- All these things are found at your local grocery store.
99 cent store, honey.
You can even go to Dollar Tree and get spices, okay?
(laughing)
Hey y'all, I'm Tabitha Brown
and I'm here with my friend Destiny.
- Hello, hey girl. - Hey!
- And I'm gonna show her
how to prep 12 vegan meals in 90 minutes.
- I am new to this whole vegan thing.
I don't really know where to start with my meal prepping.
- I can help you out with this.
- Okay!
- So for breakfast we're gonna do tofu scramble
with a little sweet potatoes in there,
that's one of my favorites. - Yum.
- Then for lunch, we gonna create a couple
of grain bowls, you can do all kind of things with those.
And then for dinner, we'll have a little bolognese
as y'all call it, I just call it spaghetti growing up.
But I'm also gonna show you how
to like mix and match it,
so it doesn't get boring and you get a variety.
- Awesome, I love that.
Well I'm really excited to see like
if we can get all this done in 90 minutes.
_ Girl, I'm up for the challenge.
It's very possible.
- All right, I trust you.
Let's do it.
- Okay, so we got our rice cooker here.
And this is for our quinoa.
And we're gonna use a rice cooker
because you pretty much cook it the same way.
And the great thing about this
is it's got a little button that say rice.
Hello.
You just push it and it do all the work for you.
- Okay. - All right,
so we'll add our bowl of quinoa, okay?
And then a salt.
We're only gon' add a pinch.
Then we're gonna add the water.
Make you feel like you're doing something.
Child, but this is the only part you're doing.
And then we gon' add on the top.
And then we just hit the rice button.
(beep)
- That so simple.
You can just put it in and walk away.
- So now we got our veggies.
- All right.
- Okay, this is what we gon' use for our grain bowls.
To save time, we leave the skin on the potatoes.
We just make sure you scrub 'em,
clean 'em real good because the skin actually has
so many nutrients in it and it's so great for it.
- Awesome.
- So tell me a little bit more about why you decided,
I'ma go vegan.
- In my family there's a lot of diabetes,
heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure.
And so I kinda was trying to figure out
what's a way that we can like help with these things,
and so I did my research and kind of found
that eating more plant based is better for that.
I recently also had kind of like a pre-diabetes scare.
- Oh, wow. - Yeah.
And that really put everything into perspective for me.
So I was like, let's try this.
I've tried every diet in the book,
but being vegan or plant based
is something I haven't tried, so.
- Well good for you! - Thank you.
You know I had this resting headache
in the back of my head for one year and seven months.
- Oh my goodness.
- Every single day I would be dizzy,
I had chronic fatigue.
I tried all kind of drugs that the doctors, you know,
prescribed, because they couldn't even figure out
why I was having this. - Right.
- And when I did a 30 day challenge,
after 10 days my headache went away.
- [Destiny] Wow!
- And then after like 20 days or so,
I started getting energy again,
I started feeling better,
and I was like wait a minute.
Honey, this thing seem to be working!
- Yeah, wow. - I'ma stick with this.
- Love that. - And it literally
changed my whole life. - Wow.
- Absolutely.
- So inspiring. - Yeah, girl!
Okay, so we gon' put our yams here, or sweet potatoes,
whichever you wanna call them, okay?
And then our peppers and broccoli, and our chickpeas,
and then we gon' season 'em up
- Awesome - so then we can get ready.
Okay, so everything gets a little bit of garlic powder.
- Awesome.
- I love garlic powder because, you know,
you can use as much as you like.
- Oh! - If that's your business.
Okay.
(laughing)
And then a little bit of salt.
And then we got chili powder for our chickpeas here.
And then paprika for the yams.
So now they all seasoned up,
we gon' put a little bit of oil,
I prefer grape seed oil, yes.
Very good.
Girl, yes, you doin' great.
Go on ahead.
Now we gon' roast them for about 20 to 25 minutes.
Set a timer, but baby check it 'bout half way through.
Okay?
You know when you get doing' stuff
and you forget that you got stuff roasting,
you don't want burnt veggies.
Here we have five cloves of garlic.
So we're gonna use three of these for our bolognese,
and then we'll use two of them later when we make our pesto.
- Great.
- Now the great thing about this is a little trick.
All right, if you shake this really hard,
the peeling off of the garlic cloves with come off.
- Really?
- You go ahead and give it a try, girl.
- Okay.
- Shaking hard enough? - Yeah!
Yeah!
- Oh my god!
- You see that?
- Look at that!
- You see that?
- That is so cool.
