by Mama Fox
I'm a baker. It was what I was born into. First my grandma and then my mother owned and operated a cake decorating store. How could it not be in my genes to be a baker? I can make cookies, muffins, brownies, fudge, cake. Sweet stuff. From an early age I was an expert. Grab a step stool, a bowl and a big wooden spoon. I made the good stuff. I even baked and decorated my own wedding cake. Made the icing myself from scratch (30 minutes of constant whipping. It hurt). I still have people talking about it almost 5 years later. It was that awesome.
Actual cooking came later. I was a follower of directions. Cook as directed on the box. It took me a while to get to the point I am now, throwing things together that sound good and hope the result is something both my husband and children will like. I like food in general, I will eat it if I make it.
Up until recently, a lot of my cooking was meat based. How can I not give my husband what he likes? We could eat our way through 10 lbs of meat in a week. Expensive but what could we do? I added vegetables and made lots of pasta to try to even it out and stretch out the meals to make them last longer. Still, we ate a lot of meat.
Now that I am being more mindful, and of course vegetarian, our meals have changed. I have gone from cooking meat 5-6 days a week down to 1. I cook enough meat in one shot for Papa Fox to add to his dinners for the week. It saves me lots of time when I don't have to wait on meat to cook. I never really realized how much of my dinner prep was spent on meat until I just stopped.
I've been experimenting more with dinners. Tonight turned out very well. Brown rice, fried potatoes, red beans, stir fry veggies, spices. I've been reading cook books. I am been looking through recipes online. I'm trying to expand the list of our favorite stand by meals, find easy meals that can be thrown together with that I usually have on hand. After all, the average American family eats the same 10 meals in rotation. How boring is that?
Yesterday, an omnivore friend and her vegetarian husband dropped off
Vegan with a Vengeance. I have The
CluelessVegetarian from the library. I've really enjoyed thumbing through them although I have yet to try a recipe. This week I will test out some things. I am in the process of putting together a vegetarian recipe book. I'll probably make copies to send to my mother and my in laws. My mother in law heard my story yesterday. She is supportive and just asks for recipes when we come visit. I was very happy to hear that. My mother on the other hand thinks it's a passing idea. She heard my freaking out about the egg the night I snapped but didn't realize how damaging that was. The physical distance between us doesn't allow her to see how serious I am. It's not my concern anyway because my mom doesn't eat a lot of meat, and it will be easy enough to just cook for myself when we visit.
Going vegetarian is a major change, one of the biggest thing I have done in my life besides having children. Just this one change has a ripple effect on everything else. I feel healthier, cook healthier and am more mindful about not only what goes into my body, but into my husband's and children's as well. This is my change alone but a big change that effects the entire household. I am excited to see what new recipes I will find in the coming months. This is definitely an amazing journey... tough, but still amazing. :)
What does a typical dinner look like in your home? What do you spend most of your prep time on?
Comments (18)
I'd also like to recommend Veganomicon by the same authors as Vegan With A Vengance. They have another book (Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World), but it's not the greatest, or so I hear. There's also this website called TasteSpotting which features thousands of recipes, and some of them are amazing vegan meals.
Good luck cooking!
Im a vegetarian and my mom doesn't eat much meat so most of what we eat is meatless. Except for occasionally she'll make something for her and my dad and I'll just have a veggie burger. We eat lots of soy meat substitutes. Like for example tonight she is making south western beaf bake but with fake meat. It's reallyyy good.
I tend to slow cook using a crockpot in the summer since it is so hot here. I think I spend most of my time doing prep work - like slicing up all of the vegetables and getting the right combo of spices for the meal.
My family would throw a fit not having meat everyday - and in our culture a vegan lifestyle would seem foreign and wrong - I respect it though as I have a friend who lost a lot of weight eating vegetarian while striving to be vegan (she just can't be totally vegan out here as everything has animals fats in it when you eat out). I do what I can when she visits.
I would be curious to know if you went through a withdrawl - I know that when I went on southbeach to lower blood pressure I craved bread miserably. I don't think I would have that problem with meat but who knows?
I think I could cook without meat because I am not much of a meat eater. What is hard for me is cooking without WHEAT because my boyfriend is allergic to it. although he's decided to eat everything and anything he wants....any ideas to help me?
@alexiah100@xanga - No withdrawl. I wasn't a big fan of meat in the first place. Sure from time to time some meat sounds good, like chicken when I made alfedo noodles the other night but not enough to get me to eat meat again.
I haven't been out to eat since I stopped eating meat but yeah, it's hard enough to eat vegetarian at restaurants let alone vegan. I'm lucky to live in a big city (Austin TX) so I think I have more dining options. We don't eat out often anyway but I don't see me having too much of an issue when we do.
@Felrna@xanga - He's allergic to gluten? That would be tough. A quick google search brought up some wheat gluten free cook books though that may be worth investing in. You would have to be a good label checker but I don't see it being very difficult once you get the hang of it.
