Kitchen Monk

📅 8-Week Meal Plan
🏮 The Book

🌱 Welcome to month two. Same simple idea: cook a few times a week, let leftovers do the heavy lifting, and keep every meal 100% plant-based and SOS-free (no added salt, oil, or sugar). Tap a recipe name to open it in the VA’s free guide, then follow the 🌿 note beneath it.

⬅️ Back to Weeks 1–4

📅 Jump to a week:

🫑 Week 5
🍝 Week 6
🍲 Week 7
🎉 Week 8

🌿 The SOS-free basics, every recipe: sauté in water or no-salt-added broth and bake on parchment (no oil); choose no-salt-added beans, tomatoes, broth, and salsa and skip salt, soy sauce, and bottled sauces; sweeten only with whole fruit or dates (no sugar, honey, maple syrup, or juice); no eggs, dairy, or cheese; read every label. “Same swaps” below means the swaps for that recipe in Weeks 1–4.

🧭 A gentle note: General cooking information, not personal medical or nutrition advice. If you take medicines for blood pressure or diabetes, have kidney disease or food allergies, or are pregnant, check with your clinician or registered dietitian first; low-salt, plant-based eating can lower blood pressure and blood sugar quickly. 💊 Everyone eating only plants needs a reliable vitamin B12 source.

🫑 Week 5: Fiesta week

☀️ Sunday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Vegan Breakfast Tacos (guide p. 36)
    🌿 Skip the oil and salt; crumble the tofu into a dry nonstick pan; no-salt-added salsa; 100% corn tortillas; nutritional yeast is fine.
  • 🥗 Lunch: Cowboy Caviar (guide p. 82) over brown rice
    🌿 Skip the oil, sugar, and salt; dress with lime juice, red wine vinegar, garlic, and cumin; no-salt-added beans and corn.
  • 🌶️ Dinner: Bean and Rice-Stuffed Pepper Enchiladas (guide p. 49), 6 servings
    🌿 Make your own sauce: no-salt-added tomato sauce simmered with chili powder, cumin, garlic, and oregano. Water-sauté; skip the cheese; top with avocado and cilantro.

🌙 Monday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Breakfast taco leftovers
  • 🥗 Lunch: Enchilada leftovers
  • 🍠 Dinner: Cowboy caviar over greens with a microwave-baked sweet potato

🌤️ Tuesday

🌿 Wednesday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Green Machine Fruit Smoothie
  • 🥗 Lunch: Quesadilla leftovers
  • 🍛 Dinner: Chickpea Masala Stew (guide p. 62) over brown rice
    🌿 Skip the jarred tikka sauce (it usually has salt, oil, sugar, or dairy): use no-salt-added crushed tomatoes with garam masala, cumin, ginger, and garlic. Water-sauté; no-salt-added chickpeas.

⚡ Thursday

🎉 Friday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Peanut Butter-Berry Toast (same swaps)
  • 🥗 Lunch: Mushroom soup leftovers
  • 🎃 Dinner: Enchilada-Style Spaghetti Squash (guide p. 48)
    🌿 Roast the squash cut-side down on parchment, no oil; homemade salt-free enchilada sauce (see Sunday); skip the cheese, sour cream, and hot sauce.

🌲 Saturday

🍝 Week 6: Italian night and backyard comfort

☀️ Sunday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Banana Bread Baked Oatmeal (same swaps: bananas and dates, no oil, syrup, or salt)
  • 🥗 Lunch: Lemon-Garlic Hummus (guide p. 84) with carrots, cucumber, and peppers
    🌿 Skip the oil and salt; no-salt-added chickpeas; thin with lemon juice and a splash of the chickpea liquid or water.
  • 🍝 Dinner: Italian White Bean Meatballs (guide p. 51) with marinara over 100% whole-grain pasta
    🌿 Use a flax egg (1 tbsp ground flax + 3 tbsp water) instead of the egg, rolled oats instead of panko, and nutritional yeast instead of parmesan; salt-free Italian herbs; bake on parchment; marinara with no added salt, oil, or sugar.

🌙 Monday

🌤️ Tuesday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Strawberry-Pineapple Green Smoothie
  • 🥗 Lunch: White bean soup leftovers
  • 🫘 Dinner: Pressure Cooker Smokey Baked Beans (guide p. 72), Creamy Cauliflower Mash, steamed greens
    🌿 Skip the oil, salt, and maple syrup; sweeten with 4–5 blended dates and a little no-salt-added tomato paste; smoked paprika for the smoke; no-salt-added broth.

🌿 Wednesday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Cinnamon-Raisin Overnight Oatmeal, no salt
  • 🥔 Lunch: Baked beans over a baked potato
  • 🥕 Dinner: Carrot-Almond Rice Pilaf (guide p. 75) with Lemon-Herb Roasted Chickpeas (guide p. 83) and broccoli
    🌿 Pilaf: water-sauté, no salt, no-salt-added broth, raw almonds. Chickpeas: roast on parchment with lemon and spices, no oil or salt.

