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If anyone needs inspiration, Deborah Madison books are just fantastic--that woman can write a recipe!

Thank you for this post. Seeing various recipes that you guys come up with that are vegetarian would be awesome. I don't eat red meat, I stick to poultry and seafood if I go out to eat. At home I keep it strictly vegetarian though, cheaper and easier for a newbie cook as well as being healthier. I enjoy seeing your various recipes but as a newbie, don't know how to make them veggie friendly, so I'm hoping to get more recipes under my belt from this.

i'll be one of the few persons who on doctor's orders NEED to eat more meat. And my toddler prefers MEAT. She'll push lots of other things off her plate though she's not a finiky eater. But she has some allergies that limit her food choices a lot. And I found that HER allergies made ME scared of cooking experiments - there's nothing worse than seeing your child turn red and covered in hives, and pass out on you...after eating whatever your new cooking invention was. :-(

The hardest thing about going vegetarian, if you've eaten meat all your life, is to make sure you incorporate enough protein, esp lean protein. This is why Indians eat daal (lentils) at every meal, and even make desserts using chickpea flour. The recipes pictured don't seem to have a lot of protein, from what I can tell. It's also tempting to get most of your protein from cheese, which can be high fat. So we have to find good ways to get lean protein -- nonfat dairy items, beans/lentils, tofu/tempeh, and eggs are the best sources.

Meatless Monday. We go meatless every Monday and my husband only complains about half the time. I'm finding that as long as the food is hardy, he doesn't complain. When it is just a salad or lentils and greens he always says, "this is good, but it would be better with meat." When it is risotto or grilled cheese and soup he says, "this is good. You should make this more."

And, the Veganomicon is a great place to start with vegan cooking.

Never was nor will be a veg*n, but I almost never cook or have meat at home, except for a rather infrequent bit of bacon/jamon iberico/chorizo, oh and a tin of sardines for eating with crackers. My SO is 99.9% of the time unable to eat meat and can't stand the sight of raw meat in our fridge, so it's only when we are dining out somewhere nicer that I sometimes indulge in a bit of meat. We live in a country (Spain) that likes its home-cooked beans and lentils, which suits us fine. I try to make a pot of lentils or chickpeas once a week.

I'd love to see more dishes here at AT kitchen that are not meat-centered, and also to see more bean-centered as well. :)

I'd like to chime in for veggie recipes--it's how I eat most of the time, with chicken and fish semi-regularly.

I second the Deborah Madison endorsement. As a vegetarian for over 10 years, Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Greens have been my cook books for every occasion. She's great.

I've been a vegetarian for 20 years and I love the Moosewood cookbooks. I have Deborah Madison's Greens cookbook, which is great, but the recipies are more time-consuming and complicated than those in other cookbooks I've used.

I know the following statement will be controversial, but I have to add that it's not that difficult to get all the protein you need from plants. According to Dr. Mcdougall:

"The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that men and women obtain 5% of their calories as protein. This would mean 38 grams of protein for a man burning 3000 calories a day and 29 grams for a woman using 2300 calories a day. This quantity of protein is impossible to avoid when daily calorie needs are met by unrefined starches and vegetables. For example, rice alone would provide 71 grams of highly useable protein and white potatoes would provide 64 grams of protein."

Read the full article here: www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/apr/dairy.htm

I've never gone out of my way to eat protein, and after 20 years I'm healthy and happy.

I definitely want to eat more ethically, which involved eating more veggies. However, like many people I am soy and lactose intolerant. Too often a recipe that foregoes meat just substitutes tofu or tempeh or another soy product. Vegan recipes which should be good cause there are no dairy products are actually horrible (for me) b/c they are so reliant on tofu. Let's see some vegetarian dishes that don't rely on soy.

Thanks for the push on this! One of the biggest advantages of eating vegetarian more often is that it's typically much less expensive. We've adopted it as a way to combat food price inflation.

Daniel Koontz
Casual Kitchen