Hi Ladies.

My husband has now decided he wants to go vegetarian. For all intent and purposes I became a pescetarian several months ago with the rare occurence of eating other types of flesh. I need help. I am not interested in using fake meat products. What steps do I begin to take to make this happen? Of course, I know--no meat but give me some ideas of "family meals" that are meatless. I have two young picky eaters. Thanks for any advice. Also, other than fake meat products what do you eat to take the place of fleshy texture in recipes? Is eating eggs okay for a vegetarian? Any products that contain meat I need to know about and wouldn't inherently know already?

There are tons of vegetarian cookbooks and recipes online that don't use fake meat. Vegetarians do eat eggs and I use beans and tofu a lot in place of meat. TVP is another product you can use to get more texture in dishes like chili or spaghetti. TVP is textured vegetable protein and can be found in health food stores.

Your best bet is probably to start checking out recipes online. You'll find lots of great recipes!

You do have to check labels carefully to make sure there's nothing "meaty" in them. Often canned vegetable soup will have beef broth in them. Gelatin is another non vegetarian product that's in a lot of stuff. You can find a more extensive list here:

http://vegetarian-issues.suite101.co...an_ingredients

Good luck!

Fleshy texture hmmm well beans, mushrooms, tofu, tempeh and seitan are all things that I'd think take the place of something fleshy. Seitan is probably closest to what you'd call 'fake meat' although it is really easy to make and every few months, I'll decide to make it.

I'd definitely check your local library for cookbooks. My favorite cookbooks are Vegan With a Vengeance and Veganomicon. There are lots of good casserole type dishes and no fake meat products although there might be a recipe or 2 in them on how to make seitan and a recipe with seitan.

also, blog.fatfreevegan.com is one of my favorite blogs. Again no fake meat for the most part although you may see a recipe once in a while using seitan.

(this is my first post! whee!) I would agree with you there...although fake meat (and for that matter, frozen organic pizza, mac & cheese, etc.) might be better for you in some ways than real meat (as well as being better for a peaceful world and for the Earth), it's not necessarily going to help you lose weight. calories still matter. I've found that since becoming officially vegetarian about 5 1/2 weeks ago, my relationship with food has improved and I eat fewer unhealthful things while stressing out about diet less. I've lost about 3 pounds in the process. :-)

There's an older cookbook called The Gradual Vegetarian that has some good recipes for transitioning. I think that their Hoppin' John recipe was really good if I remember right. Its still available on Amazon and other places, or super cheap half.com.

Tons of recipes on the net. Good luck!