Meatless Meals - Westport,CT

I usually just put "vegetarian pasta" or something similar into google and whole lot of stuff will come up. Allrecipes.com has tons of vegetarian recipes.

Hi Kirsten,

When I'm looking up veg recipes, I don't usually use a specific website. I type in the keywords for what I want to make (and even some ingredients I have on hand) and put 'recipe' behind it. (As in "quinoa salad red peppers feta recipe") After that, I like to look at several recipes (including the cooking techniques) and figure out how best to go about making my dish. I'm more of a cobble-it-together cook than a straight-from-the-book cooks, so having an array of recipes to look at offers information on spice combinations and other tweaks I might make.

You can also use a SmartGround-type ground beef substitute for spaghetti/red sauces or tacos or chili. In which case, you can use a standard non-veg recipe for those sorts of meals. Tofu pad thai can also be improvised: House of Thai has a good sauce, most stores have rice stick noodles, and use whatever veg you wish.

The Tassajara cookbook has some great flavors/recipes, as well as Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone", in case you feel like investing in some books. The second also has a lot of good information on each vegetable itself, how to cook it, and which flavors best complement it. It's a favorite reference book of mine. Good luck and delicious eating!

2 of my faves:
101cookbooks.com/
peasandthankyou.com/

We tend to stick to beans, lentils, eggs and tofu/tempeh as our mainstay proteins but just keep tofu/boca/morning star products to a minimum because they're bad for you too! Oy!

Good luck!

Allrecipes.com has good veggie recipes. An easy idea is to buy veggie crumbles by morning star and use it in place of ground beef (I was a little confused by your salmon comment....salmon is not vegatarian. Fish is a meat. People who follow a mostly veggie diet but eat fish are pescatarians) Here is a quick easy recipes if you have a crockpot (though you could make it without) Take one can of chickpeas, one peeled and cubed eggplant, one cubed and peeled zuchini, frozen pepper onion mix (I get it at krogers but you can use fresh green,red, and yellow peppers and onions) one can spegetti sauce. one tb each of garlic and chili pwder. cook on low for 5hours in crockpot and serve over rice. Also we have alot of spegetti squash during the summer so I cook it then combine it with parm cheese, moz cheese, one egg, salt, pepper, garlic, a diced tomato and cooked cubed zuchini. place it in a baking dish and cover with bread crumbs, and bake at 375 till golden brown.

That's easy. A lot of stuff we all take for granted is vegetarian.
1. Cheese lasagna or cheese manacotti. My mom never put any kind of meat in her lasagna or in the sauce that went on into making it. We just used tomato sauce. The only time she used a meat sauce was for on top of spaghetti. She did put fresh parsely in the cheese mixture. (ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan, and parsely.)
2. PIzza - Make your own pizza. (Bread machines make great pizza dough!) top it with fresh sliced peppers, onions, and tomatoes.
3. Substitute veggie crumbles (textured soy crumbles...Morning Star in the freezer section) when you make tacos, sloppy Joes, or chili.
4. Learn how to cook extra firm tofu. It's amazing stuff! You just rinse it off and dry it as much as you can, slice it and dry with a paper towel again to get rid of excess water. Then you can fry it up with a little salt and pepper on it to give it a crunchy, browned exterior. (Tastes like egg whites done like that.) You can put it into stir fries. You can even curry it to make it taste like curried chicken. You can put it in broth with spinach and white wine. (We don't eat it raw though... My family would never do that with any tofu.)
5. Boca had the best vegitarian sausage that looked like the real thing, but I haven't seen it lately. It even almosted tasted like the real thing.
6. Make a fried egg sandwich with fried onions.
7. Vegetarian Mein Tiou...What do you call it in English...Ugh, it's in every Chinese restaurant...You can get shrimp, beef...Lo Mein. Ok, You can make vegetable Lo Mein. Very easy, but won't look like the restaurant since there's no food coloring involved. (Hubby loves it.) Make some thin spaghetti or angel hair pasta ahead of time and let it get cold. Fry up any vegies you'd like to put in it and chopped fresh garlic with a little oil. (Peppers, broccoli, onions, etc.) Beat up an egg and fry that in with the vegies, when they are almost done. (Be sure to keep chopping up the egg as it cooks.) After the egg is cooked, add the cold pasta with a little more oil so it doesn't stick. Keep stirring with your flipper/spatula. When everything's hot you can add the soy sauce a little at a time until it reaches the color/flavor you like. Sometimes I sneak some oyster sauce into it too. (Don't know if oyster sauce really has oysters in it or is used for oysters, so you might want to read the label.)

i'm with hazel, i usually just google. that being said, i DO have some favorite sites to which i go for inspiration.
http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/chocolate-covered-recipes/
(she's more than just desserts, have a blast roaming her site!
http://www.veganchef.com/
if you really want to go rad and raw, i like this one (i'm not a raw foodie all the time but i do like to do it periodically)
http://goneraw.com/
http://www.simpleveganrecipes.co.uk/
have fun!
:) khairete
S.

Falafels - find it in a box at Whole Foods, just add water, mix and fry. My meat loving sons really liked these.
Rice Biryani - a curried Indian dish, there are variations at different recipe websites. Really good with cashews for protein.
Salad boats - heap grated carrots on top of whole organic romaine leaves. Top with cheese (I like feta or shredded parmesan), nuts and cranberries. Drizzle with olive oil (lime infused olive oil is the best). Pick up and eat like an open face sandwich.

allrecipes.com is my favorite. Just type "vegetarian" or "vegan" in the search bar and TONS of recipes will pop up!