Twenty-three recipes at the light end. Salads, smoothies, a juice and a few dinners that will not sit heavily.
Almost all of them are under twenty-five minutes, and most involve no cooking at all.
Twelve are ours. If you are new to this, the raw end is where plant-based eating is easiest to get right.
Salads
1. Fresh Cucumber Carrot Salad
Ours, and about as simple as food gets. Cucumber and carrot cut thin, dressed, eaten.
Fifteen minutes, serves four. Worth making when the cucumbers are good and not worth it when they are not.
2. Refreshing Zucchini Salad
Also ours. Raw zucchini sliced thin, which is the part people do not expect to work.
Ten minutes, serves two. Best in summer when the zucchini are small and firm.
3. Alfalfa Sprouts Salad
Ours too. Fifteen minutes, serves three, and sprouts are the cheapest fresh thing you can grow on a windowsill.
They add a peppery bite that lettuce cannot.
4. Arugula Sunflower Sprout Salad
Ours. Sunflower sprouts with arugula, tomato, cucumber and a can of kidney beans.
Sunflower seed butter and lemon make the dressing, so nothing needs blending. The beans make it lunch.
5. Kale Crunch Salad with Cabbage and Almonds
Ten minutes, serves four at 194 calories. Kale and cabbage together stay crisp for hours after dressing.
Massage the kale first. It takes thirty seconds and changes the texture entirely.
Get the recipe from Mandi of the Mountains.
6. Chickpea Beet Salad
Also ours. Beets and chickpeas under a tahini dressing, earthy and a little sweet.
Beets stain everything, so choose the container before you toss it.
7. Avocado Quinoa Salad with Roasted Peppers
Ours as well. Twenty minutes, serves two, and the roasted peppers do most of the flavor.
Quinoa turns a salad into a meal without making it heavy.
8. Steamed Vegetable Salad
Warm rather than raw, which is the version to make when it is cold out and you still want vegetables.
Fifteen minutes, serves three. It goes in a lunchbox better than a raw salad does.
Get the recipe from Refresh My Health.
Smoothies and a juice
9. Raspberry Banana Smoothie Bowl
The last of ours. Frozen raspberry and banana, thick enough to eat with a spoon.
Use less liquid than feels right. That is the only thing that separates a bowl from a drink.
10. Healthy Green Smoothie Bowl
Spinach behind frozen fruit, blended thick and topped. Fifteen minutes, makes two.
Spinach disappears completely. Kale does not, which is why this uses spinach.
Get the recipe from Refresh My Health.
11. Broccoli Mango Green Smoothie
Frozen broccoli in a smoothie, which sounds like a dare and is not. The mango covers it entirely.
Ten minutes. Use it frozen or the texture goes stringy.
Get the recipe from Refresh My Health.
12. Watermelon Lemon Ginger Juice
Watermelon, lemon and a lot of ginger, poured into small shot glasses. Twenty-nine calories each.
Juicing throws away the fiber, so this is a nice thing rather than a healthy one. Eat the watermelon too.
Get the recipe from Heavenly Spiced.
Light dinners and lunches
13. Avocado Hummus with Spinach
Hummus and guacamole in the same bowl. Five minutes and a food processor.
Eat it the day you make it. Avocado browns whatever you do to it.
Get the recipe from Chef’s Pencil.
14. Healthy Vegan Pita Sandwich
Fifty minutes, serves four. A pita stuffed properly rather than a sad wrap.
Warm the pita before you fill it or it splits down one side.
Get the recipe from Refresh My Health.
15. Vegan Sorghum Grain Bowl
Sorghum instead of rice or quinoa. It stays chewy rather than going soft, which most grains do not.
Thirty minutes, serves two at 555 calories. Gluten-free, and the least known grain on this page.
Get the recipe from Piping Pot Curry.
16. Vegan Tuscan Chickpeas
Chickpeas cooked down with sun-dried tomato and spinach. Serves two at 571 calories, so it is the heaviest thing here.
The recipe offers vegetable or chicken broth. Take the vegetable.
Get the recipe from Avocado Skillet.
17. Spaghetti in Pesto Sauce
Twenty-five minutes, serves two at 201 calories, which is remarkably light for a pasta.
Pesto without parmesan works because nutritional yeast does the same salty savory job.
Get the recipe from Veg Buffet.
18. Vegan Pad Thai
Thirty minutes, serves two at 562 calories. Tamarind and lime rather than fish sauce.
Soak the noodles rather than boiling them. Boiled rice noodles turn to paste in the pan.
Get the recipe from In the Kitch.
19. Vegetable Soup
A plain vegetable soup at 120 calories a bowl, serving four. The original calls it a detox soup.
Nothing detoxes you except your liver and kidneys, which are already doing it. It is a good light soup and that is reason enough.
Get the recipe from The Soccer Mom Blog.
Light does not have to mean hungry
The salads here that fill you up are the ones with a bean or a grain in them. Leaves alone will not do it, whatever the bowl looks like.
A can of chickpeas or a pot of cooked quinoa in the fridge turns any of these into a meal.
And, always, seek health consciously.
Four more of ours that need no cooking at all
All four are ten to fifteen minutes and a chopping board. If you are starting this week, start here rather than with anything that has a method.
20. Chickpea Mediterranean Salad
A can of chickpeas, a can of sweetcorn, a cucumber and a tomato. Ten minutes, and at 323 calories a serving it is substantial enough to be lunch rather than a side. Get our recipe.
21. Fresh Cucumber Summer Salad
Cucumber, radishes, sweetcorn and dill, at 68 calories a serving. Worth saying plainly: this one is a side. Put it beside something with beans in it or you will be hungry in two hours. Get our recipe.
22. Vegan Peach Salad with Beans
Peach with cucumber, avocado and red onion. Ten minutes, 315 calories, and the beans are what keep it from being a fruit salad. Get our recipe.
23. Easy Avocado Pasta Salad
The one thing here that needs a pan, and only to boil pasta. The avocado is the dressing, so there is no oil and nothing to blend. Serves four at 199 calories. Get our recipe.
