Recently, a friend asked me, 'How may I prepare a Whole Food Plant-Based stew quickly at home, for carrying to work?' In response, I came up with these ideas:

Imagine an InstaPot preparation with these components:

(A) WHOLE GRAINS: soaked overnight; we may choose grains that cook very fast, within a few mins, for example, quinoa or rolled grains (rolled oats) or broken grains ('dalia' / cracked wheat).

(B) BEANS: soaked overnight; we may choose beans that cook very fast, within a few mins — lentils or black eyed beans, for example. Or we may choose tofu (no need to cook) or edamame (no need to cook).

(C) LEAFY GREENS: super important to eat in abundance; batch prep these leafy greens on a weekend by cleaning & chopping into largish pieces — kale & collards are the best. Add these in generous amounts.

(D) BERRIES: add 1/2 tsp amla powder & buy all sorts of berries & throw a few randomly picked ones on any day — they make this preparation flavorful!

(E) HERBS & SPICES: buy dried herbs & spices instead of fresh. If we have individual spices at home, batch prep 5 different spice mixtures for weekdays on Sunday. Tomatoes make everything flavorful — instead of fresh tomatoes, we may use sun-dried tomatoes, dried tomato flakes, tomato paste, diced tomatoes etc. For onion, ginger & garlic, use onion powder, ginger powder, garlic powder. I usually throw in something sour into such preparations: sumac powder (sumac spice) or garcinia ('kokum') or mango powder or pineapple (freshly chopped; this may not be possible for those without time in the morning) or amla powder.

(F) (optional) MISC VEGGIES: any misc veggie or two that you feel like adding on any day — this will require chopping (if we're busy, we may skip this step). We can eat RAINBOW VEGGIES in our evening meal in the form of a giant salad.

(G) TUBERS: We can replace WHOLE GRAINS by TUBERS (potatoes or sweet potatoes; sweet potatoes are healthier) into relatively largish pieces. And we can have a TUBER-centric meal without any WHOLE GRAINS. Some people are not accustomed to such a meal but it's like "baked potato" meal served in American restaurants. Or do a combination of WHOLE GRAINS (in smaller quantity) and TUBERS.

[If we'd like to save the time needed to chop a large-sized sweet potato in the morning, simply put it into a microwave and heat it for 15 mins :) It's ready to eat. Then add it to the final InstaPot preparation as is. Alternately, I think there are some containers -- not food jars but flexible & made of some other material) in which we can carry such a sweet potato hot to work :) ]

Now imagine putting (A) thru (G) into an InstaPot in the morning & setting the timer. When this preparation is cooked, transfer into Food Jar.

Which specific foods in categories (A) thru (G) result in flavorful combinations? I don't know that. However, if we invest 8 weekends in trying out different combinations, it should be possible to identify the right InstaPot settings and devise a flavorful recipe.

What's this meal missing?

(H) RAINBOW VEGGIES — these are often part of a salad, which requires a fair bit of chopping, dicing, mincing, grating. We can prepare such a salad for our evening meal after returning from work. Of if we have mastered batch prep techniques for salad preparation, we can assemble such a salad daily in 5 mins (for both lunch & dinner — it's good to eat such a salad for both lunch & dinner).