I am going to go ahead and admit it. I miss chicken! We’ve been eating mostly vegetarian since last November or December and all vegetarian (well, except for very occasional seafood) for over two months. I don’t mind, for the most part, but I’m running out of ideas. Help. Anyone?
I don’t know if I even explained here why we are doing this. My adult son who lives in our guest house and usually eats with us, decided to go vegetarian last year. I began cooking mostly vegetarian for him, but also because I have decided I only want to buy organic/local/free range or grass fed meats. Those are not available here in our little town and are quite expensive so I was just cooking chicken or beef/bison about once a week. That was quite doable. Then David, my husband, decided a couple of months ago to eat 100% vegetarian as a gesture of friendship and support for his very dear friend battling cancer whose doctor put him on a VERY strict, mostly organic, vegan diet. This is a temporary measure for us but one I am whole-heartedly participating in for my husband’s friend. (They were friends in junior high; I now consider him and his wife my friends, as well.)
I shouldn’t complain, and really, I’m not. I like virtually all the recipes I’ve tried but having grown up in a real “meat and potatoes” sort of family (we ate steak probably three times a week when I was growing up!) and currently living in rural Oklahoma, I just don’t have much of a history or example for vegetarian cooking. I think I need to invest in a couple of vegetarian cookbooks. If you have any recommendations, please leave me a comment. Or if you have any tried and true vegetarian recipes, please share. Just to clarify a bit, we do eat eggs and dairy. I love seafood but our sources here in rural Oklahoma are limited and seafood is not my husband’s favorite thing. I’m also deathly allergic to mushrooms so all those recipes using portobello mushrooms as meat substitutes are out. And speaking of meat substitutes – I’m not impressed with the texture but more to the point, I don’t like all the ingredients. I prefer to stick to “real” foods. We all like vegetables really well, which is a darn good thing. Last week one of our dinners consisted of a casserole of roasted potatoes/bell peppers/onions/garlic, glazed carrots, cheesy cauliflower, asparagus and a green salad!
I’ve just spent the past half hour looking for new-to-me vegetarian recipes and found a few which I will try this couple of weeks. I’ll post the recipes of the ones we like and try to remember to take photos. The other night I asked David to run upstairs and get my camera so I could photograph our dinner which I was just finishing up. He did and then I totally forgot to take the picture. Oops! So, here is the plan for the upcoming week:
Monday:
- Gallo Pinto (black beans and rice)
- salad
- homemade guacamole
- tortilla chips
Tuesday:
- homemade macaroni and cheese
- green beans
- fresh fruit
- salad
Wednesday:
- potato broccoli soup
- homemade bread
Thursday:
- David will be away on a business trip so I think I’ll let Chris do his own thing and just have a salad myself.
Friday:
- Creamy Artichoke Pasta (will share recipe if it’s good)
- salad
- garlic bread
Saturday:
- pancakes
- eggs
- smoothies
So that’s the plan. There’s never a guarantee that’s precisely what we will end up eating but it at least gives me a starting point. Don’t forget: If you have any great vegetarian recipes or cookbooks to share, please leave me a comment. And I’m always looking for people to do guest posts on Fridays.
Leave a Reply