New to this..... Help with planning, recipes, shopping... EVERYTHING- Mostly Vegetarian.

[Chloe'sMama]

We are a pretty mixed house.  Were vegetarian and vegan for most of our adult lives (meaning we don't know how to cook meat).  I like eating veggie most of the time but want to avoid soy and processed foods.  I would like to focus on making most of our meals and snacks at home.  DH likes to have fish at least once per week and maybe another meal of chicken or beef.  I can handle chicken the best and mostly in soups. 

I would like to make my own breads for sandwiches and to eat with dinner.  Can you soak regular flour overnight?  What is a good recipe for that?  Should I get a starter?  

I am at a loss for meal planning and shopping.  We don't do tons of milk, but have a raw dairy close by.  What veggies are good to ferment for kids and a newby family?  I looked at the book nourishing traditions, but it seems very meat-centric and not a ton of recipes for beans and legumes.  

Resources would be great!

[Koalamom]

Do you soak you beans?  If not that would be a good start.  Yes if you do make bread, sourdough would be a good change and switching to raw dairy is good too. 

I do alot of my meal planning on what is in season and local atthe time.  I am eating more apples now and only the beries I froze and no more raw tomatoes as they are not available but more root veggies and meat.   I was a vegetarian for years so I know the switch can be hard.

When starting fements I started with cabbage and my kids loved that.  You could do some cultures from kefir.  Water kefir is easy to get into kids.

[JMJ]

Take a deep breath.  It's overwhelming to overhaul your family's diet, so take it a step at a time so that you don't stress out too much.  Every change you make will make a positive impact on your health, so even if you don't change everything overnight, you're still going to have improvements.

First, change the way you look at food.  Most Americans are afraid of food.  We spend so much time thinking about what not to eat and not enough time thinking about what will nourish our bodies.  Focus on what foods are going to have a positive impact on your health by providing vital nutrients.

Buy a variety of vegetables.  Get organic when possible.  You may be lucky enough to have a local market that has a great variety of organic produce, though this likely comes with a high price tag.  Just get the best you can afford.  Get several colors of vegetables because they contain different nutrients, but get extra green vegetables.  The green ones are extra nutrient-rich.  Don't let your vegetables be naked.  Make sure they're covered in nutritious fat to help you absorb their nutrients and make it easier to eat more of them.

Invest in some high quality fats.  For cooking, use butter, lard, ghee, coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, or bacon grease.  On salads, use olive oil, flax oil, sesame oil, or even fish oil if you like it.  Make sure that your oils are minimally processed and do not contain any trans fats.  Make sure your polyunsaturated oils are high in omega 3's, cold pressed, and kept in the fridge.

Maximize the nutrients in what you are already eating.  A vegetarian diet tends to be high in grains, beans, nuts, and seeds, all of which contain antinutrients.  This can be mostly overcome by soaking and sprouting.  If you want to maintain a mostly veg diet, soaking and sprouting would be very important for you.  It helps at first to make a soaking schedule.

Consider some ferments.  I started a sourdough starter long before I was ever TF.  When I went TF almost a year ago, I started yogurt, and I'm just about to start kefir.  I have dabbled in vegetables with about 50% success (when I produced something I'm not afraid to eat).  I'd like to get more involved with ferments, but that hasn't happened yet.  Do your research before going down this road.

Add in some superfoods that will nourish your family.  We've added in brazil nuts for selenium, organ meats for vitamin A and iron (among other things), collards, broccoli, asparagus, and beets in greater quantities for folate, CLO for Vitamins A and D and omega 3's, oysters for zinc, more dairy for calcium, ghee for vitamin K2, and berries for Vitamin C and antioxidants.

[JMJ]

I also wanted to add that the higher up the food chain you go, the more careful you need to be.  It is worth paying extra for good quality animal products when you do buy them, and you can be TF just fine with a smaller amount of meat or even non-flesh animal products.  Interestingly enough, many of the best cuts are sold for less than the low-fat muscle meats.  My chicken farmer throws away a lot of bones because many people want boneless, skinless chicken breasts only.  He happily gives them away to me for free so that I can make broth for soups and cooking with rice.  Ask around for who has the best quality milk, eggs, grassfed beef and lamb (if you do red meat), poultry, etc.  Get information about the healthiest fish.