If you are not a veggie household how many non meat evening meals do you eat a week?

[AtleastitsnotMonday]

Having recently read a few different threads this is something I’ve been thinking about. We probably have at least three, sometimes four, meat free meals a week. Not for any particular reason (health, environmental, cost saving etc) but just because there are a lot of veggie meals we like as much as meat or fish based.

I wonder if it’s some what generational, I know my parents generation seem to eat more meat based meals and I know for sure my grandparents were a lot more in the ‘a meal isn’t a meal with out meat or fish,’ camp.

3-4 meat free meals a week

But on reflection those actually arent 'vegetarian'

Lots of risottos and pastas in there with real cheese (parmesan, real cheddars).

And chicken stock cubes or bits of bacon go in things all the time. Like base for mac cheese, or certain risottos, pastas etc.

So cancel the 3+ . Probably very few actually 'vegetarian' - more missing a main of meat

One or two. We dont eat meat on Fridays and 'm trying to add another meat free day per week.
I'm limited for non meat protein because my DS is allegic to most of veggie protein sourcex though so its a bit tricky.

My husband and I own a home-based business so we are always at home so we cook (mostly) three meals a day.

In a week, we will have 21 meals and AIM for seven vegan, seven vegetarian and seven meat/fish meals. On a good week, 14 meals a week are meat-free.

None.
DP "needs" meat with every meal and will concede maybe 2/3 nights a week to fish . He also eats heat daily for lunch - no exceptions. I'd happily drop meat but not fish I think but couldn't find time tondi two meals every time I cook .

1 a week, but there's always "wot no meat" comments.

Two or three times I'd say. I like a good mixture.

Honestly very rarely for dinners. Some lunches are meat free (I batch cook either macaroni cheese or chicken pesto pasta each week so it depends which week it is).

For the poster who suggested beans on toast, I don't eat beans and wouldn't consider "on toast" a dinner. I add chicken to my pesto pasta or it just seems so boring. I don't like eggs so wouldn't eat egg & chips either.

I'll admit I'm a fussy eater. I struggle with both the texture and the taste of most vegetables, so I'm very limited as to what vegetarian meals I will eat.

We have at least 3 veggie nights per week and 2/3 fish based . My husband will only eat chicken as a meat or non fatty beef mince in chilli etc .

None at all.

I don't usually eat meat or fish for breakfast, although I have boiled eggs a few days a week. Every other meal includes some.

For me, the meat / fish is always the tastiest part of every meal. There are some vegetables which taste fine, but I'd never look forward to eating them. I eat them because they're healthy and I'd die if I didn't. If meat contained all the nutrients we need, I'd happily eat nothing else for the rest of my life.

@AtleastitsnotMonday
As for it being generational, my paternal grandmother (born in 1910) used to live with us and she cooked a significant amount of vegetable-based meals.

She was Mexican-born and our cultural food is actually heavy on rice, beans and vegetables plus, meat was expensive so she didn't have as much experience cooking it. My father, her son, was also Mexican-born and was used to it and preferred meatless meals.

My mother was a first generation American (her parents were also from Mexico) born in the mid-1930's. She grew up poor and when she moved up the economic ladder, she made sure to cook meat daily. Plus, it was what American families did and she wanted to fit in.

For my family, it was about economics and fitting in.

I often wonder what my mother would have thought (she died in 1981) about her granddaughter being a vegetarian and how common it is and a lifestyle choice and wonder if she would have changed her ways.

I am really trying to cut down our meat consumption but I often find myself very hungry in the middle of the night if we've eaten a veggie dish. I feel full when the meal is done but then I'll wake up starving. Like pesto pasta - for me just pesto pasta is a lunch dish. It needs something else with it to be a dinner.

Probably about 50/50, but a lot of the meals we have with meat don't have much in, but obviously are not vegetarian.

For us, it's mainly that the food I naturally like is either vegetarian, or doesn't have a lot of meat in it. I'd probably never choose to eat steak and chips or pork chop, mash and veg for example.

So we have things like chicken biriyani, where there's 3 chicken thighs in 4 portions of biriyani, plus I'll make a dhal and a vegetable curry and that's all the food for 2/3 days - there's 2 of us and I tend to cook a couple of times a week and then eat the leftovers for 2/3 days.

Or a pasta bake that's macaroni cheese with cauliflower and/or broccoli that might have one of those small packs of bacon cubes in, so maybe 100 g of meat in 4 portions of food, just for flavour. Or I won't bother and leave it out.

Chilli would have maybe 300 g of mince and then 2 or 3 tins of beans, peppers, onions, tomatoes etc and then there's quite a few portions and some goes in the freezer.

If we get pizza, I never have meat on it.

Just another way of reducing your meat consumption if you're not vegetarian and might be a good compromise if you're feeding people who insist on meat, but you don't want to be a 'lot of meat every day' household.

We eat fish or chicken maybe once a week. However, our diet is completely different from what most people eat because we are Asian and were raised eating mostly veggie diets.

Zero typically, if you mean evening hot meals only anyway.

When there are threads on here about amounts, I notice our flesh-portions are much smaller than people mention. I think 1.5 sausages is an adequate adult portion, for instance.

DH is the main cook & has experimented a lot with meat substitutes, which DC like fine. I can quite like true meat-free meals and don't need a protein item at all, but I don't like the taste of most of the fake meats. I'm only one likes tofu (which is NOT a fake meat in my mind).

Mon - fri

5 out of 7 evening meals would be veg for me.

2/7 dinners are usually veggie. 1/5 meat dishes are fish.

We rarely have meat for breakfast / lunch.

we eat one dinner containing meat and one containing fish each week.
rest of dinners are vegetarian or vegan food.
the dc and dh sometimes have cold meat on sandwiches, but also fake meat slices.

Probably just less than of half of our evening meals wouldn’t be suitable for vegetarians. Both of us grew up in households where it wasn’t a meal if it wasn’t based around meat, so it’s quite different to what we grew up with. Things we cook else are tofu, lentil (dahl), and beans (chilli type dishes, although usually without spices so the kids eat it and we add Tabasco), as well as veggie pizzas, omelettes etc.

We aim for only eating meat at the weekends or if eating out. Mon-Fri we choose veggie/vegan options as standard. The exception is the occasional piece of fish. Often the only meat we will eat each week is a Sunday roast.

Have generally stuck to this for years but not always rigidly - sometimes added more meat meals in to cater for a fussy toddler, and I’m currently pregnant and have craved a bit more meat.

I’d go entirely vegetarian if I had the willpower but I can’t quite give up meat. We only eat organic, high welfare so that’s the current compromise.

DD is pescatarian but the rest of us a omnivores. We eat meat about 1 or 2 times a week only. Have fish a couple of times and veggie the rest.

None. We eat meat or fish with every evening meal. It’s just not a meal without some kind of protein iMO and beans on toast certainly isn’t an evening meal, and egg and chips hardly counts as in the healthy steaks so not sure which would be worse there, a meat meal or egg and chips….

I do veg soups for lunch etc and we rarely eat meat based breakfasts etc e.g. bacon rolls and so on, but in the evening we always have some kind of meat or fish. Mostly chicken or fish based though rather than red meat.

3 or 4 ish

None.