My Go-To High-Protein Plant-Based Vegan Meals

This plant-based meal has over 40 grams of protein and this one has over 20. No protein powders, no highly processed fake meats and no animal products. Let me show you exactly how we're going to make them. Hello, my honeys. If you are new here, my name is Emmy. I'm a nutritionist, a weight loss specialist and the creator of the slim on starch program. To learn more about that, click the link in the down bar to learn how you can get slim on starch with the help of me and perhaps even a mindset coach and a nutrition coach. Today, we are going to be making two bowls from my healthy bowls cookbook. So if you do enjoy this recipe, make sure to check out the whole cookbook. It's linked below. My tofu teriyaki bowl. It packs the protein baby, not just from the tofu, but also from the greens. And this recipe is fantastic because it is so easy with the tofu. You don't have to be a chef at all. It's so basic to cook this tofu, but this looks like it was from a restaurant. So we're going to start out with wild rice and I'll put exact amounts up on the screen, but please know that in the slim on starch program, the way that we approach this is that you are going to honor and listen to your body's hunger, fullness cues. And so long as you are eating real whole natural food, your body has the nature given universe, given God, given ability, however you think of it to be able to regulate how much food it actually needs. There's something called the law of satiety, which States that an animal in nature, when given the diet that nature intended for it to eat is going to eat no more and no less than its body truly needs. So let's fill up on these foods to get things started here. We are going to be starting out with some tofu. This is the extra firm tofu. I get this from whole foods and I really like extra firm tofu. It's the most substantial. It has the best bite to it. If you can't find extra firm, then firm is fine, but any tofu brand will do. This just happens to be the whole foods, three, six, five brand, just check the ingredients and make sure that it hasn't already been marinated because then there's probably sugar added and oil added to it. So if we look at the ingredients here, we see that the ingredients are water, soybeans, and magnesium chloride. So this gets the seal of approval for me. And if we look at the protein content for this one, it looks as though there's about four and a half servings per container, 10 grams per serve, meaning that this whole block of tofu is 45 grams of protein. So depending on how much you use, if you eat half of it, for example, you can get up to 22 and a half grams of protein. So I'm going to open this up and now we're going to press the tofu and we're going to press it in a very old school way. So I'm just going to take a plate. I'm going to lay down a napkin. I'm going to put the tofu on top because I don't have a tofu press. I'm going to take another napkin, another plate, and I'm just going to press it down. I'm just going to flip it over and do that again. So pressing out as much of the water as we can. So now I'm going to slice up this tofu and you can slice it into cubes or into strips. I think that it, I'm going to photograph this. It photographs really nicely in strips. So I'm going to cut it into strips. Now I'm going to take my marinade and this marinade is a half a cup of coconut aminos or liquid aminos or soy sauce, one tablespoon of maple syrup, one teaspoon of rice vinegar, one teaspoon of cornstarch, and a half a teaspoon of fresh grated ginger. And I also threw some sesame seeds in there and you know, ideally we would marinate this overnight. It is not currently available to us and that's okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. So pressing the tofu is what is going to allow it to absorb the marinade better. If there's a ton of water that's still in the tofu, then you know, it's, it's the flavor of water at the moment versus squeeze out all the water. We make room, we make room for flavor. So like I said, ideally you would let this bathe overnight. So now I'm going to take a baking sheet with parchment paper. The oven is preheated to 425. I'm going to lay down my strips of tofu. This is going to go into the oven. I'm going to flip it at 10 minutes. I'm actually going to keep the marinade because I'm going to use it in the bowl a little bit later. I've got my wild rice. My tofu is done. Smells amazing. All right. I'm going to save some of this tofu for another occasion. Okay. So I'm going to take my broccoli. I'm going to take the rest of the marinade that I had for the tofu and I'm gonna give the broccoli a little bath here. Try to soak it as much as I can. Put it on the parchment paper. Oven is still at 425. So I'm going to bake it. I'm realizing now I could have just done this all together. Pro tip, do it all together. I got this really fun tool on Amazon. You can cut things into ribbons and you can also cut them into little spirals. So first, let me just peel this carrot, cut the rough part off. I'm always afraid I'm going to peel my skin off, which reminds me of my dad with tape measures. He's always, cause he's, you know, he's a dad. So he's always measuring tape, measuring everything. And he'll go like this and he'll close it up so quickly. I'm always afraid that he's cut himself on the edge that has anyway. So you could certainly dice this, put it into coins, ribbon it, spiralize it, do whatever it is that you want to do. That's the fun part here. But, um, I think I'm