- So another great way to like save time
when you're prepping, is to use a food processor.
Okay, so we gave our veggies here like a rough chop.
We let the food processor mince 'em up real good.
So we gon' go ahead and take our celery.
Carrots in there.
Some onion.
And then let's put the garlic too.
(food processor whirring)
All right, so now we have these all minced up.
Okay, and then we'll just at them to the pot.
So now we'll take the walnuts.
Nuts in general are great on a plant based diet
for a meat substitute.
And honey, ain't no need of you cleaning it out,
'cause it's all one together.
- [Destiny] That's true.
(food processor whirring)
That looks like ground beef.
- Very good, very meaty.
And then we gon' set it aside.
So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna add
a little bit of our grape seed oil into our veggie base.
We got a little bit of our dried basil, dried parsley here,
and our good friend oregano.
This is gonna be our good base for our bolognese.
One of the great things about meal prepping, honey,
is multi-tasking.
So while I am stirring these veggies,
I want you to make us a little dressing for our grain bowls.
All right, so this will be like you by yourself
imagining in your kitchen that I'm there with you.
- Okay! - You too.
So we're gonna take so basil.
Some arugula.
We got a little sea salt here.
Some lemon juice.
Some water.
Our garlic cloves that we had
and a little bit of walnuts.
Then olive oil.
We gon' blend it up and make a good old sauce.
(food processor whirring)
- Yeah! - Oh!
- We're gonna take this
and we're gonna transfer it into a mason jar.
So we got a little bit of tahini,
some water, lemon juice, salt
and some maple syrup.
And you know, we could've just kept the one dressing,
the pesto sauce or whatever, but we don't wanna get bored.
- [Destiny] Keep it interesting.
- [Tabitha] Yes!
- This is like one of the first times
I've been really excited about like changing the way I eat.
Like I've never been excited, but I love this.
- Yes!
- I'm so excited. - That make me excited.
- Wow, look at that.
That was easy.
- Girl, you'd a made pesto and a dressing.
- I'm a chef now.
- Honey!
So see how our veggies are soft, they look good.
Okay so now we gon' add a little bit of tomato paste.
All right, we stir it on in.
Let it get brown.
Smooth it on around.
Let it get brown, okay?
So now we gon' add everything else that we need.
So we got our veggie stock,
the walnuts that we minced earlier,
we got our tomatoes,
a little bit of salt, and some lentils.
- [Destiny] Awesome.
- Stir it up til it gets all mixed in together.
We gon' cover it, reduce the heat
and let it simmer for about 35 minutes.
So now are bolognese is simmering right now.
I also put on a pot of boiling water
for some pasta that we're gonna make later.
While of all that is happening,
we're gonna go ahead and make our tofu scramble.
Make it taste like some good old scrambled eggs.
Ooh, I see your face now.
Tell me how you feel about tofu.
- The times I've had tofu - Ooh!
- It just was like spongy and just kinda like no flavor.
- I don't like nothing bland myself,
so I ain't gon' feed it to you, all right?
I put it in a towel just to kind of pat it dry.
You don't have to worry about pressing it.
I know tofu gives you a lot of water,
but this will be fine once you break it up.
It'll absorb all the other flavors right and nice.
- Little oil. - Feels weird!
- I know it does feel right weird, child.
But it's all right.
There you go.
- [Destiny] Okay, looking like eggs.
- So we got a little bit of low-sodium soy sauce
and then we got nutritional yeast,
garlic powder because you know we love garlic
- Sure do.
- And it makes everything better.
Now this is the black salt. - Oh!
- You only need just a couple of pinches of it.
And the black salt it to give it a egg flavor.
Now we adding turmeric 'cause that actually
gives us a little bit of the color
so it looks like we got some real eggs going on.
But also it's great for the inflammation,
especially when we add the black pepper
'cause this activates the turmeric.
- I did not know that. - Okay.
- We don't have time to be inflamed.
- No.
- [Destiny] Wow, like this looks like scrambled egg!
- It is lookin' like a little scrambled egg, right?
Ans we're gonna add a little bit of spinach.
And you know like right here is tons of protein.
Your tofu is protein, - Ooh!
- Your greens is protein.
So when the people be like "Oh my god,
"you're gonna go vegan, how you gon' get your protein?"
Message.
(laughing)
Give me a wrap with some guacamole and salsa, baby.
- Ooh, yum! - Oh, honey.
- We eating' big girl.
So we have our bolognese still simmering.
We always need a fresh green salad.
