Friday, 21 January 2011
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Help! Need Ideas for Veg/Non-Veg Combo Meals
There is now, officially, one vegetarian, one pescetarian, and three carnivores (if you don't count our two dogs) in my house. We make it a practice to sit down for the evening meal together, as a family. As you can imagine, this causes some complications when it comes to food preparation.I, one of the three household meat eaters, do not mind vegetarian meals, but I also like to partake of food in the meat category from time to time. The challenge, then, is to find meals that can be adapted to both vegetarian and non-vegetarian needs without sacrificing protein content or adding too much time and madness to the cooking process.
So far, I think I've been pretty successful in keeping meat separate from a main meal and using it as an add in. However, when I prepare meals that revolve around meat as the main course, I'm wondering how to make a practical substitution for this.
Tonight I am attempting a spice-rubbed fish with lemony rice. As I purchased the ingredients at the grocery store, I was searching for a viable non-fish fish that I could rub with spices and cook for the vegetarian member of our family. I ended up with a firm tofu which I plan to use as a guinea pig at the evening meal.
This shouldn't be so difficult with my homemade spaghetti sauce either, which I normally bombard with sweet and hot Italian sausage. Again, I should be able to add the sausage later. My concern here is that I usually cook the sauce all day in the crockpot with the sausage, which I feel adds another dimension of flavor. If I separate the meat, will I then sacrifice the flavor for the meat eaters in my family?
Can anyone offer some other creative solutions for making vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals simultaneously (or adapting non-veg meals) without sacrificing flavor or adding too much time to the preparation?
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- From: chelleannette@xanga
- About Me: I'm an almost 40 mother of three teenagers, two crazy fat dogs and one husband. I live in and love New York City. In the last five years or so I've taken up French, shooting for eventual fluency and possibly picking up one day with the man after the kids are gone and moving it all to France. I also learned how to play tennis in the last few years and have, consequently become obsessed with the sport and acquired the delusion of playing on the WTA seniors tour or in a grand slam (Watch out Serena!) Living passionately, I want to see, smell, taste and feel the world through relationships, travel, food and whatever else life throws at me. Still waiting to discover what I want to be when I grow up!
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Comments (16)
At our house, we have one vegetarian, and three omnivores (one slightly picky). Most of the time, Mom will cook up until she adds in the meat, and then she'll pull some out and put it in a small pot for my sister, the vegetarian. Then, it gets beans, TVP, veggie crumbles, or nothing, and the main meal gets the meat.
Usually, there's a "Morning Star" fake meat that would compliment the meal, but that's not necessary. There are other ways to find protein. Also, fake meat isn't all that hard to make. I'd like to point you to vegandad.blogspot.com to start. His veggie lunchmeat and vegan sausages are great and not too difficult to make.
You can get TVP (texturized vegetable protein), which can be used in place of ground beef, and vital wheat gluten, which is used in a lot of meat-substitute recipes, in most grocery stores, but you might want to check out the nearest Whole Foods or food co-op.
Also, if you don't have a little crocpot, you could make a batch of the tomato sauce without meat and then freeze or can it. Then, pop open a can and heat it on the stove or in the microwave before dinner. (You could even do this when you try adding the sausage later--if you find that it doesn't taste as good, you can save the un-sausage'd part.)
My younger sister is a vegetarian and we rarely have issues with it in our house anymore. You can get away with making some hearty sides for the vegetarian in your family, like whole grain rice and cooked vegetables. Adding tofu to stir fry and other dishes is also easy to do. Sometimes my mom will make something separate for my sister. Like if our main dish is steak or chicken, she'll make her a vegetarian lasagna or something like that.
Speaking of that, pasta is extremely flexible. You can do a "build-your-own" pasta night and have different toppings and ingredients laid out in the kitchen, so everyone can add whatever they want to their dish. As for your spaghetti sauce, why not do two separate pots: one for the meat eaters and one for those who don't eat meat?
Another idea is to make vegetable soup with vegetable stock for your vegetarian/pescetarian, then add chicken or meatballs to it for the rest of your family. That way you can all enjoy the same meal together, but you get the added plus of the meat flavor.
Hope this helps!
@Katja88@xanga - I agree, Morning Star is also a good choice. They have vegetarian chicken nuggets and veggie burgers and stuff like that. It's pretty good too, and I'm not even a vegetarian!
Chili is also another viable option, as you can seperate the base of your chili into two batches, and then add a variety of beans to the veggie version and meat to the other version.
