This is Part 5 of a 5-part blog series about sticking to a healthy-eating routine that is sustainable even on a budget and when you’re busy. To start at the beginning of the blog series, click here.

Okay, friends. I took two weeks off from blogging before this final Food 101 post, and in the spirit of honesty, I have to say we kind of took those two weeks off from eating as well as we normally do. If this were an Instagram post instead of a blog post, I’d insert several emojis here — pizza, beer, taco, hamburger, crazy smiley, high five, fire, crying kitty face.

There was a little too much restaurant food (since we were out and about a lot), a little too much dessert (since I made cookies just a couple days after a friend brought us cookies and just a couple days before we did brownies and pound cake with chocolate fondue for a mini Oscars party), and a little too much meat (since I promised Danny a traditional lasagna the same week we made a four-pounds-of-meat batch of chili for a church cook-off).

It is what it is — sometimes we all have those stretches where we don’t/can’t/choose not to hold fast to our eating plan. And that’s okay. The key is being able to pick up where we left off, which is what Danny and I are doing with a vengeance this week: except for milk and yogurt, we’re doing this week vegan and entirely home-cooked to recalibrate. It’s already off to a great start.But this isn’t supposed to be about my meal plan for the week — I’m supposed to be sharing some of the recipes and resources that help me stay on track (you know, most of the time…) without feeling I’m spending every free moment in the kitchen. So here goes: my tips for building your recipe stash and knowledge base to keep your cooking fun, creative, and low-stress.

First and foremost — know your food philosophy. Yours doesn’t have to be the same as mine, but knowing what you do and don’t want to do with your meals is the first step to deciding whether an individual recipe (or an entire cookbook or food blog) is going to be a good fit for you. I know I don’t want to make meals that rely on prepared and processed ingredients, like condensed soups or instant rolls; I want most of my meals to go light on the animal products or skip them entirely; and I know I want the majority of my meals to be made up of fresh produce and whole grains. So I know I want recipes (and cookbooks and food blogs) that are written with that same mindset. Your food philosophy becomes a filter that helps you zero in on recipes that your taste buds will love and your body will thank you for.This was today’s fantastic lunch — Cookie + Kate‘s Southwestern Kale Power with Sweet Potato, Quinoa & Avocado sauce. It will be lunch many more times in our future.

Once you have your food philosophy set, you can really start building your own recipe collection. Here’s where most of my favorites come from:

•  A few carefully curated cookbooks. Working up from the end of the list: the last book on this short list is vegan and brand new to me this week (yay!); the fifth, fourth, and third books are vegetarian, and the third is admittedly complicated with lots of exotic and hard to find ingredients; the first two are not vegan or vegetarian but include tons of vegan and vegetarian options, with recipes that are very approachable and un-intimidating, and every single recipe I’ve made from both has been a smashing success. Many recipes from It’s All Good have become mainstays at our house.

• Food blogs — I follow them mostly via Instagram because, even though I don’t actually style my own food pictures, I love pretty, thoughtful food photography that makes me want to eat all the things. A few of my favorite food blogs are Smitten Kitchen,  Teach Eat Love (hey, Anne!), Oh She Glows, Cookie and Kate, Half Baked Harvest, Feasting at Home, Manger, and Vegan Richa.

• Recipe-gathering sites like Epicurious and cooking sections in major publications like the New York Times (I’ve found some excellent globally-inspired recipes here) and Southern Living (their Thanksgiving issue from a few years back is pretty much our Thanksgiving menu these days).
• Pinterest and Google — because, let’s face it, sometimes a little random searching can produce incredible results. That kale power salad pictured above was a Pinterest find.

And to help build up your favorite recipes collection, here are some of the vegan main dish recipes that I make again and again:

• Maple-rosemary roasted butternut squash with tofu, raisins and walnuts
• Risotto with peas and greens
• Kale, mushroom and tomato saute with polenta (skip the Parmesan cheese to make it vegan…I prefer it without the cheese anyway)
• Spicy squash salad with lentils (omit the goat cheese to make it vegan…but it’s really good with the goat cheese)
• Chickpea curry with roasted cauliflower and tomatoes 
• Veggie or tofu stir fry (I almost never follow an actual recipe for stir fry though — I just throw whatever produce I have in the wok and serve over rice or rice noodles
• Masoor dal
  
• White bean and mushroom stew
  
• Farro salad with roasted Brussels sprouts, pumpkin, cranberries and walnuts
• Eggplant, tomato and chickpea casserole
• Avocado, beet, and orange salad
  
• Street noodles (swap tofu for chicken to make it vegan, or omit the protein altogether and just add more veggies)

Well — that’s the end, and for now at least, that means I’ve wrapped up my Food 101 blog series, and we’ll be going back to your regularly scheduled programming of portrait sessions and random life ramblings. But I hope this series has been a welcoming introduction for you if you’re new to the mindset of fresh and healthy cooking, and if you’re a culinary pro who knows your way around the kitchen blindfolded, I hope this has been an encouraging reminder that the work of eating healthy is worthwhile (and should always produce delicious results).

~ Laura