Vegetarian-Meat eater marriage

ebella22

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 4:47 pm

Hi all, I recently got married to a vegetarian, who also doesn't eat fish and I am having a very hard time coming up with dinner ideas. I also am having a hard time planning balanced meals, bc I grew up doing protein, starch and veg, and now I feel like there is no protein and as main dishes are now mostly pasta etc, I can't do a starch side dish.
Please give me some recipe ideas I would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks

chanahlady

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 5:10 pm

Check out Vegetariantimes.com and also the Recipes for Health in the online health section of the New York Times. We're both vegetarians over here and those are my tried-and-true places to go.

Basic ideas:

Stir fries with tofu or edamame
Quiche
Falafel
Veggie pizza
Stuffed mushrooms/peppers/cabbage
Mexican food - burritos filled with rice, soy crumbles, beans, salsa, guac, sour cream
Matzah brie with salsa

Remember that beans and nuts have protein, as do cheeses. Nutritional yeast is yummy and cheese-like, if your DH doesn't like dairy.

Those are the ones I can come up with off the top of my head. Good luck!

tizunabi

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 5:19 pm

Quinoa is also full of protein.

I come from a mixed marriage too (I'm the one who doesn't eat anything though). Usually I just prepare a meal like you would (protein starch and veg) and I dont eat the protein. Sometimes I make a stir fry with tofu, or load the veg with protein like edamame. Chummus is good "salad" side too.

As long as he is happy with whatever you serve you should be fine.

IamI

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 6:33 pm

lentils, eggs, beans, tofu, milchigs, quinoa are all proteins and you can make so many different yummy things out of them.

spring13

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 7:06 pm

Get thee some Moosewood cookbooks, ASAP! Full of yummy, uncomplicated, practical vegetarian recipes. Borrow some vegetarian cookbooks from the library for variety. Check the milchig sections of the ones you already have and make lists of potential entrees to try. You'll learn about the possibilities much quicker that way.

chocolate moose

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 7:30 pm

What has he been eating up until now ?

bluebird

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 9:29 pm

Presumably your husband ate before you got married. Wink

What kind of foods does he like?

granolamom

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 10:00 pm

my mil is a vegetarian, she cooks regular meat based meals for fil and she eats mostly sides.
I'm a vegetarian but thankfully my dh doesnt expect a meat based meal, he prefers cereal and milk (no comment). for shabbos, I cook meat/chicken and a separate parve cholent for myself. some weeks I make chicken soup for the kids and some weeks vegetable soup for me.
its extra cooking but I like to cook so its ok.
ask him what he wants to eat, prepare the meal you want plus a dish for him. so what if you prepare two starches? you dont have to eat both.
btw, neither myself nor mil eat much pasta other than the occasional lasagne. she eats tons of whole wheat bread and sandwiches, I eat a lot of grains; quinoa, rice, barley, farro, and lentils or beans. in winter I eat lots of stews and soups, in the summer mostly salads and spreads.

Chana Miriam S

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 10:10 pm

I am a caterer who often has vegetarian guests plus who cooks congregational meals that include vegetarians. Occasionally I do pareve and meat versions of the same dish (like when I did pot pies and made a veg one before I added the meat) but also my husband was a pescatarian when we started dating.

Him being a vegetarian made me need to stretch as a cook. I agree about the Moosewood Cookbook. To this day when I need a vegetarian cholent, I make their mushroom barley soup and just make it more like a stew.

So what I do is I cook all my sides as pareve. no matter what they are. That way no matter who shows up at my house, they have what to eat. There is no reason why you cannot eat your piece of chicken and hub can't eat a piece of tofu with the same seasonings, or why you can't make a stew but use tofu or tvp instead of meat.

