I hope your week includes a July 4th picnic or some BBQ fun! This week's meal plans are full of recipes perfect to take along to share at your holiday event, or just to celebrate at home — Patriotic Smoothie, Green Bean Salad, Summer Succotash, and Israeli Salad are all NEW for both plans, plus much more!

Individual Highlights:

• Patriotic Smoothie (NEW!)
  
• Israeli Salad (NEW!)
  
• Summer Succotash (NEW!)
  
• Green Bean Salad (NEW!)
  
• Red, White & Blue Parfaits
  
• Sun-Dried Tomato White …

Tomorrow is Eat Beans Day! I love the ease of canned beans (open, rinse, ready!), and I still recommend keeping canned beans on hand for "last minute" cooking or convenience when you don't have the time to make beans yourself.

Still, home-cooked beans are great. They cost a fraction of what you'll pay for canned beans, there are no added salts (or anything else... unless you add it), and you can make a big batch passively while …

A few months ago, I posted this on my personal Facebook page:

"We can't beat ourselves up for the mistakes we made in the past, only allow them to power us to make better choices in the future. Love yourself ♥"

Soon after, this email bubbled up in my inbox:

"Good Morning Lindsay, love your quote today and I live too much in the past and trying to move forward but …

We did it! It is officially Day 28 of the HH28 Challenge! At the start of the month, many Herbies joined me in a community pledge with a simple mission: to keep it simple and eat and drink only whole foods. I left the specifics up to each participant and we each set our own realistic guidelines, but the goal was really to take whatever small steps we could with one goal — to live better. It seems …

You've got questions...

Q: How do you measure a cup of spinach — are you using a full packed 8 oz cup or do you measure by weight? (With the meal plan)

A: 1 cup of spinach is usually about 1 ounce. I grab a big handful, which is usually 1 cup measured or 1 oz on the scale.

Q: Do you know of children's books that will explain to the children that to be vegetarian/vegan is so important?

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