After easing myself into Organic September by replacing my coffee and milk with organic versions for week one, week two has upped the pace. For the second week of Organic September, I replaced one meal a day with an all organic, all vegan, option. Here’s how I got on…
I began the week by swapping my breakfast for an organic alternative. Since I usually opt for a sugar-free muesli, this was by far the easiest swap of all – replacing my usual muesli with a Dorset Cereals organic muesli. To accompany the cereal, I chose an organic oat milk since it was the easiest organic plant milk to get hold of (I also found it to be the only organic one available for last week’s Organic September challenge).
To mix things up, later in the week I added organic raspberries and organic cacao nibs to the muesli for another organic breakfast. Phew, that’s a lot of ‘organics’ in one sentence! These items were a little more expensive than my usual purchases – though it’s worth noting that the organic cereal didn’t come up any more expensive than the other varieties from Dorset Cereals. The muesli was nicer than my usual choice so I think I’d still go for it again.
For two lunchtimes, I chose organic baked beans. I absolutely love baked beans as a surprisingly nutritious (and cheap!) mid-week lunch option for when there aren’t any leftovers, erm, left. For classic beans on toast, they teamed up perfectly with organic wholemeal toast.
Both the baked beans and the bread I chose were part of Waitrose’s Duchy Organic range where everything is grown accordingly to the Soil Associations’ standards with an emphasis on British supply when possible. A portion of sales from Duchy Originals goes to charitable causes too, which can find out more about over on their website. In switching these to organic I barely noticed any difference in the price – a definite bonus and I’d happily choose organic again next time, even more so from the Duchy range knowing the strong ethics behind it.
The other half of the tin of baked beans made a great lunch combined with sweet potato mash and grated smoked tofu (both also organic). The smoked tofu was a last-minute addition, but possibly my greatest discovery during this challenge was putting it on top of baked beans. Honestly, who needs cheese and beans when you can have this!? I urge you to go and try it!
The real winner of the week however, was this organic dinner of stuffed peppers, sweet potato mash and chickpea & tomato salad. This actually lasted me for a couple of meals; the following day I blended up the chickpea and tomato salad with a little extra tahini and fresh lemon juice to create an organic homemade hummous for lunch. The hummous was fantastic eaten with organic barbecued mushrooms and organic bread.
Finally to round off the seven days, I ate the remaining hummous on organic toast for breakfast!
So that was my full week with one organic meal a day! Overall I found it was very easy to make the swaps, with an organic version of just about everything readily available. Would you give any of these a try?
This post is in collaboration with Waitrose who kindly provided the organic ingredients but all thoughts and recipes are my own!