You can both eat the same sides. Unless you are cooking with schmaltz, I can't imagine why you could not make your sides pareve. You have to get over your perceptions about how things SHOULD be and realize that other people dont' come from the starch, protein, vegetable tradition. I got over it and you will too.

funny thing is that hubby, while he does eat meat now (apparently because I cook so well, he could not stop himself) would still rather be a vegetarian. also ironic is that while I prefer meat, myself, as a total carnivore, my business is often dairy- ironic, but I am an amazing dairy cook, despite my strong preference for meat!

you will adjust. just keep learning. listen tohim and let him or his mother teach you how they eat. you never know how it will all work out in the long run, but trust me when I say that despite my own preferences, I can make an amazing vegetarian or dairy meal that would not feel like it was missing anthing....I learned and so will you.

celestial

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 10:39 pm

Quote:

You can both eat the same sides. Unless you are cooking with schmaltz, I can't imagine why you could not make your sides pareve. You have to get over your perceptions about how things SHOULD be and realize that other people dont' come from the starch, protein, vegetable tradition. I got over it and you will too.

Yes! This! This is what I tell carnivores all the time! Even if you do choose to eat meat, it shouldn't take up the main portion of your plate (if all the food you were eating for a meal were represented by the size of a plate).

Here are some basic nutritional points to keep in mind when you mix things up:
-Most people eat more protein than they need, especially in the US.
-You can get protein from a VARIETY of leafy greens, beans, fruits, nuts, etc. Rice and beans together are a "complete" protein, and you find the combination in many cultures. Protein comes pre-processed by the animal meat, but they processed the protein via plant sources, so you too can get your protein in a diverse way.
-I can't stress this enough: the more VARIETY you have, and the more colorful (literally) your food is, the more assured you are of getting all the nutrients you need. Try and include any or many of the following into your meal:
-Beans (garbanzo in a salad, black beans in a chile, lentils in an Indian stew, etc)
-Nuts (toasted and tossed in a salad, or roasted with vegetables, in a pesto, mock chopped liver, also good by the handful as a snack, butters like peanut, almond, cashew)
-Healthy whole grains (quinoa, wild rice, brown rice, spelt or multigrain bread toasted, taboulis)
-Animal based diets rely on dead stuff or bodily functions to get flavor or texture. There are ways around this. My favorite is herbs - lots of them - for bursts of flavor in everything. To get something creamy, make abundant use of your blender or food processor. Avocados are naturally creamy - put them in salads or serve a perfectly ripe one sliced with lemon sauce. You can make lasagnas with tofu and breadcrumbs instead of cheese and not taste the difference if there are vegetables and good sauce, serve smoothies with a meal for fresh veggies and use maple syrup for sweetener. Seitan is by far the best meat substitute - tofu in excess can be unhealthy, and seitan tastes better anyway. It's easy to find kosher in health food stores.
-When shopping for fruits and vegetables, don't go shopping in a frum store (if you live in a big frum community). By demand, I suppose, the frum stores only have very simple selections that will make you feel more limited than need be. Go to a health food/yuppie style store, or to an ethnic market, and pick up wacky stuff like kabocha squashes, oyster mushrooms, broccoli rabe, yukon gold potatoes (very creamy/buttery!), kale (extremely nutritious and bursting with flavor if prepared correctly!), japanese eggplants, rainbow chard, etc. This will get you excited about cooking and make you feel like you have a world of options.

Just as an example, here is what my husband and I had for dinner tonight (we used to be a "mixed marriage" until recently):
Kabocha squash and sweet potato soup (with browned onions, carrots, celery as a base) with lots of fresh herbs - mostly dill but also some cilantro and parsley and a bay leaf.
Big Romaine salad with avocado and organic tomatoes and slivered almonds, with a balsamic based dressing.
Spelt bread, toasted. (We sometimes have this with hummous)

I hope this helps!!!! Feel free to ask me any more questions.

I HIGHLY highly recommend the book "Vegan Planet" by Robin Robertson, or anything else by her.

celestial

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 10:48 pm

A few other points:
-What did he eat before he married you? Maybe he can cook for you for a while, until you get the hang of what he likes and what a vegetarian diet is like.

