I’ve decided to try vegitarianism for a week for dietary reasons. Any good menu plans or suggestions? Ground rules:
No nuts (I’m allergic)
No cheese or butter (too much fat)
No white bread (wheat is ok)
Strongly flavoured root vegetables are the way to stop you going insane with boredom. Parsnips, and celeriac are really good.
When I was a vegemitarianist for a few years, my housemates and I invented a lovely casserole with chopped simmered carrots, onions and parsnips in a bechamel sauce, topped with well seasoned celeriac/potato mash, then 45 minutes in a hot oven to crisp up the top. Serve with a green veg like broccoli. A damn nice dish.
Apart from that, try southern Indian food - lots of really, really good vegetenariphile recipes that involve no bread, butter, cheese at all, but tons of lovely fresh ingredients and tasty spices.
I have a dip I make that is fantastic with carrots. I don’t even like carrots that much but they’re great with this dip. It’s also good on crackers.
Cottage cheese - a 16 oz. container, or less if you want - fixed amounts don’t much matter
Mayonnaise - a teaspoon or tablespoon, maybe
A clove or two of garlic, either put through a press or chopped very fine
A scallion or three, chopped in about 1/4" rings
Minced horseradish from a jar, or fresh - not the “horseradish sauce” that you find in the salad-dressing aisle
Mix some cottage cheese (you can adjust all this to your taste: I’ll assume a pint) with a soup-spoon of mayonnaise. You don’t need a heaping mountain of it; just a normal filled rounded spoon. Stir in however much garlic you think it needs to taste good. It doesn’t take much. Add the garlic - a lot if you like garlic, a little if you only want a little. Stir in the chopped scallions. Add a rounded teaspoon, or more or less, of the horseradish. Stir it all up. It’s fine right away but better once all the flavors have melded. Eat with raw vegetables. Carrots are the best to my mind: the sweetness mixes with the sharp/savory of the dip and it’s just delish.
Most vegetables get great flavor from roasting with a little olive oil and sea salt. Asparagus this way is phenomenal. Tomatoes are also great like this and can be used for lots of things: eat them alone or with bread rounds that have been toasted in the oven and rubbed with a raw garlic clove.
Do you like gazpacho? I think that’s pretty easy to make and stays good for a few days.
Edit: am assuming you’re not going vegan; otherwise the dip won’t work.
As someone who grew up spending weekends with her vegetarian father, I always find this sort of question bizarre. There’s no great secret to it; you eat normal food, only skipping the dishes with meat in them. Admittedly, the butter and cheese prohibition makes it a little tougher. (You can easily find low or no fat versions of both, by the way.)
If this becomes a longer term dietary choice, you should do some research on what you can substitute in for nuts to make sure you get enough protein in your diet. (It’s not hard to do).
Anyway, potential dishes for the week:
- Linguine/spaghetti/vermicelli/etc., with sauce. You can sautée a combination of vegetables of your choice to put on top.
- Pirogies come in several varieties without cheese in them.
- Salads can contain pretty much any combination of vegetable matter you can think of.
- Many Middle Eastern recipes, such as falafel.
- Scrambled eggs or pancakes.
- Chili or enchaladas with beans
- Sandwiches
- Lasagna
- Soup
- Spanish rice
etc., etc., etc.
I don’t have any good suggestions for the food, but caution about cutting out too much fat, we really need some fat in our diets.
This is something I learned after becoming vegetarian: a lasagna should be home-made and filled with vegetables instead of meat. That is the food-lover in me speaking.
If you want something without dairies, I highly recommend making a soup on potatoes, onion and leek and then add whatever you like (I usually add broccoli and cheek peas). Garlic bread is very tasty with this.