going to, I'm going to shred it into little, I'll show you. So it's going to come off in little long shreds like this. And I think that's kind of the vibe because I have the long tofu pieces. This is linked on my Amazon storefront, by the way, we're gonna take a handful of spinach. We'll just wait on that broccoli. I guess I'm going to take the broccoli, place it on now for garnish. We're going to take scallion, also known as green onion. We're going to chop that on. It's garnishing your meals. That really takes it to professional status where you're like, I made those like my chef. When did that happen? And then we are going to add in some sesame seeds. This is another thing where you add it in. You're like, I am the chef of the future. As far as what I'm going to do for dressing, I'm going to take the marinade, the leftover marinade. And that's going to be in case I need a little bit more flavor. You also could add avocado to this for some creaminess, but there we have it. I'm also going to be adding shredded cabbage. You can use purple or green. I have some green on hand. We'll add in some of that. And then the last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add on some grilled zucchini and summer squash. You can steam it, you can bake it. When you grill it, it gets this nice seared sort of taste to it, which is very enjoyable and compliments the whole bowl. Well, if you are loving these recipes, then you will love the recipe book that they come from, which is the healthy bowls cookbook, the healthy bowls cookbook, who doesn't love a bowl. These are super simple recipes that don't require a ton of cooking and allow you to put together gorgeous bowls that look like this one. I'll put some other ones up on the screen. So if you love today's recipes, then get a copy of the healthy bowls cookbook. It will be linked in the description. This gorgeous Southwest bowl has over 22 grams of protein. I absolutely love this meal. My boyfriend just walked in and he's like, that looks so good. I love this meal for so many reasons. First, there's absolutely nothing processed in this meal. So we don't need to have tofu in this meal. We don't need to have protein powder. We don't need to have these fake meat replacements. This is all whole real natural food that is going to be giving us this nice hit of protein. What I love about this as well is it's great to bring on the go. This isn't something that you have to heat up. It's something that you could eat cold. So you could bring this to work. You could bring it in a lunchbox. If you were going to be out and about for the day and you need to bring your food with you, or if you're going on a picnic or you're going hiking or camping, this is a great thing to bring that you can just keep refrigerated. You don't need a microwave, or if you work somewhere where you don't have access to a microwave, it's a great, it's also great no matter what season you're in. So right now we're finishing up spring and coming on to summer. And it's great for summer because who doesn't love corn in the summer? Who doesn't love a cold meal in the summer, but it's also great for the winter time because it's a nice hardy meal that you could have warm as well. You could warm up the rice. You could warm up the beans. What I love about this meal too, it requires no cooking. You don't have to cook anything. This is a throw it all together meal. And it's super satisfying not only because you're getting so many nutrients. I mean, look at this array of colors and vegetables, and you can just see it's bursting with vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. But what I love as well is that you have the creamy factor from the avocado. You have the crunch from the pumpkin seeds. You have the hardiness from the rice. You have the sweetness from the corn. It's going to hit all of those as we call them in this Lamont starch program satisfaction factors. So we are starting out with wild rice. You can use any type of rice. You could use a Brown rice, a black rice, a short grain rice, a long grain rice. I really like wild rice for a reason similar to what I'm going to tell you about the next ingredient, which is going to be beans. Now the recipe calls for a fourth of a cup of kidney beans, a fourth of a cup of black beans and a fourth of a cup of Pinto beans. But let me tell you about a little hack. If you have a whole foods near you, they have something called the organic bean trio and the organic bean trio contains kidney beans, black beans, and Pinto beans. And why is this a hack? Because when it comes to gut health, we really want to make sure that we are eating a diverse array of foods. So instead of just buying a can of black beans by yourself, the bean trio, because now you're getting three plans for the price of one and the bang for your buck in terms of how this is going to affect your gut health is tremendous because gut health is directly correlated to the diversity of whole plant foods in your diet. So I love this organic bean trio from whole foods. And if you don't have it, no big deal. Just buy a can of black beans, a can of Pinto beans and a can of kidney beans and mix them all together. Make sure that you are rinsing your beans very well. When you rinse beans, you know how you see those bubbles come up. It's those bubbles that make you gassy. So make sure that you rinse them until the bubbles go away. If you really do have a lot of trouble with beans, then I would encourage you even trying to cook the beans for a second time. So put them on the stove and