I'm a pescatarian living in an otherwise omnivorous family, and I often find that people make a bigger deal out of finding something for me than they realise.
One of my favourite meals is a giant salad with all sorts of creative toppings, or other times I'll make a wrap with feta, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, chickpeas, and italian dressing, and it's great. I also really like nicoise salad. A good choice for the pescatarians and omnivores is a nice tuna steak, as it has a nice meaty texture. I just pan fry the tuna and put lemon, salt and fresh cracked black pepper on it. There are meat alternatives like TVP, tofu, or even ready made packaged nuggets, burgers, etc, and while I'm studying abroad here in England, we have Quorn, which is made from fungus (sounds disgusting, but it's not), but it isn't approved by the FDA yet. Pizza is also really easy to make different versions of at home if you get a pizza kit.
Overall, I find chick peas and beans are a fantastic replacement. TVP also works pretty well, but you really have to season the bejeezus out of it.
Good luck! :)
My dad always makes separate pots for me, my mom would make different batches. But as the first comment said, you can cook the food and pour some into a bowl, than add meat to the rest of the dish. I love being vegetarian!
@Katja88@xanga - @ginakuzmick@xanga - @leave_it_lovelier@lovelyish - @coraleave@xanga - Thanks, guys, for all your ideas! I now have some new things to try!
@ginakuzmick@xanga - Me neither! I just don't like cooking with raw meat, and the vegetarian stuff's healthier sometimes.
Lasagna is nice in that you can make veggie, meat... etc.
I love this topic! There's 3vegetarians, and the 4omnivores, but most of us kids have moved out already. However, we have a huge problem with going out as a family to a restaurant.
trader joes has chik'n less strips. i haven't had them but i heard they're good.
also, you can always just add more vegetables to a meal so the vegetarians dont feel left out. If you make enough, it should be fine. Add some rice or bread if you weren't having any, throw in some beans or eggs (mexican food is really easy to make vegetarian), and then you've got the protein. Im really picky though so I eat mostly the same things, so this might seem kinda obvious hah, sorryy.Veggie tacos! My mom makes a small pan for my dad (omnivore) and he and I have a larger pan of vegetarian substitute.
There's also burgers you can do, and chicken substitutes for stir-fries. My mother also gets a vegetarian substitute for cheese steaks (we're right outside of Philly) and makes my dad real cheese steaks.
if you go to morningstarfarms.com, they have a lot of recipes that you can use either meat or meat substitutes.
@ginakuzmick@xanga - I like that "build your own pasta" idea!
I am the cook and the only vegetarian in my house, some of my easiest fast night are fajata's (two pans one with meat one without), chicken/no chicken pie night (one smaller one with tofu), spaghetti (two pans one meat one without), lasagne (same one with meat one with veggies), gumbo with rice (one pan, you add the meat/tofu right before you serve it anyways), make your own pizza night with homemade crusts is another family fave at our place....and yes SOME of the morning star meat substitues are good, but I found after awhile you lose the desire even for the texture of meat, so I prefer the tofu or just veggies. I supplement with a vegan protein shake for breakfast though. It's really just more of a hassle to have more dishes to clean than the actual cooking thing is all you have to do is make 2 dishes of the exact same thing up until the meat. And if you do the crock pot cooking alot it would be a good investment to just buy another one and keep them seperate. The utimate tofu cookbook adn Easy Vegetarian are 2 of my favorite cookbooks, you could use them and then add meat to the recipe for you guys! :)
Beans and rice all the way haha. Honestly at my house if there's nothing but a meat dish for dinner I'll just have a big salad and a roll or something and I'm happy. Or you could try a some what raw food night, I've done it and it's great just do salad, a fruit (fruit salads are yummy) and maybe some biscuits if you want to make sure every one is full. I usually just live off of pasta, salad and fruit honestly sometimes I like the fake stuff though =)
We have half vegetarians & half meat eaters here...with spaghetti it's really really simple! You cook one pot of sauce with the meat, one with a meat substitute. You can get beef crumble substitutes that are like ground beef, or cut up veggie sausage. I'm allergic to wheat (celiac disease) AND vegetarian though, & most of the meat substitutes besides tofu have wheat flour, so i also cook some plain sauce for myself if need be, & cook wheat-free pasta. Meals like that are really not that hard to customize if you have the right ingredients! Just divide up the portions & cook in 2 or more different containers....that way you never sacrifice anyone's "flavor".