-Try ethnic foods, besides for the classic vegetarian canon!! You may find you like Mexican, Indian, Thai, African food (hey, don't knock it till you try it!) and surprise yourself with tons of new tastes and options that are quite vegetarian friendly and break the familiar model of the meat-central main dish.

Peanut2

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 11:03 pm

Moosewood. They are online. Start with that.
Then go on amazon and start buying their books. Cooks at home is awesome. Sundays at Moosewood is also excellent. They all are. You need at least 3. Don't worry about other cookbooks, at least not for a few years.

How do I make their soups and stews into my crookpot shabbos lunch? I'm too scared!

imamiri

Mon, Apr 30 2012, 11:04 pm

celestial wrote:

Quote:

ITA.

Especially about too much protein and meat.

A serving size of meat is the size of a regular deck of cards. That's far smaller a serving than the average person eats. Most of your plate meant to be filled with with veggies and good grains.

While I also suggest the Moosewood Cookbook, I also suggest trying cookbooks from different cuisines. The are many Indian and Middle Eastern vegetarian dishes that are delicious, healthy, and quite filling.

DrMom

Tue, May 01 2012, 12:15 am

bluebird wrote:

Presumably your husband ate before you got married. Wink

What kind of foods does he like?

This^^^.

Try Indian cooking -- lots of lentils, beans, etc.

Hearty lentil soup is a very tasty starter, or a meal in itself.

ewa-jo

Tue, May 01 2012, 5:11 am

Milchik dinner!!!

I'm vegetarian. OK, more accurately, I eat a cheese-and-milk based diet with grains and eggs and vegetables to round it out.

Why not find some yummy milchk recipes... quiches, lasagna, stuffed pasta.. and serve those.

And the bonus is that you can have ice cream for dessert or drink coffee with milk after dinner.

granolamom

Tue, May 01 2012, 2:30 pm

our library has tons of vegetarian cookbooks. you can borrow them and read through before buying. also reading a cookbook cover to cover sparks lots of ideas for me.

binah magazine recently had a recipe for vegetarian cholent. its amazing. my meat eating guests love it too (although now I make a separate cholent with meat in it for the kids)

spinkles

Tue, May 01 2012, 9:21 pm

Granolamom, any chance you could post the vegetarian chulent recipe? I'd love to try it. TIA!

granolamom

Tue, May 01 2012, 9:54 pm

chana_f wrote:

Granolamom, any chance you could post the vegetarian chulent recipe? I'd love to try it. TIA!

I will try to do that when I have some more time, I know the guy who sent it in and he would want me to include his "hashkafa" with it, it's a bit of typing. Will try to get to it tomorrow

spinkles

Tue, May 01 2012, 10:05 pm

thanks so much!!

SJcookie

Tue, May 01 2012, 10:12 pm

I'm not a vegetarian, but I grew up with 3 (!!!) vegetarian sisters, and I learned a thing or two from my Mother.
She basically made the same exact recipes as you would with chicken or beef - except she used substitue meat or chicken.
She'd make a lot of things in the microwave oven or toaster: veggie hamburgers, veggie hotdogs, veggie chicken nuggets, etc.
A lot of chinese stirfries with tofu.
Chicken soup w/ vegetables and matzo balls minus the chicken.
Pastas - marinara sauce, experiment with different sauces.. alfreo, white wine, etc.
Rice dishes - mexican rice, rice with tomato sauce and beans, etc.
Quinoa - sautee veggies, craisins, and add quinoa
Dairy dishes: lasagna, quiche, cheese muffins, etc.
Veggie dishes: stirfry vegetables, grilled vegetables
A lot of salads, breads, cheeses, and veggies.

Check out www.allrecipes.com. There are tons of vegetarian recipes on there.

Now when it comes to vegans... THAT'S different. A whole other ball game.
Bhatzlacha!