just heat them up to really help kill those lectins, which can cause the bloating. So I have my bowl of rice here and I'm going to add beans. Like I said, the recipe does call for a fourth of a cup of black beans, a fourth, a cup of Pinto beans and a fourth, a cup of kidney beans. So I'm just going to add three fourths of a cup of my mixture. The next ingredient that we are going to be adding in is corn. This is actually the fire roasted corn that is frozen from whole foods. But if corn is in season, buy yourself corn on the cob, boil it up and cut it right off. Frozen corn is great though. You can even use canned corn. What you do want to watch out for though is making sure that there isn't any sugar added to the canned corn because sometimes they do that as if corn isn't sweet enough. So I'm just going to heat this up in the microwave. I forgot to add as well that the beans were heated up in the microwave. And I know that some people don't like to use microwaves. That's totally fine. You can heat everything up on the stovetop. So I'm going to add in the corn beauteous. Now I'm going to add in some avocado. Avocado will add a very nice creamy texture. Now, if you are looking to release weight, avocado is a little bit more calorically dense. So pound in a way, the avocados, if weight loss is your goal might prohibit you from, Ooh, this one is super creamy. Wow. It might prohibit you from being able to reach those goals in a, in a quick manner. And so what I would suggest if you really are trying to lock in weight loss to, you know, I'm going to use a half of an avocado here, but if you're trying to release weight, go for a fourth of an avocado, because like I said, it is more calorically dense. And if you wanted to, you could blend it with some white beans, or you could blend it with some peas to help give it a little bit more bulk and stretch out that creaminess as much as possible. So I'm going to dice mine up here. I can't get over how creamy this is. All right, there's our avocado. Now I'm going to add in pico de gallo. Pico de gallo is such a hack. I cannot even tell you. This is what changes the game for rice and beans. The ultimate hack is to, if you are a lazy gal, a lazy guy, lazy honey, and you, you know, you don't feel too comfortable in the kitchen, this right here, this is going to change the game. This is going to take you to top notch chef. If you take rice and beans and pico de gallo, bam, it's also, it's, it's the least talked about hack ever. It's such a hack because this is a great way to get in non-starchy vegetables too. It's a bunch of tomato, onion, peppers, you know, it's very low calorie. And so it's a great way to get in non-starchy vegetables and bulk up your meal. So I'm going to add in pico. Now I'm going to take a lime and what you want to do, you want to roll the lime to get the juices flowing. All right, back to my line. I'm going to cut her open. I'm going to squeeze out as much juice as possible. The most common question we get on a plant-based diet is where do you get your protein? But really the question should be, where do you get your vitamin B12? If you are eating a plant-based diet, it's an absolute non-negotiable to supplement with vitamin B12, because you're not going to be getting it from your food. This is totally different than protein. You have to supplement with this one. Unfortunately, all the B12s you're going to find on the market are disgusting. So I created one for you that is clean, premium ingredients, no sugar, no oil, no gross stuff, no gunk, just one ingredient, B12, get it today. Okay. And then to the lime juice, I have added a little bit of cumin, garlic powder, and chili powder. Mix that up. Look at that gorgeous color from the powder. Add that on. I'm going to add cilantro. And for a crunch, I'm going to add on some baby pumpkin seeds. Again, these are going to be higher in fat. So if you are being modest with your fat intake and not just fat, you know, fat is not a bad thing. Fat doesn't make you fat and excess of calories is what makes you fat and fat is super calorically dense. It's nine calories per gram versus carbohydrates and protein are four calories per gram. Meaning if you have one gram or we'll make it a hundred, if you have a hundred grams of carbohydrates, that's going to be 400 calories versus if you have a hundred grams of fat, it's going to be 900 calories, meaning we're going to have equal size portions of food, but one's going to be more calorically dense. And it's the one that's high in fat, but these are really high in protein too. So exercise caution, if you are looking to release weight, but if you're not looking to release weight, then have a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds. Actually, I'm going to be strategic with how I place these because I'm going to take a photo. Gorgeous. Well, a Southwest bowl from the healthy bowls cookbook been done. Gorgeous. So easy. If you made it to this point of the video, I want you to tell me which one of these are you choosing? Are you choosing the Southwest bowl or the tofu teriyaki bowl? Leave a comment and let me know. I'll leave a comment too, and let you know the next video that pops up on the screen is from my slim on starch clients, Stephanie, who went from eating a super high animal based protein diet and having kidney issues because of it and being overweight to eating exclusively plant protein, watching her body heal and releasing weight effortlessly. You're going to love this video. I love you honeys. And I'll see you in my next one.