheat. I do have trouble finding much variety in that in my area, but you could use chickpea pasta, lentil pasta. There’s so many pastas that you could use. And then it does call for fresh parsley and a little bit of red pepper flakes to give it a little uh heat. So, look how beautiful it is. It has so many vegetables in it. Um, and I thought it was very flavorful, very good. And I just have that one serving left. That could be dinner. Hm. Maybe I’ll eat that for dinner. But wait, I do have one more. Um, I have in my refrigerator some leftover shredded zucchini. I have zucchini coming out of the garden like crazy, and I decided I was going to make some plant-based uh zucchini bread last night. So, I made several loaves, but I had this left over and I have to figure out what I can do with that. and I have an idea. So, I’m going to share that with you. But first, I want to share something else with you. Did you know that I have a free document that you can get very easily that’s all about plant-based success? I think it’ll be valuable to you and I always put the link in the description of my videos, so be sure and check that out. Did you know that I offer a course about plant-based 101 and how to get started? It has several videos um that will give you all the information that you need to get started with a plant-based diet. Did you know that I have an event every year? Yeah. It’s called Wellness Weekend West Virginia and it’s at Cana Valley Resort in West Virginia, the beautiful mountains of West Virginia in the fall of the year. Uh and I always have great guests, special guests that come and speak at this event. the the resort offers u plant-based food for us and it’s just a wonderful time to learn more. We can always learn more, right? And get the encouragement and support that we need. So, that link is also in the in the description below. So, be sure and check it out. Now, let’s get on with what am I going to do with this zucchini. Okay, so I have leftover shredded zucchini and I don’t want this to go to waste. Uh, it took a little time to shred the zucchini that I shredded for my zucchini bread last night and I had this leftover. So, hm, what could I do? I already have an idea. So, I would make a spaghetti sauce and I would throw this in. There’s something about zucchini and Italian type food that go very well together. So, what I would use is I would use a jarred probably spaghetti sauce or marinara sauce. When I go to the grocery store, I always look at the back. I always look at the label and I try to find the one that has a the least amount of ingredients. I try to get my spaghetti sauce or marinara sauce without sugar and without oil. I can’t always find that in my area and I do the best that I can. Um, if I go out of town and I happen to go to a grocery store that’s not in my area and I find it, you better believe I’m going to buy several that don’t have sugar, don’t have oil. This particular one does have oil. It does not have sugar. Um, it doesn’t have very many ingredients. Um, and this is a Ragu uh garden combination sauce. Um, but at different times I buy different brands, so I’m not saying this is necessarily the best. So, I throw this in a pot, get it heating up, and then I would add uh veggie crumbles to my spaghetti sauce. Uh this is Morning Star. It only has nine ingredients in it. It’s 2.5 g of fat per serving, so it’s relatively low in fat. Um and I would add that to my spaghetti sauce. Um, if you are a person who just does not eat processed food at all and you just want to do completely whole food, you could certainly first sauté some mushrooms that have been diced. Um, some onions, some garlic, uh maybe some peppers. You could even throw in a little uh red lentils, maybe a half a cup of red lentils and put that in your sauce and that would give you somewhat of um a meaty texture. The especially the mushrooms and the lentils there. So, you could do that and it would be more whole food. But let’s say I’m having a crazy week like I am and I’m going to uh warm up this the spaghetti sauce and I’m going to warm up the veggie crumbles. And then to that, I’m gonna throw in this shredded zucchini. Uh just like you buy spiral zucchini and you put spaghetti sauce on top of it. It’s the same kind of concept. You don’t have to cook this ahead of time. You just throw it in your sauce and let it warm up and then it’s ready to eat. I would probably put some Italian seasoning in there, a little garlic powder in there. It may need a little salt and pepper. I’ll taste it to see. But um once I get it nice and warm and ready to eat, I I’ll put some nutritional yeast on top of that to give it a cheesy flavor. So that’s an idea for dinner as well. So it’s a crazy week, y’all. Absolutely crazy. But thank God I have some leftovers in my refrigerator. And plants keep for a pretty good while. If I had meat dishes in my refrigerator, they would keep for three or four days, but veggie um leftovers keep longer. And so I am glad for that. So, which would you choose? Help me out. Would you do the sweet potato with the black bean chili on top? Throw a little cilantro on top of that, a little lime juice on top of that. Would you eat your leftover minestronei soup that has all those beautiful fresh veggies in them? Huh? Or would you go ahead and make spaghetti tonight using veggie crumbles or even the vegetables that I mentioned in um marinara or spaghetti sauce and throw in the zucchini? H which would you do? Which would be your choice? Put it in the comments below so I know what you would choose. Guys, life will be busy sometimes, but we can’t detour from our health journey just because life gets crazy. If we did that, we would never be able to stay on our health journey for very long, would we? Uh because life gets crazy a lot. At least it does at my house. I’m assuming it does as yours as well. Always remember, there is power in our plate and what we eat, even during crazy times, really does make a difference. Thanks for joining me. You guys have a good day. See you next time.