Greetings all. My daughter is trying to go vegetarian, and me, being the household cook, I'm trying to learn healthy meals for her. Any recipes would be appreciated, and the simpler the better. Thanks.

What variety of vegetarian would be a helpful bit of info. No red meat, but fish OK? Only eggs and milk, no flesh? Complete vegan?

Stir-fry tofu, Chinese cabbage, and onions. Sesame oil, soy sauce, any flavor she likes. Just skip the oyster or fish sauce. A little corn starch to thicken. Serve next to rice.

Favorite bread toasted. Smeared with hummus. Sprinkled with crushed chips. Serve with carrot slices.

Fresh oatmeal with maple syrup and bananas.

Apple slices, low-salt nuts, carrots, Mary's seeded crackers, hummus.

Fresh grits with pepper and maple syrup. (Salt is added, like the oatmeal, during cooking).

With cheese and milk? Cheese on the hummus/chip sandwich. Milk in the oatmeal. Butter in the grits. Life is good.

quote:

Originally posted by Otto Pilot:
What variety of vegetarian would be a helpful bit of info. No red meat, but fish OK? Only eggs and milk, no flesh? Complete vegan?

Learning, myself. No red meat, but eggs and milk okay, also fish, shrimp, etc. She's cutting out four legged creatures and fowl.

Cool, well that opens up a bazillion options.

One thing I would do is learn how to fry tofu. Just use harder varieties, cube them up and then fry it in hot oil until it gets a nice golden brown color. It will get a nice spongy texture that is awesome for soaking up the sauce of virtually any stir fry sauce or curry.

Tofu and shrimp can replace beef/chicken/pork in virtually any Asian recipe with great success.

Omelettes and quiches take a bit of practice, but you can vary their ingredients to give a wide variety of tastes.

Pastas and rice dishes can be made with no meat at all. Indians do amazing things with spices and peas/beans. And, there are a number of great sauces and pasta recipes from Italy that are dairy and/or tomato dependent. Mediterranean cultures in general will have tons of great seafood dishes as well as the Latin countries.

As far as specific dishes, I've got about about 2 dozen in my head that can be adapted. And I'm looking at shelves of cookbooks across my office.

If you are a griller, the sky is the limit with fish and veggies. Go wild. I love trout, salmon, swordfish, tuna, and or shrimp grilled and veggies on kabobs are a great goto.

You are lucky. You have been given about the easiest "vegetarian" palette to work with. Enjoy! My wife's good friend is just like your daughter, and we have them over regularly since I like to cook for groups. She is dead easy to cook for and I never have to go out of my way. She also makes an insanely good pistachio bread (cake) that gets them invited back too. LOL

P.S. I just entered "non red meat or chicken recipes" in Google and just made myself very hungry.

Vegetarian can have multiple definitions. One can accurately call themselves a vegetarian if they eat nothing but Cheetos and drink Coca Cola. That approach isn’t healthy but it is vegetarian.

My wife and I have been on a Whole Food Plant Based Diet for the last few months. That means, no meat, dairy products or eggs and no processed foods. Yeah, spices will become your friend.
It takes time to sort out the recipes you like. We’ve become accustomed to eating oatmeal, beans, peas, potatoes, barley and all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Some of which, like kale, I hide in smoothies.
We’ve learned that if a recipe is too cluttered or complicated it’s really not worth the trouble.
As a result of our diet, I’m off of taking insulin injections and swallowing a hatful of pills every day.

I recently got a recipe for a cheese sauce from a zany lady by the name of Jill McKeever. Cheese is very hard to give up and the stuff is 70% fat. I made some enchiladas with this cheese sauce and some nachos and they tasted pretty good, but YMMV

Cheese Sauce
Jill McKeever
https://youtu.be/bKlHFXOjkfA

Ingredients:
2 cups ordinary rolled oats
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes (HEB has it in bulk in some of their Texas stores)
1/4 cup corn starch
2 teaspoons onion granules or powder
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 (12 oz.) jar Fire Roasted Red Bell Peppers and the water (HEB stocks their brand)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon Pecan or Apple liquid smoke - https://www.colgin.com
4 cups hot water

Blend the ingredients on high in a Vitamix or other high speed blender for 5 minutes or until mixture thickens then quickly pour the mixture into a container that will hold 6 cups. (If using a regular blender, you might can blend the mixture until smooth then heat it in a sauce pan on the stove top on medium high heat while stirring constantly for about 5 minutes.) The sauce will continue to thicken as it cools and will keep in the fridge for about a week. To reheat - add a little water or soy milk and microwave at 80% power then stir the mix. Thin it with a little water for pasta. Use the thicker sauce for enchiladas.

Recipe ideas:

Broccoli, rice and cheese casserole
Meatless ground beef, cheese sauce with a can of Rotel tomatoes
Pasta shells with cheese sauce that has been thinned
Nachos - refried beans, cheese sauce, baked chips, jalapeño slices
Cheese with chopped onion for enchiladas
As simply a cheese dip
Cheesy spaghetti with chopped onions and black olives
Rice with cheese sauce
Over a baked potato

A nice 25lb slab of brisket smoked fat side up for 12 hours with a nice, brown sugar and spices rub.

