While I post a lot about cooking ahead and freezing meals, I do not use pre-frozen meals every night of the week. When we’re meal planning, I look at our schedule and determine which nights will afford me some (emphasis on some!) time to cook. I do have quite a few meals that I can efficiently pull together on those nights. One of my favorites is stir fry. Patch is vegetarian, so we do eat a good amount of plant-based meals. I speak with a lot of clients who are looking to eat a more plant-based diet, and I find that stir fry and other Asian meals are an easy way to integrate more plant-based dishes into their lives.

For one, many Asian dishes are naturally vegetarian. Secondly, they tend to include a lot of vegetables. And, finally, Asian cuisine integrates many fresh and delectable flavors. This can help those who are reluctant to eating vegetarian get over “missing” the meat.

In order to regularly make stir fry, I keep a few key ingredients on hand–these include: sesame oil, canola oil, soy sauce, garlic, corn starch (it will make sense later), and brown rice. These are all ingredients that will not perish quickly. Most can be purchased in bulk, if you plan to regularly make stir fry. From there you can include the fresh ingredients, such as tofu (or “tofood” as Elliot refers to it), veggies (bell peppers, peapods, green onions, mushrooms), lime, etc., in your weekly grocery list. It is also a great way to use up some veggies that need to be eaten from your fridge.

Check out this beautiful stir fry that I pulled together last week for dinner.

All of these veggies were sitting in the fridge and would have gone south had I not used them soon. This wok has been so useful! I bought it on a whim about 6 years ago, and we use it multiple times a week. It is also a great place to make oil-popped popcorn!

In addition to the veggies, I made the tofu using this recipe from thekitchn.com (one of my favorite sites for recipes). I then served it with a side of our favorite brown rice. So, this meal hits all of my “nutritious” check boxes. It has lean protein, a variety of veggies, and whole grain. And, everyone devours it! What are some of your go-to weeknight meals?