⚡ Thursday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Peanut Butter-Berry Toast
  • 🥗 Lunch: Pilaf and chickpea leftovers
  • 🫘 Dinner: Hearty Bean and Vegetable Chili (same swaps). 📝 Freeze two portions for Week 7.

🎉 Friday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Green Machine Fruit Smoothie
  • 🥗 Lunch: Chili leftovers
  • 🍝 Dinner: Spaghetti with Vegetable Sauce (same swaps). 📝 Start slow-cooker oatmeal tonight.

🌲 Saturday

🍲 Week 7: Soups, wraps, and stir-fry

☀️ Sunday

🌙 Monday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Banana-Oat Chia Pudding (same swaps), made the night before
  • 🥗 Lunch: Tofu wrap leftovers
  • 🥬 Dinner: Lentil pumpkin soup leftovers with Simple Savory Kale Chips (guide p. 79)
    🌿 No oil or salt: massage the kale with lemon juice, sprinkle with nutritional yeast and garlic powder, bake low on parchment until crisp.

🌤️ Tuesday

🌿 Wednesday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Microwave Blueberry-Walnut Oatmeal
  • 🥗 Lunch: Stew leftovers
  • 🥪 Dinner: Lentil Sloppy Joes (same swaps) in lettuce cups

⚡ Thursday

🎉 Friday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Green Machine Fruit Smoothie
  • 🥗 Lunch: Stir-fry leftovers
  • 🌼 Dinner: Turmeric Roasted Cauliflower Soup (same swaps) with roasted chickpeas on top

🌲 Saturday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Strawberry-Pineapple Green Smoothie
  • 🥗 Lunch: Cauliflower soup leftovers
  • 🧊 Dinner: Freezer night: the chili you saved in Week 6, over a baked sweet potato
    🍫 Weekend treat: Stuffed Dates (guide p. 91). 🌿 Peanut butter made from only peanuts; skip the chocolate and dust with unsweetened cocoa powder instead.

🎉 Week 8: Favorites and a celebration

☀️ Sunday

🌙 Monday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Apple oatmeal leftovers
  • 🥗 Lunch: Fajita leftovers
  • 🍲 Dinner: Lentil soup leftovers, kale chips

🌤️ Tuesday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Green Machine Fruit Smoothie
  • 🥗 Lunch: Cowboy Caviar (Week 5 swaps) over greens
  • 🍠 Dinner: African-Inspired Sweet Potato Stew (same swaps) over brown rice

🌿 Wednesday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Cinnamon-Raisin Overnight Oatmeal, no salt
  • 🥗 Lunch: Sweet potato stew leftovers
  • 🌮 Dinner: Plant-Based Lentil Taco Meat (same swaps) in corn tortillas or lettuce cups. 📝 Freeze the extra.

⚡ Thursday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Peanut Butter-Berry Toast
  • 🥗 Lunch: Taco bowl with brown rice, greens, and no-salt-added salsa
  • 🍝 Dinner: Lentil Mushroom Ragout (same swaps) over whole-grain pasta

🎉 Friday

  • 🌅 Breakfast: Strawberry-Pineapple Green Smoothie
  • 🥗 Lunch: Ragout leftovers
  • 🫘 Dinner: Three-Bean Chili (same swaps), green salad

🌲 Saturday: You did it! 🎉

🔁 After Week 8: two months of meals, about 40 different recipes. Start again at Week 1 and keep your favorites; by now many of these will feel like your own. 🛒 Each Saturday, look over next week’s recipes and make a shopping list.

🔁 Start Again at Week 1
📖 Open the Full Free Guide (PDF)

⚠️ Allergens in Weeks 5–8: soy (tofu, soy milk), peanuts, tree nuts (walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts), sesame (if you add tahini), and wheat. Swaps are ideas, not promises of safety for allergies or medical diets. Always read labels. 🧊 Leftovers: refrigerate within 2 hours, eat within 3–4 days, reheat to 165°F, and freeze the rest.

ℹ️ About This Page

Weeks 5–8 are Kitchen Monk’s own plan, built from recipes in Practical Plant-Based Cooking by the GEMS Clinical Work Group with the Nutrition and Food Services Healthy Teaching Kitchen, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (May 2023), plus three Kitchen Monk recipes from our Oregon Coast Kitchen page. The SOS-free and plant-based swaps are ours, not the VA’s. Recipes appear only in the original guide. Kitchen Monk is independent and is not sponsored or endorsed by the VA. The original PDF is not tagged for screen readers.

Written by Nathanael Elijah Smith, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM, with AI-assisted drafting · Independent external review: not yet completed · Last updated: October 2026

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