I have always gone back & forth between eating vegetarian & not eating vegetarian. Always in the past when I have eaten meat it still has been mostly a vegetarian diet & eat meat occasionally because everyone in my family are meat eaters & sometimes the fight to have what I wanted was just not worth the problems that it has caused.

With the kids moved out on their own & with the support of my husband the last 3 months I have gone back to eating vegetarian, although it has been lacto-vegetarian. Yes I am a chubby vegetarian!

Last month, I cut out all cheese & yogurts. This month I am working on cutting out all milk/dairy products.

I am not crazy about tofu unless it is in a soup. I do not like meat/cheese substitutes at all. I get a majority of my protein from dairy and beans. I absolutely love bean burgers & cooked beans of all kinds. With cutting out dairy completely I am looking for other ways to make sure that I am eating a healthy vegetarian diet.

Anybody got any really good ideas for things that I can make that won't leave me lacking in what I need to eat & won't get me to the point that I get tired of eating beans for my protein?

I would load up on vegan recipes, blog.fatfreevegan.com is great as well as http://www.theppk.com/recipes/

I also think Isa Does It is a fabulous cookbook and I highly recommend it.

There are so many types of legumes, you can certainly explore the range. Have you ever tried tempeh? Seitan? Those are other protein sources as well as nuts/seeds.

My general rule is eat a wide variety of foods and take a multivitamin.

Thanks Nellie. No I haven't tried tempeh or Seitan, they are on my list of stuff I want to pick up at the store tomorrow & I don't know why but I didn't even think of nuts & seeds, guess I wasn't even thinking when I was making up my grocery list & menu.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but Oh Nelie!!!! I was searching here for comments on the Isa Does It book. Enough low calorie recipes to make it worth it?

Jennifer, Isa Does It is probably one of my best cookbooks. There are plenty of low calorie recipes in it. Go for it! xoxo

justsayno - Also remember that every whole food has protein in it. I think leafy greens have the highest protein content of any food but you have to eat a lot of them to get a lot of protein but mixing in various grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruit will provide you with a well rounded amount of protein. Seitan and tempeh are good options to add in as well. I think homemade seitan tastes better than store bought but you might want to try it first but if you don't like the store bought, that doesn't mean you wouldn't like the homemade.

Found the book on Amazon & ordered it, thanks for the suggestion.

You haven't mentioned seeds and nuts. These should be on your salads and in other dishes. Mustn't get into binging on them though.

I don't think i could ever give up milk. I wish i could a bit because of things they do to dairy cows but i just don't feel i could cope on a vegan diet.

I do eat nuts & seeds & I really don't have a problem of eating too many. I usually put a small handful on my salads, every once in a while I will snack on a couple.

I really like Almond Milk, Soy milk is okay but I am not crazy about it. Giving up all dairy really hasn't been very hard at all.

You never know, if i stick around this forum for long enough i might even try to go vegan for a while to see how it feels. I don't like those other "milk" products though. I'd probably just have to drink more wine and beer. Though i discovered the other day that even beer uses a pork product at least i think i read that. They use pork in lots of novel things apparently. But i am not a purist so i guess i could live with that.

Justsayno -- I like almond milk as well.

Also, I have found that after quite a while being vegan my tastes changed. For instance, I didn't like cheese substitutes at all when I first went vegan. Now I do. Nobody was more surprised than me!

So as time goes by, you may want to revisit some of the items you don't like now, and try them again in different ways perhaps. You never know!

I have been vegetarian for about 15+ years. Last year I gave up milk drinks. This year I have been trying more a vegan lifestyle with carbs from fruit mostly.

Pattience - Oh that is just crazy, pork in beer products, eeewww.

Mrs. Snark - That is such a good point, I will have to keep that in mind & every so often try items again. Food around my house never goes to waste, so if I don't like it I know my daughter will eat it when she comes over. She doesn't care what it is, she would eat anything, I am thinking if you glued food to the floor she would still pry it up & eat it. That does make me feel better about buying food that I may or may not eat.

noshoes - I've done really good without the dairy products, I guessing that if I wanted to eat a vegan diet it probably wouldn't be that hard, I cook a lot from recipes & there is a good mix of vegan recipes that I cook, if I like the ingredients and it taste good I will eat it.

Some beers and wines are vegetarian and/or vegan (some egg can be used too). http://www.barnivore.com/ is a good resource and Ive found emailing the company and asking always gets a response. Im currently drinking a British beer, clearly labeled as vegan, I wish it was more common.


I went back to being a vegetarian last year, I had been as a teenager and went back to meat eating, but Id got increasingly picky again after my kids were born. 2 weeks ago I went fully vegan, not found it hard at all so far. I feel healthier and my skin looks better. I also sleep better than I have done in years.

Ive also made my own seitan which was really good, though a little on the salty side so Ill just adjust the recipe next time.

SuomiSara, thanks for the link, I especially liked seeing the wine list.

I went vegan for a year, and had trouble with gluten, plus I'm a finicky eater and I didn't digest soy very well...as well as some nuts. Getting my protein was a terrible challenge. I found that eating pumpkin seeds, nuts (I could digest), fortified rice and almond milk helped, but with my weight training I still needed more. I discovered brown rice protein powder. In a glass of almond milk, it was a needed addition to my nutrients.

I'm back to being a carnivore, so it's no longer an issue, but yeah...I had trouble, good luck!