So we have some mixed greens here,
a little spring mix, with some arugula already in here.
And a little fun fact,
when you have 'em in your container
in the refrigerator to keep them fresh,
just put your little paper towel like that.
And that just kina helps soak up the moisture.
- Right. - I throw away
so much spring mix, it's like shameful.
- Right! - So that's good to know.
- Let's go ahead and chop these up.
- So something that I really like about
everything we've bene cooking today
is that these are all ingredients that I've heard of,
or like can find at any grocery store.
So that's really exciting
- Right!
I think that's the misconception, right?
A lot of times, people here the word vegan
and they freak out first and foremost.
- I did.
- Especially people in our community.
Listen, I ain't even gon' lie to you,
when I would hear the word vegan,
I really thought "Oh, that's for white people that do yoga."
Me, I'm from a little small town,
it was never even mentioned.
Now, it's like a movement but really in the black community,
which makes me excited because need it.
- We do.
- We are the high percentage in all of the like, you know,
diabetes and high blood pressure.
And this is so great for us.
Right? - Yeah, I agree.
- So it doesn't have to be expensive.
All of these things are found at your local grocery store
99 cent store honey, you can even go to Dollar Tree
and get spices, okay?
(laughing)
Now we're gonna add it in, aint that pretty?
- [Destiny] It's so pretty.
- Ooh, I get excited about a good colorful salad, child.
So the hemp seeds are great because
they have fatty acids in them which is like Omega-3s,
and it's so good for us.
This is a life bowl.
Ooh, look at that honey! - Yum!
- It has simmered on down.
- So now what we'll do it add a little bit
of our red wine.
Then a little bit of salt just for taste.
Let's go ahead and stir it up.
And then what we'll do is we'll leave this uncovered
and let the wine kind of cook down
in there for about 10 minutes.
And now, it's been enough time that our boiling water,
it's time to add the pasta.
- Let's do it.
- Voilà!
Okay.
So let's start with our breakfast.
So we have our breakfast scramble
with our sweet potatoes.
You can have it just like this, or you can get fancy,
and make a breakfast burrito. - Yum!
- And we add a little bit of
our roasted red peppers in there,
you know, that add a little flavor.
- You see that? - That's really good!
Wow!
- We have these amazing grain bowls,
under the bottom we have our quinoa
- Yum. - We just mix up our dressings
so we have our pesto, and then we got our tahini dressing
which you made.
And then if you noticed you see we have
half with the sweet potato
and then half with the red peppers
'cause we mixed it with out breakfast burrito.
That way we won't get so bored.
Try it out.
- Mm!
- Girl, you did that.
- That pesto's good.
- Who made it?
- Me! - Go ahead, girl!
For breakfast and lunch these are using bowls
that you take on the go with you.
So you individualize them in containers.
But with dinner, I keep the bolognese sauce
in the pan and like our big salad
we keep that in a container
because we make our dinner at home.
So we have our standard way
with our noodles and our bolognese on the top.
And then if you say "you know what,
"I'm trying to do right with my life."
You can use some zucchini noodles,
or whatever veggies noodles you wanna use.
And then if you get to the point
and you say "Honey, I am bolognesed out."
- No more. - I don't want no more.
Put that thing on in the freezer.
And freeze it until you ready for it again.
You still got your pesto sauce that you know,
you had in your little mason jar.
- That's right.
- Put that on your pasta, whip that up honey.
Now you got a little pesto pasta.
- I love that.
- And then you pair it with just salad.
And you can have that salad with every meal.
And you can also take some salad to work,
if that's what you wanna do. - It's your business.
It tastes like a meat sauce.
- That the lentils and, you know, the walnuts
and all the veggies.
So say you wanna switch it up, right?
Some days you may just wanna do your pasta
like how you have your pesto pasta.
Use some of your veg.
- Ooh, okay. - Mix it up in there.
Okay, your peppers and broccoli and chickpeas.
Baby that's a pasta salad.
- Yeah, options.
I love this. - Yeah, you got options.
- Well I cannot believe we were able to make
12 meals in 90 minutes. - Yes we did.
- And all this food is vegan and easy to find
and healthy and good for you and feels good.
- I'm so proud of you! - Thank you!
- You know, 'cause the first step
is being open to just trying something new.
And plant based living can be super easy.
If you want me to come back, comment below say
"Y'all bring Tab back to the room."
- Yes.
- We'll come back and do some more meal prepping ideas
and have some fun in the process.
- I'd love it.
- High five! - Love that.
- So proud of you.
(gentle music)