Help a meat-eater host a vegetarian friend-- baked beans?

[Llyra]

I am not a vegetarian, but my cousin is coming to stay for a week. His girlfriend, who's also coming, is vegetarian. This is going to require a big adjustment in my cooking-- we use a lot of animal foods in our cooking. And I cook almost entirely from scratch, because of DS's allergies, and my own ulcerative colitis, which limit our diets a lot.

Anyway, I'm mostly managing to come up with good food ideas that everybody can share, except for this one dinner Sunday night. I was wondering if anybody has a recipe for baked beans. All of the traditional recipes seem to be based on pork or bacon. I can't use canned, because the canned beans aren't soaked properly, and they bother my disease a lot.

[Kyamo]

You can easily just leave out the meat from the recipe. I have made them both ways.

[TheGirls]

We're also meat eaters but regularly host a couple of veggie friends/family. I actually find it really fun to expand our eating a bit, and usually fix at least a couple of veg meals for everyone (and a couple of meat-optional meals as well). My favorites are bean burgers with portobella mushrooms. Yum yum.

My favorite veggie bean recipe (from dried beans):
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/vegan-...ns/Detail.aspx

[cristeen]

I use the honey-baked lentils recipe, subbing already cooked navy beans for the lentils and omitting the water.

For a vegan, i've replaced the honey w maple syrup w really good results.

[bandgeek]

Just leave the meat out. I know some people feel like baked beans just aren't "right" without the bacon flavor, but I eat vegetarian baked beans all the time and don't miss the bacon at all. It's actually one of my go-to comfort foods when I'm feeling down.

[Lauren82]

What about stuff like veggie lasagna, pizza topped with veggies (you could still have your own with meat), tacos (you can put meat on yours and they can have beans and rice or the veggie "meat" crumbles).

I agree with what everyone else said about the baked beans. Just omit the meat.

[catnip]

Adding some fat to them, olive oil is good, and maybe a bit of liquid smoke seasoning, and enough salt. You won't miss the bacon.

[cubits]

I love baked beans! I have a good recipe on my blog. Its easy to make vegan/vegetarian beans just use a vegan/vegetarian fat in place of bacon/pork/lard.
Here are my ingredients:

1 lb of beans (if I can find solider beans I use those, generally I use navy beans)
1 large peeled onion studded with 3 cloves
½ cup of brown sugar
½ cup of molasses
¼ cup of maple syrup
2 tsp of apple cider vinegar
½ tsp of salt
1/8 tsp of ground pepper
2 tsp dried mustard
1/2 cup of butter (or vegan or carnivore fat of your choice)

Hope that helps.

[ollyoxenfree]

I just saw this thread, so I hope this isn't too late. Our family eats meat (about 3 times a week) but I often have a vegetarian at our dinner table when friends are over. It's fairly easy to accommodate them by making a main dish like pasta or stir fry or risotto that is meatless, and then serve some lamb chops, chicken etc. almost as a side dish.