I've been vegeterian since I was 13. However, I'm pretty anemic and a very weak person I have a lot of things wrong with me so sometimes I have to have some chicken just to make sure I'm gettin some protein. I'm a very very picky eater. I'm vegeterian but hate hate HATE lettuce, tomatos, potatos (unless mashed). There's so many things I can list that I dislike. I'm not racist or anything but I seriously dislike mexican food and a lot of other latin foods which sucks because I'm puerto rican and mexican. Puerto Rican food has a lot of things i like but everything contains bacon or pork. I like to make things and substitute the bacon and pork with tofu bacon or whatever else I might find at stores. Anyways, hmm things that I usually like to make is pastas with shrimp and alfredo sauce i eat fish sometimes. I like to make all sorts of rices with fish and side of steamed vegetables. The other day I experimented lol... I melted some butter and mixed it with dijon honey mustard and minced garlic and popped it into the microwave. I steamed some vegetables like brocolli and carrots and asparagus and mixed my little concoction in with them. came out really good haha. You'll get used to the whole change theres always different types of vegeterianism that don't limit you to just vegetables. And it's always okay to have a little chicken eggs or fish. Just be prepared for the stomach ache =P
@mamafox - Austin does have a lot to offer for different eating options - it's one of my favorit place to vacay when we can. We actually live in West Texas so we are neighbors - sort of - how funny!
Typical meal in our house depends if Hubby is working or not. When he works it's something I can do relatively quickly or easily, burgers, pizza, baked chicken, chicken and rice, spaghetti with some vegetable on the side. When he doesn't have to rush off to work I'll take time to make something more time consuming. We eat beef or chicken everyday, fish at least once a week. I didn't used to eat meat everyday, I used to eat a lot of tofu, boca, beans, etc, until I got pregnant because my iron levels were always pretty low. Also marry my hubby who is a big guy and has to have his meat has changed our diets to include more meat. He won't eat soy products and it's too difficult to maintain and prepare two different diets.
We're pretty big meat eaters, but eat mostly poultry and fish, and maybe red meat once per week. I think eating healthy is possible even with eating meat. I know some vegetarians who are terribly unhealthy - they may not eat meat, but they eat so much junk food, french fries, etc. Anyway, that being said, we're pretty eclectic eaters - I try and do various things, like Italian one night, mexican another, fish, chicken, etc. We live in a huge farm area, so have lots of markets, etc. During the summer we grill a lot, and the often have veggies from the local farms. yum! Winter, I like to do stews and soups, and I use my crock pot a lot.
congrats on becoming a vegetarian!
i've been one for over 10 years now. i had been thinking about posting some recipes on my blog and you have just inspired me to actually do it!
@geeBABY6@xanga - I'm anemic as well so I try to eat a veggie meat for dinner every day. I especially love the Boca Burgers (you can get them at walmart pretty cheap), they are very yummy and they add protein to them to help out. I bought some veggie nuggets but haven't tried them out yet: they have 12g of protein per 4 nuggets though!
I'm 15, and a 3rd generation vegetarian. I've gone without meat my whole life, and that wouldn't be a problem if I ate vegetables... but I'm seriously picky, and hardly get enough vitamins because of it. *takes supplements*
Despite that fact, there's no way I'm trading in my nice home-cooked vegetarian meals for meat. I can't stand the thought of eating an animal. xP
Good luck to you. :]
@Felrna@xanga - I had a professor in college who was allergic to wheat and dairy. He (and his wife) cooked from scratch almost all the time because then you can buy the wheat substitutes and such. It's much harder to find processed or boxed food without the wheat. It took them a few years after he was diagnosed or whatever, but she even bakes cakes and stuff. I guess just finding the right resources (websites, cookbooks, etc) would be the best bet.
a typical meal at my house is a veggie and some meat. I occassionally cook a pasta dish. my hubby only eats tacos, hamburgers, fish, and turkey. needless to say most of the time he is on his own.
The typical dinner in my house is anything from chili to chana masala (a delicious Indian dish). All vegetarian. If my boyfriend wants meat, we eat out. However, some of my dishes (like my lasagna) use a meat substitute, and he didn't know it wasn't meat until I explained to him what it was.
Most of my prep time is spent, unsurprisingly, chopping vegetables. Last night, however, I made black bean soup, and it took 3 hours to soak the beans and then 3 hours to cook them.
Good for you! There's lots of meat substitutes out there too, which is amazing. They even have breakfast sausages that are completely meatless. I've started to do lots of tofu! Like, I just made this tofu stir fry with a nice peanut sauce. It's amazing! I have the occasional pieces of chicken/beef in the freezer if a friend comes over but other than that, I'm trying to be anti-meat as long as possible :) Good luck in your newfound vegetarianism!!
My husband is an omnivore, but my vegetarian meals are so good he's never missed it or asked me to cook extra meat for him.
I use the wonderful wonderful wonderful book vegan express, as well as a subscription to vegetarian times and the internet. It really helps me stay varied. Explore ethnic foods and feel free to use tvp as a beef replacer. Its VERY cheap compared to meat and literally undetectable in meals like chili, faux-chicken salad, sloppy joes and tacos. Also Seitan works great in place of chicken if well seasoned. I use it for fajitas and quesadillas. Make sure to eat the protien you need and don't rely to heavily on simple carbs.