Vegetarian suggestions

Just don't let them in!

Is it easy to make your own pizza?

sorry i'm not very accurate about quantities. i don't often use the scales!

Anyway, get hold of some tomatoes, aubergine, whole garlic cloves and red onion, enough for 4 people and roast in a big tin with good olive oil and salt and pepper. Meanwhile cook plenty of pasta (we used farfanalli iirc) til just done.

When all veggies are good and roasted (you might want to add the tomatoes after the rest have been raosting a while) take out the oven and squeeze the contents of the cloves of garlic over everything.

then get some double cream (about 100 ml, but not too much, as a coating rather than a sauce) and add fresh parmesan, seasoning and some torn basil leaves.

Pour this over, grate more Parmesan and put in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes or until the parmesan on top starts to brown. Take out and eat with crusty bread and a lovely salad.

Nice.

Serious (if ridiculous) question: what do y'all do when you have bought meat by mistake? I tend to figure that the damage is already done and that there's now no harm in eating it, but I'm interested what others think?

This soup is unhelpful, for instance:

http://www.baxters.com/images/core/broc-stil.jpg

I was wondering what you meant. Yeah, my wife has accidentally bought meat soup (why the hell would you put bacon in split pea soup?). We didn't eat it.

do you mean there's some flesh product in the soup and you didn't realize it before buying? i think i did that once and gave it to a neighbor. could try returning it....

Yeah, there's often canned food drives toward the end of the year.

I've done that with hidden bacon. I know what you mean about "the damage is done" but I still didn't want to eat it. I ended up giving it to a friend.

Depends on your reason for being vegetarian, surely? I mean, if it's just because you don't want to financially prop up the meat industry, then sure, if you've already bought it then eat it. But don't expect other veggies to do the same.

(I eat meat btw. Will eat all your hidden bacons.)

Returning it is probably the answer I guess, with something like soup that you probably haven't opened at least.

When we were in St. Ives they had a 'ploughmans' sandwich that had ham in it (??)

Seriously, some supermarkets seem to be hiding bacon in every tasty looking apparently veggie ready meal these days :(

canned soup is total shit anyway

If I can take it back to the grocery store/exchange it, I do, but if it's at a restaurant....

This has never happened with MEAT, per se, but it's happened with cheese/butter/etc. I figure that it's going to be more wasteful to throw all of it away and make me new and *technically vegan* stuff than to just eat what they already fucked up. I will, however, tell them that I specifically told them not to bring me things like this and ask to get it taken off the bill. But I feel like an ass eating something and asking to get it taken off the bill.

I'm a "damage is done" guy, as I'm not disgusted by meat products, just trying (as a consumer) to minimize my adverse impact and encourage better behavior.

Meat stock somewhat ubiquitous in mainstream brand canned goods. It's a trivial amount with respect to health and environmental consequences, and when I've made mistakes shopping (once, with collard greens), I went ahead and eventually consumed them myself. I read labels as assiduously as someone with an allergic child, these days.

I wouldn't serve a mistaken purchase to other vegans/vegetarians.

A week ago, when overeager service at the burrito shop added sour cream, I ask them to remove as much of the offending substance as possible. They offered to toss it and make a new one, but I declined. Waste is also an ethical lapse.

i am relatively freegan, but i admit that i have an obsession with Jerky of all kinds and cannot turn it down when it's offered.

I'd probably give the soup to a neighbour. Don't know how long you guys have been veggies for, but I'm definitely at a stage now where there's just no way I could bring myself to eat it, wasteful or not.

i wouldnt eat it. give it away!

Supermarkets always take returns.

food bank

why the hell would you put bacon in split pea soup?

Because thats how it is usually done isnt it? Split pea and ham soup, made with a smoked hamhock.

The Arguments of Claudius the Neapolitan who published a Treatise against Abstinence from Animal Food.

13. It now remains, that we should adduce what plebeians and the vulgar are accustomed to say on this subject. For they say, that the ancients abstained from animals, not through piety, but because they did not yet know the use of fire; but that as soon as they became acquainted with its utility, they then conceived it to be most honourable and sacred. They likewise called it Vesta, and from this the appellation of convestals or companions was derived; and afterwards they began to use animals. For it is natural to man to eat flesh, but contrary to his nature to eat it raw. Fire, therefore, being discovered, they embraced what is natural, and admitted the eating of boiled and masted flesh. Hence |19 lynxes are [said by Homer 7 to be] crudivorous, or eaters of raw flesh; and of Priam, also, he says, as a disgraceful circumstance,

Raw flesh by you, O Priam, is devoured 8.

And,

Raw flesh, dilacerating, he devoured 9.

