Meaty mom with a veggie girl

[Terrilein]

Hi there! My dd recently decided to go vegetarian and for some reason I'm kind of having a hard time adjusting. It's just not a matter of not serving her meat with our meals. and there are things she just won't touch like tomatos (except as sauce), paprika, onions. A kid can't live on cucumber and carrots alone!

So I've been looking for kid-friendly veggie recipes and am having a really hard time. My favorite site has kid friendly and vegetarian meals as two separate categories. The kid friendly stuff is for the most part not veggie, and the vegetarian category is too sophisticated for dd's taste . . . or contains all the numerous food items she won't touch. I'd really appreciate any links to online resources/recipe databases with specifically kid friendly vegetarian meal ideas.

[bandgeek]

I make most of my old dishes, just with things subbed out.  Like I make tacos or burritos, but instead of ground beef, I'll use lentils, or for burritos, refried beans.  You can do a lot with rice and pasta.  If a recipe calls for something you know she won't like, just leave it out.  Or make it anyway and just let her pick out the offending ingredient.  My DS likes my sweet and nutty rice casserole but picks out the chickpeas.  I always have him try one anyway....he knows it takes time to learn to like something.  Pizza is always a good option.  We do "breakfast for dinner" once a week or so.  I use fake meats from time to time.  I don't have any websites, sorry.  Just trying to give you ideas.

[greenemami]

Hi there!  Things my kids (almost 10, 4, and 1) enjoy are quesadillas/tacos/burritos with beans, cheese, guacamole, etc., broccoli or spinach quiche, lots of different soups (veg, carrot, black bean, lentil, etc.), chili, stir fry with lots of veggies and rice and tofu sometimes, homemade pizza (she might like white pizza w/o sauce-I make white pizza with cream cheese adn broccoli, yum!), breakfast for dinner (pancakes, eggs and potatoes, etc.) veg. lasagna with spinach and red peppers, pasta with cheese and veggies, hummus sandwhiches/pitas...well that's all I can think off of the top of my head but I'm sure there are more, lol! :)  Dp is not veg, so I try to make things he will like too or that he can easily add a meat to if he wants, kind of opposite of what you are trying to do.  Hope that helps!

[catnip]

Check out the Vegan Lunch Box and Fat Free Vegan Kitchen blogs for kid-friendly recipes. The cookbooks Pretend Soup, Salad People and Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen have great recipes for a lacto-ovo vegetarian kid. We find most of the recipes are easily veganized, too. 

Some of our favorite kid-friendly meals are soups, bean tacos, brown rice with cubed tofu and diced veggies mixed in, hummus with veggies and whole grain pitas, spaghetti, and our fallback of simply a bean (white, pinto, black, lentil, with just salt and a little lemon juice), a veggie (broccoli, chard, carrots, peas, sweet potato...) and a whole grain (rice, quinoa, pasta, tortillas, toast, couscous). I usually make ours with a spicy sauce and let hers be.

[iris777888]

It may be hard to figure out when you're just starting out, but pretty much anything can be made vegetarian, even vegan! What kind of stuff does she like?

If you join the VRG parents yahoo group, you'll see tons of recipes come through http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vrgparents/ , It's also a good place to get advice about how to deal with other issues you might run across as a parent of a veg kid, like birthday parties, school, etc.  Some of parents are veg themselves, others are not and are just supporting their veg kids.

[Terrilein]

Thank you so much, ladies!!! Keep it coming. Your input has been a really big help! 

[Thalia the Muse]

Is she vegan or ovo-lacto? My daughter has recently decided to go ovo-lacto as well. I found that most of the vegetarian-kid Web sites are geared for vegans, so it's actually been a little hard to find resources for that.

Here are some things she likes for dinner or in her lunch box, My kid's not super-picky (as kids go -- compared to an adventurous adult, she's pretty limited), but she doesn't really like her food "mixed," so my suggestions are geared to that.:

If we're doing a dinner with multiple dishes, she'll have the starch and veggies with us, and can make herself a scrambled egg instead of the meat portion, or she can have some plain beans.

Stuffed baked potato.

Pasta with a meatless sauce -- or, if she won't touch the sauce, buttered noodles with beans/cheese/egg and a vegetable on the side.

Hummus or bean dip and pita bread.

Deviled eggs (OMG, she LOVES THESE).

Homemade bean-based or lentil-based burgers.

Beans right out of the can -- especially chickpeas.

Cheese and crackers, obviously.

PB&J.

Noodle-veggie stir fry, customized with the vegetables she likes.

Smoked or BBQ tofu, in a sandwich or just eaten straight.

Couscous salad.

Pizza with olives and mushrooms.

Sliced raw veggies.

So we mix and match from that list -- deviled eggs, some crackers, and a handful of grape tomatoes. Or a quesadilla with some flavored tofu, sugar snap peas, and strawberries. Or we'll make pasta and save some out for her without the meat-based sauce. It helps that the adults like vegetarian food too, so we have no problem eating veggie a few nights a week.

If you want cookbooks, the Moosewood series is a pretty good source for kid-friendly recipes. And Mollie Katzen's cookbooks for kids are great!