Where to begin?

[becca_howell]

I've contemplated a vegetarian/vegan diet for a decade and a half (ever since getting nasty food poison from a hamburger). I've always come back to eating meat because of a lack of resources or a craving for meat. I'm in the middle of reading The Kind Diet, and it's got me thinking. I have asthma and I'm fat. Both of my kids have eczema. DH has (unadmitted) GI issues. From what I've read, a vegan diet could help with all of these. The way I see it, if one of us were to be diagnosed tomorrow with diabetes, sugar and products like it would go out the window. Why not change our eating habits to help the medical issues we already have?! Not to mention, the descriptions of the nasty processing of animals... I nearly threw up!

Here's where I'm stumped on where to begin. We are quite the carnivores. We've gone vegetarian before, and to be exact, I was the one who cracked first. In texting back and forth with DH, he's already unsure about going hardcore vegan (can't live without his cream cheese). We are also on a tight budget, trying to save moeny for a bigger place. So, where did you start? Where should I go from here.

[maciascl]

We started slow and it was a long process here. We first stopped eating beef and pork leaving only chicken and fish. Then maybe a year later stopped eating chicken leaving only fish. Then again a while later cut out fish becoming officially vegetarian. We often eat vegan, but really are only vegetarian (eat dairy and eggs). From the 1st step of cutting out beef and pork we saw a huge change in our health, which is really why we did it in the 1st place.

As for cost, meat is expensive. Beans and tofu are much less expensive than meat. Being veg*n doesn't have to be expensive at all. It is when you eat alot of the prepackaged processed stuff that it gets expensive. Don't get me wrong we do eat the boxed stuff sometimes, I am just careful about which ones for the sake of cost and ingredients

ETA: Also learing how to make "meat-like" meals may help as well, such as lentil sloppy joes or seitan ribz.

[Messac888]

I used to be vegetarian after a fairly long struggle with food in general. I LOVED being vegetarian- and only switched back to a meat-eating diet because of pregnancies. My ds (7) loves meat, dd (5) hates it, and dds (3 & 1) are dairy-intolerant so they can't have much non-animal protein. To top it off, dd (3) seems to have problems with nuts (refuses to eat them so I don't force the issue) which leaves us with.....BEANS. None of the kids are too enthused about beans. They'll eat hummus and tofu, but I don't want hummus and tofu all the time so we do eat animals. However, it is quite rare that we eat red meat (makes me nauseous). I want to get back to a more vegetarian diet but it's a slow-going process. I've been adding less and less meat to our meals and no one notices (example- stir fry nights have maybe two chicken breasts for ALL of us- and there's six of us- and tons of veggies). In a huge pan of lasagna I only add 1/2 pound of ground beef- one of the few times I use red meat. And sometimes I just substitute the meat with chipped, sauteed mushrooms instead- and NO ONE NOTICES. Maybe just decrease the amount of meat you add, maybe supplement with some TVP granules (I don't, seems too processed to me) or seitan. Eventually no one will realize they're eating vegetarian. Don't lie if they ask, but you don't have to offer the info, either. Good luck with all that!

[catnip]

I found that making a gradual transition with more and more days of first vegetarian, then vegan meals helped me build up a large repetoire of meals that keep me from feeling burned out.

Here are some ways that my family eats beans:

Chickpea 'tuna' salad
black bean soup
Sweet potato-black bean enchilada casserole
chickpea croutons
Navy bean soup with lemon, garlic and sage (really good with kale)
chili
refried beans
minestrone soup with kidney beans and pasta
Pasta e'Fagoli
lentil soup
lentil loaves
curried red lentils
red lentil tacos
maple baked lentils
baked beans
while beans pureed in to a cream of (vegetable) soup

[catnip]

Also, for the occasional treat, tofutti's yellow label "better than cream cheese" is an excellent fake.