My daughter ....

[JanieB]

I eat far less meat than I used to. Can't agree to go totally veggie tho', I like bacon sarnies, roast dinners and stews too much .

I had to feed my two older children veggie meals when they decided to go vegetarian at the ages of 16 and 18. Bl&&dy inconvenient at the time. I was married to a definitely meat eating farmer, had just had a baby and they (the teenagers) had just started work with very different hours to anyone else. I learnt to make the same meals for all of us, add meat to ours. Buying a microwave resolved the timing issue. I made veggie gravy on Sundays and they just skipped the roast. the taties were cooked in oil instead of dripping.

We had a problem when my daughter was still at school as she had regular bouts of acute stomach pains, trips to the doctor and even a spell in hospital. She had a known problem with digesting legumes, the obvious question was "have you eaten peas or beans?" She loves Shepherd's Pie, Spaggy Bog etc. These were regulars on the school dinner menu. It turned out that the "mince" had a high percentage of soya protein to meat . Even the school management didn't know this as the meals were brought in from another kitchen.

[The Doctor]

Beefy, no one is taking pot shots at anyone else here, in my opinion.

Paul and I have crossed literary swords on a couple of threads recently. However, I have read Paul's input here and some of his articles in GYO and he is an intelligent, literate guy who I'm sure has no objection to a bit of healthy debate.

I apologise for attempting to produce that if it wasn't wanted, however I cannot believe that what we really want is an environment where people cannot post disagreement to the masses in future.

Having said that, apologies to Farmer_Gyles for being involved in the side tracking of his thread, which was a tad rude.

[Paul Wagland]

Yes, we probably should have moved to another thread. Farmer Gyles - Jeannine wants you to PM her with your address. She has various veggie cookbooks in the GYO cupboards and would like to send you something.

Paul and I have crossed literary swords on a couple of threads recently. However, I have read Paul's input here and some of his articles in GYO and he is an intelligent, literate guy who I'm sure has no objection to a bit of healthy debate.

I love a bit of it, me .

TBH it's great to be able to have intelligent discussions (by my standards anyway...) about important issues like this. In our local pub all Jeannine and I get to listen to is Mick the right-wing w@nker, and Ivan the punk, who mostly just sings "You're only 29 and you've gotta lot to learn" very loudly.

[HeyWayne]

I love a good mass debate as much as the next man!

[piskieinboots]

I love a good man as much as the next mass debate!

[Paul Wagland]

It's nice that we can all have a good mass debate together. Feel the love.

[Farmer_Gyles]

ty all for advice so far and for getting back on topic

its good to know what quorn and tofu are made from and good to get a recipe idea

i'm still a bit stuck with what i need to know and therefore what to ask, but i've got a couple of Qs - i'm a fairly good cook, but this is something very different to me so please bear with me!
i'll go "back to basics" to start with to hopefully give me a better idea of what i'm going to do

if i was to cook normal meat sausages for me and my son, i could give my daughter veggie sausages instead
likewise with burgers
do the veggie sausages and burgers have similar "nutrional value" to meat based sausages and burgers? (ie, are they ok as a direct replacement for meat products and will they contain similar amounts of proteins or whatever?)
(please no arguments over the content of "meat" sausages or the "nutritional values" or whatever)

does the same apply to quorn type pies etc?

likewise for cheese and spinach lasagne replacing a meat based lasagne?

my daughter has always liked curries, chilli, spag bol, stew and dumplings, chicken casserole, roasts etc - i can do a veggie curry easily enough, but what on earth do i do about the other things?
a veggie stir fry should be easy enough but i'm stumped on the other things

[piskieinboots]

It's nice that we can all have a good mass debate together. Feel the love.

*giggles .......

[Farmer_Gyles]

I love a good mass debate as much as the next man!

there comes a time where a man gets bored with mass debating ......
try 7 years of being a single dad!

(trust wayne to lower the tone )

paul - cheers - will PM jeanine

[The Doctor]

TBH, it was almost me. I almost put 'healthy mass debating' in my earlier post, but resisted!

[Paul Wagland]

FG - Jeannine does the cooking in our household, on account of being so good at it but I am an expert in the consumption at least...

There are some meals (curries, toad in the hole, stews etc) that work very well if you just replace the meat bits with quorn (or other options). Eg quorn sausages and mash, curry with quorn chunks instead of chicken/lamb, hearty vegetable stews with veggie sausages cut up into chunks etc. Remember though that you only need to make quorn good and hot before it's ready to eat, you're not trying to sterilise it like you do when you cook pork or chicken for example. Basically it takes less time to cook.

Other meals don't need to involve a meat substitute - spinach and cheese lasagne (or cannelloni, or in puff pastry with mushrooms mmmmm....). You could make these for the whole family maybe?

We eat a lot of roast dinners (my reward whenever I've been well behaved ) and basically we just have all the veg and trimmings but with veggie sausages or a Linda McCartney pie instead of meat. Quorn roasts (like a giant sausage) are also very tasty, if you can find them in the shops.

Nutritionally, I wouldn't worry about making each meal precisely match what you're eating. Just make sure your daughter eats lots of different types of food (especially leafy greens), rather than just cheese sandwiches and crisps.

[HeyWayne]

there comes a time where a man gets bored with mass debating ......
try 7 years of being a single dad!

(trust wayne to lower the tone )

paul - cheers - will PM jeanine

Hey, if it's gonna be anyone...

Nutritionally, I wouldn't worry about making each meal precisely match what you're eating. Just make sure your daughter eats lots of different types of food (especially leafy greens), rather than just cheese sandwiches and crisps.

It's well documented that a vegetarian diet can equal, if not surpass the nutritional content of a carnivorous diet - human beans after all are not designed to eat meat. However, I have known people to takle it to extremes - one girl I know only ate peanut butter sandwiches for a long time. Needless to say, she became quite ill. Just make sure, like Paul says that she's eating plenty of variety (as you would do with any diet) and she'll be fine I'm sure.

Good luck with it, as I've said before, those that make the choice to go vegetarian have my admiration.

[TrishY]

I tend to eat sandwiches and drink cups of fennel tea because that's what i like - i don't eat meat because i don't like it so don't like things such as linda mcartney pies that mimic meat. don't like milk neat either, put it in scrambled egg though when i have that. I eat veg of course and when my chooks start laying i can make cakes and lovely scrambled egg!

i would never recommend my diet though as i am anaemic twice in my life i have been dangerously anaemic but at the last blood test i was just slightly anaemic. also wouldn't recommend it because each to their own and all that.

FG your daughter might have met a vegetarian friend on the school trip and thought it was kewl so may miss and return to meat when the novelty wears off

[Paul Wagland]

There are loads of recipes here FG - just go to the 'food' tab and scroll down to 'recipes'. It's divided up into meal types - even special occasions like Valentines Day and Christmas!

The Vegetarian Society

[Protea]

I'm not veggie, but when i was at Uni, we were all on diets (to counteract the booze!!) and were also skint, and we used to eat Quorn southern style burgers quite often. They look and sort of taste a bit like breaded chicken, really yummy. We used to have one each with baked beans, peas and oven chips, but you could have 2 if you think thats not enough.

Link to the Quorn website here so you can see what the box looks like for supermarket identification purposes! Quorn | Southern Style Burgers