I have been wanting to become vegetarian for quite some time now. I eventually want to become vegan, but I figure I better start out slow and then ease into vegan.

How can a person raised on eating meat who is 31 yrs old and has to cook meat for her family become vegetarian? Please give me suggestions and persuasial so I can put the animals before myself and become vegetarian. Help, Help, Help!!!!

Congratulations on making the decision to cut meat from your diet!

I haven’t had to deal with cooking for a meat eating family, and I’ve been eating vegetarian since I was a young teenager so I’m afraid I can’t provide too much advice about your situation from personal experience. But I’m sure there are others who can!

My mom used to just leave meat out of things till the last ingredient, set some aside for me, and then add the meat for the rest of the family. Granted she didn’t know much about nutrition, and nothing of vegetarian nutrition, and I ended up eating a diet heavy in simple starches, dairy, and eggs which isn’t all that great, but I imagine you could use the same concept for your own meals making sure they’re well balanced and healthy. Basically you could prepare the meal for your family, and then substitute a vegetarian protein for your portion. Experiment with tofu, tempeh, beans, seitan, there are lots of options. For convenience there’s always the “fake meats” you can buy frozen, but they are highly processed and often expensive and full of sodium so I try to limit these to just a couple times a week.

I would also try to start introducing your family to more vegetarian food. You can do this with familiar foods that aren’t threatening, and make it fun! Like bean tacos and burritos, falafel (you can oven bake the patties if you like avoid deep frying, I know I do), veggie burgers, pastas, etc. Take what your family already eats and see if you can find a way to make a similar veggie dish. Takes some practice at first I’m sure, but you’ll get the hang of it!

Invest in some vegetarian cookbooks. The Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas might be of particular interest for you, Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a personal favorite.

Here are some of my favorite sites for information and recipes:

The Post Punk Kitchen
The Vegan Lunchbox
Fatfree Vegan
Christina Cooks
Bryanna's Vegan Feast
Vive le Vegan
melomeals
Get Sconed

Hope that helps. Wishing you luck, hope we can help with any other questions you might have!

I am not vegetarian, but I've reduced the amount of meat I eat considerably. It's a lot harder now that I'm reducing carbs, but I do have some tips I think might help you.

I had a book a few years ago called "The gradual vegetarian," and it had three stages, each progressively cutting out more animal proteins. Stage one had fish and chicken, but no red meat. I don't remember if Stage II was lacto-ovo and Stage III was vegan or whether Stage II included fish and Stage III was lacto-oveo. Although I remember there being some macrobiotic recipes.

I started by extending ground beef with tvp in recipes tvp is textured vegetable (soy) protein. You can buy it in bulk in most health food stores and it can be used to replace some or all of the meat in recipes. It comes in granules to simulate ground meat, and chunks and strips that like beef and chicken. They don't have a lot of flavor in themselves, but they absorb flavors well. You pour boiling water over the dry tvp and then use it in recipes.

I like tvp fine on it's own, seasoned and used like I would ground beef, but hubby is only starting to come around regarding meatless meals. Still, even when all of his completely carnivore buddies are over, I use 1/2 ground beef and 1/2 tvp (and/or cooked wheat berries) in my taco meat. I had to give away my "secret" when two of the guys asked for my taco recipe because they loved it so much. They were shocked to learn it was partially "fake" meat.

I do this with spaghetti sauce too, but now can serve hubby completely meat free pasta without complaint. Initially I would make a very "meaty" sauce again with 1/2 tvp and 1/2 ground beef. I kept reducing both the tvp and meat, and increasing the vegetables each time I made it. He often isn't sure whether there's meat in the sauce or not, since I still use a little tvp or cracked wheat or wheat berries (the wheat berries are more obvious).

We also do a lot of fend-for-yourself and assemble-yourself meals. I'll make buffet style meals for tacos, burritos, salads, pasta or baked potatoes and we can add our own fixins with as much or as little meat as we want. This is especially great when I'm cooking for guests, because almost any diet or allergy can be accomodated. My husband has a friend who is allergic to onions. He can't eat them (and neither can his wife - because if she kisses him after eating onions, his lips will swell and itch), but can be in the same room with them (unlike some people with severe peanut and seafood allergies), so I can incorporate them into the buffet.

Thanks for the tips. I appreciate it.

This book might be helpful to you. http://www.amazon.com/Gradual-Vegeta.../dp/0440215854

It's older, but still relevant, and you can probably find it at the library.

Welcome MugCanDoIt - here is a link to some informative books and resources to get you started - good luck with your new lifestyle!

http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92224

I have both vegetarian and carnivorous kids!! And my dad is vegan, my mom more like a mediteranian diet, mostly plant foods but she does eat small amounts of animal foods too. So I have to please everybody!

product I really love is "Yves Good Ground," you will find this at whole foods, it's a soy-based stand in that I find much superior the the regular kind of textured veggie protein stuff.

If you want to be a sneaky little snake...make some spaghetti sauce or chili or sloppy joes or whatever they like usually, with this stuff I am telling you they will NOT be able to tell the diff!!

Same with stuffed peppers, etc.....the only trick is, cook the sauce FIRST, then crumble in the yves last, unlike the real stuff it does not benefit from long cooking and just needs to be heated in the dish.

We moved into it with "fake" meat. There are some pretty tasty things out there that satisfy the meat cravings until you learn to like/make meals that don't have meat. Just don't do the fake bacon. Even when you tell yourself it isn't real bacon - it's just not right. I love the Morningstar breakfast sausages cooked with a touch of real maple syrup.

First, congratulations on making a very good decision!

You can ease into vegetarianism slowly by first buying yourself a couple good vegetarian cookbooks. Click on my blog link below as I have some listed on the right side of my blog under "favorite cookbooks".

Try starting by having one vegetarian dinner per week. Use your new cookbooks to choose the recipe. After a couple weeks, increase to 2 vegetarian recipes a week (always try to make new recipes so you can build your cooking repertoir and get used to vegetarian cooking). Continue to add until all your days are vegetarian.

This is the easiest way to do it and it will be fun as well!

The book EcoGeek linked to is the book I was talking about. It's on my list of to buy books, because I lost my copy.

The other day, hubby and I were shopping at a discount store that gets in health food and gourmet stock (it's a liquidator store, kind of like BigLots, but privately owned), and HE actually pointed out the shipment of assorted beans and lentils they had gotten in, and suggested we stock up to make
beans and rice and such. It struck me how much I have changed his (and my) eating habits away from "hunk-o-meat" eating. Even a year ago, I don't think he would have looked forward to any meatless meal, except maybe macaroni and cheese.

Congratulations on wanting to make the transition to become a vegetarian.

I myself struggled when I first went vegetarian back in August. We had a freezer full of meat, and all my cooking involed some kind of meat. For me, I went cold turkey. One day I woke up and that was it, not more meat. Of course, i had been thinking about doing the transition for quite some time now. My boyfriend is still a meat eater and he respects my decision 100%.

I went to the library and picked out books on vegetarian and vegan cooking and that has helped me a lot. I also read a lot on the subject. I also looked at what we ate most and tried to make a vegetarian version of it.

My boyfriend now eats less meat as a result of me going vegetarian. We try to make our meals to accomodate both of us. For instance, last week he wanted to eat Shepperd's pie, so i made a small one with ground beef and the other one, for myself, with lentils. It wasn't much more trouble, and we had some for our lunches.

It's been almost 2 months and it's much easier now than it was when I first started. Just give yourself a little time.