Turns into meat candy and converts all back into the carnivores God gave us the teeth for.


J/K of course.
Happy Memorial Day.

Many years ago I picked up two great cookbooks by the same author

Moosewood
Enchanted Broccoli Forest

I highly recommend the, both

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
A nice 25lb slab of brisket smoked fat side up for 12 hours with a nice, brown sugar and spices rub.

Turns into meat candy and converts all back into the carnivores God gave us the teeth for.


J/K of course.
Happy Memorial Day.

Guys that will be enough.

Don't pester the man with meat bullshit.

Your daughter is the same as my oldest daughter: a pescatarian. I will ask mine for recipes and cookbooks.

Very simple - taco salad, replace meat with a can of black beans, add black olives. Lots of way to mix this up. Use a taco bowl, crushed corn or tortilla chips, different types of lettuce, throw in different raw veggies, sour cream or guacamole, pinto beans , red beans, ect.

Spinach quiche. (I think I got the recipe here some years back, and it's very good)

1/2 c butter
3 cloves garlic chopped
1 small onion chopped
1 10oz package of frozen chopped spinach thawed and drained
1 can mushrooms drained
6 oz herb/garlic feta crumbled (or mozzarella)
8 oz shredded cheddar
salt and pepper to taste
9 inch pie crust (unbaked)
4 eggs beaten
1 c milk

Sautee garlic and onion in butter until lightly browned. Stir in spinach, mushrooms, cheeses, and season with salt and pepper. Spoon mixture into pie crust.

Whisk together eggs and milk. Season with salt and pepper. Pour into the crust allowing egg mixture to thoroughly mix with spinach mixture.

Bake at 375 for 15 minutes. Sprinkle top with extra cheddar cheese and bake an additional 35-40 minutes until center is set.

Enjoy.

Seafood gumbo
Shrimp Parmesan
Pizza

Careful with the pizza and pasta. Not waist friendly.

Portabello mushrooms can replace a lot of meat in a lot of dishes.

OK, my daughter, Ms. "I don't eat land dwellers", got back to me with some sources for you.

She says the following blogs, "Half Baked Harvest" and "What's Gaby Cooking" use less hippie ingredients and may be less intimidating for someone new to the veg life. "Half Baked Harvest" has a lot of "veg forward recipes" (don't ask me, I don't know what the term means either), though not totally meat free. You can modify as needed.

Two other blogs, "Love and Lemons" and "Minimalist Baker" also have a lot of veggie and vegan options.

I don't think you are going to have any difficulty once you get used to the process. My daughter has been a pescatarian for about seven years now and we've never had any problem cooking for/with her. In fact, she has cooked some dishes for us that are pretty tasty.

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder76:

quote:

Happy Memorial Day.

Guys that will be enough.

Don't pester the man with meat bullshit.

Rgr

Dr Mercola's Keto diet has recipes:

https://recipes.mercola.com/ke...ic-diet-recipes.aspx

quote:

Originally posted by sig operator:
Very simple - taco salad, replace meat with a can of black beans, add black olives. Lots of way to mix this up. Use a taco bowl, crushed corn or tortilla chips, different types of lettuce, throw in different raw veggies, sour cream or guacamole, pinto beans , red beans, ect.

Will start with this one. Thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
Spinach quiche. (I think I got the recipe here some years back, and it's very good)

1/2 c butter
3 cloves garlic chopped
1 small onion chopped
1 10oz package of frozen chopped spinach thawed and drained
1 can mushrooms drained
6 oz herb/garlic feta crumbled (or mozzarella)
8 oz shredded cheddar
salt and pepper to taste
9 inch pie crust (unbaked)
4 eggs beaten
1 c milk

Sautee garlic and onion in butter until lightly browned. Stir in spinach, mushrooms, cheeses, and season with salt and pepper. Spoon mixture into pie crust.

Whisk together eggs and milk. Season with salt and pepper. Pour into the crust allowing egg mixture to thoroughly mix with spinach mixture.

Bake at 375 for 15 minutes. Sprinkle top with extra cheddar cheese and bake an additional 35-40 minutes until center is set.

Enjoy.

And this.

Thanks for all the other suggestions and links.

Soy is toxic. Lay off the tofu. A lot of pastured eggs and fish if she can. Nutritional yeast is a must for the B vitamins.

No vegetable oils except EVOO. Grass fed butters and cheeses.

Cruciforous veggies every day. Don’t go carb heavy. The constant insulin spike is unhealthy.

quote:

Originally posted by smithnsig:
Soy is toxic. Lay off the tofu.

[Drift] Debatable.

Plenty of literature I'm finding that says there is little or no adverse health effects of tofu. Also, there's articles on the negative effects of cruciferous vegetables, and just using olive oil is not practical for all cooking applications. Now we could probably throw articles at each other all day long and never agree (That's a hint, let's not), but modest consumption isn't going to kill anybody. By your comment, you sound very much like an adherent of the paleo or keto routine, which is great, but it doesn't work for everyone, especially if they are not unhealthy in the first place. Variety is the spice of life and just like your last sentence, "Don't go carb heavy", don't overdo stuff, mix it up and enjoy. [/drift]