RVegan goals, pantry, shopping, and packing lunches...

It's been a while since I chronicled our food adventure.  We strive to eat Whole Food Plant Based whenever possible for health reasons.  We plan ahead, cook at home, and pack our lunches.  I've kept track of my progress via a habit tracker app on my phone.  Each day I review what I ate and mark if I met one or more of my diet goals.  The various goals are vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, pescatarian, home cooked dinner, and home cooked lunch.  Since the first of the year I have met my highest goal, vegan, 43% of the days and I have been vegetarian 54% of the days.  I've only tracked dairy-free since July and I am doing really well on that - 61% of days I've tracked I've been dairy-free.  I also started tracking pescatarian in July and I've eaten fish on 17% of the days since then.

So what do we eat?  Lots of beans, grains, legumes, veggies and fruit.  The kids eat dairy regularly. Today's packed school lunch contained the following, 8 wheat thin/peanut butter sandwiches, half of an orange pepper, handful of cherry tomatoes, grapes, 100% fruit juice, and 3 Andes mints.  Those items were all requested by Brother.  I try to expose the kids to all types of food and let them make up their mind about what they want to eat.  I talk about the health benefits of eating plants over animal products and they know I have developed lactose intolerance (which seems to be a genetic thing so they may have that to look forward to).

I had chronicled my overflowing pantry when we first moved into the RV - here is an updated picture of the overflow:

So you see I am down to a half of one bin instead of three!  We are making good progress eating all the dry goods I had stored.  I've been cooking the dry beans up in the crockpot and then freezing them in 15 oz bags to use in place of canned beans.  That has really worked well.  The odds and ends in this bin include split green peas, barley, some rye flour, millet, and some various other grains.  I will continue to plan recipes to use all of this up.

Grocery shopping has been so much easier in the city.  First, the distance to the stores is much reduced! It used to be such a big deal to go to town for groceries!  For the past two Sunday's I have gone shopping blissfully alone while the rest of the family hangs out watching football and playing. They hardly miss me! We have just enough room in the fridge for a week's worth of cold food - I have a really good sense of what can fit now.

The best news about food is that I think we can start cooking inside!  The weather is staying below 100 and the nights are cooling off significantly! We've slept with the windows open for five nights now and in the morning it has been in the low 70s!  Tonight I think I am going to make fresh bread and then warm some cans of tomato soup on the stove!  Not having to restrict my tools to a crockpot and a grill will be amazing!