I'm thinking of reducing my meat consumption by a lot (partly for ethical reasons, partly because I don't like to handle/prepare meat), but the last time I experimented with a meatless diet, after a week, the room started spinning while I was sitting at a computer. (Iron and/or B-something deficiency?) How do I make sure I get enough essentials to avoid a similar incident again?

http://www.nomeatathlete.com/iron-for-vegetarians/
"My take on it: if you eat a varied, healthy plant-based diet that includes a balance of grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, and fruits and vegetables — and follow the recommendations below — I don’t believe it is necessary to keep close track of iron intake."

I'm halfway through a meat-free fortnight, undertaken to prove a point to my girlfriend, and I feel kind of good. I have absolutely no intention of cutting out meat altogether, but I think a significant reduction might be in order.

My vegetarian cooking skills are not quite up to scratch though; tried a chickpea and butternut squash tagine tonight, which managed to be an overcooked mush filled with lumps of crunchy underdone squash.

for b12 i think you should probably take supplements though. probably take iron supplements too if you're worried about it

Leee, I'm not sure that one week would be enough to deplete your iron/b vit to health impairing levels whatever it is you've eaten. Hard to say what it might have been for sure, but if you were eating just fruit + veg then don't forget that won't be as dense in calories as other food sources - maybe you just weren't eating enough? or maybe it was a low after a blood sugar spike, depending on what you'd eaten earlier that day? i do think though that there's often a stage of feeling a bit weird a few days after making any major dietary change (trying to give up coffee and going low carb were both hellish for me in that respect) - sometimes things improve if you just ride it out and your body finds a new normal.

good luck though this time around!

Anyone familiar with this America's Test Kitchen cookbook? http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Vegetarian-Cookbook-Editors-Americas/dp/1936493969/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429987818&sr=8-1&keywords=vegetarian+cookbook

The menu headings look good, probably would get the Kindle version.

I loved America's Test Kitchen's omnivore titles (esp The New Best Recipe), and have been hoping for a vegetarian title from them for 5 years. Only 250 vegan recipes, though, so I'll probably pass (I've 2 dozen vegan cookbooks that stare reproachfully, as I habitually do convenience dishes like caldo verde, lentil soup and black bean tortillas from memory.

So it's been a couple months of being mostly vegetarian. (On average, I've had meat less than once a week.) And no near-fainting spells! Sometimes I get lazy and subsist mostly on eggs, but I don't think I'm experiencing any major deficiencies.

eggs + other stuff (rice and veggies of some kind).

after years of gradually cutting down the amount of meat i ate (i stopped cooking it at home a decade ago), i stopped eating it altogether last year. it was just a case of my habits taking decades to catch up with my principles.

i don't really miss meat. what i do miss is having more choices at the "ethnic" restaurants i'm fond of. middle eastern is fine, because i can eat all kinds of bean-based stuff, salads, etc. chinese is more difficult. i find hot pot to be a good solution because you even without meat it's full of flavor and you can add such a wide variety of veggies and proteins. but at your typical (decent) chinese place,what is there to eat, really?

what do y'all vegetarians eat when you go out for chinese?

Fried rice, lo mein, various tofu dishes

this is very tasty:
http://thewoksoflife.com/2015/05/sichuan-stir-fried-potatoes/

^^^ looks really good

what do y'all vegetarians eat when you go out for chinese?

I'm only p/t vegetarian but I usually get something with seitan or tofu, if I know it's going to be fried. Squishy blocks of barely-cooked tofu kind of bum me out. But I find I've been buying way more Thai and Indian stuff lately, both seem to be way more amenable to vegetarians than the Chinese places in this area.

chinese food tends to have animal products like fish sauce and minced pork in a lot dishes labelled 'vegetarian', too. i think the general definition of 'vegetarian' in chinese restaurants is 'mostly vegetables', not 'strictly vegetables'. thai and vietnamese seem to do that less.

chinese is pretty great vegetarians! there is an entire "bean curd" section and another "vegetable" section on every menu. some of them might have some animal products like fish sauce or minced pork but not always and you can specify when ordering that you don't want them

chinese is pretty for great vegetarians! obv

homestyle (or family style) bean curd is probably my go-to dish and it always features fried tofu and a bunch of vegetables in full-flavored sauce, very rarely ime does it come w/ meat in it so i usually don't even have to specify anything

fwiw i was vegan for about 10 years and vegetarian for a few more, now im mostly vegetarian and eat meat/seafood occassionally

I rarely have chinese food because most American chinese food is fucking disgusting but as long as you check about the things that Justin mentioned you'll be fine. Veggie Moo Shu vegetable. Sesame Tofu. Tofu and veggies. There should be tons of things.

"What i do miss is having more choices at the "ethnic" restaurants i'm fond of."

This is such a weird statement to me because "ethnic" restaurants are usually way better for veggie stuff than most American standard stuff?

i know!

Has anyone ever cooked with TVP? Do you have to use it as a meat substitute? Could you put it in oatmeal, for example? Bland TVP squares would be fine if they ended up tasting somewhat like soybeans. (I am surprised by the font of this thread.)