One vegetarian in the household - how do you manage meals?

[BeanAround]

One of my DC has decided to be vegetarian. The other DC is a veg-refusing fussy eater, who likes things like plain chicken breasts, sausages etc.

i’ve tried making a list of meals I think both will eat and have ended up with: beans on toast, egg on toast, pizza and sausage and chips (and the last one still requires two different kinds of sausages). So far so uninspiring.

Please hit me with your tips for managing a veggie diet alongside a meat-eating one without having to spend twice as long in the kitchen making different meals!

Sausage and mash
Make your own pizza
Make your own fajitas - wrap provided with a couple of filling options and guacamole and sour cream
Pasta with either cheese or proper sauce

How old are your DC?

I just make my own food, which may not be helpful to you. How old is the vegetarian dc?

The veggie is 8 - which I think is old enough to make an informed decision about wanting to not eat meat but not old enough to cook his own meals!

The meat-eater is 11 and I do already sometimes get him to make something for thin self if he doesn’t like what I’m serving up for the family but that tends to be a sandwich or something.

I just do a small veg version of whatever the rest of us are having (my vegetarian is a teenager and extremely amenable, which helps) - I tend to cycle through halloumi, falafel, paneer, tofu, portobello mushrooms, veg sausages if we are having a meal with a separate meat component - obviously all sides the same - or a lentil or chickpea stew if we are having something stewy, or dal if we are having curry. We all eat vegetarian 2-3 times a week.

Baked potatoes with a choice of fillings: beans, cheese, avocado etc
Salad in pitta bread with choice of ham or hummus
Roasted veg with ditto
Pasta with a nice homemade tomato sauce and grated cheese
Mushrooms on toast if they both eat them
Burger / veggie burger in a bun with onion and salad

It's not really that bad unless they are both also very fussy eaters in which case you are probably stuffed anyway.

Would love ideas for how you cook/serve those things (tofu, mushrooms etc) to work as an easy sub for the meat component.

The meat-eating DC won’t eat most “wet” food so I very rarely make meaty soups, stews etc.

Just sub veg sausage , Quorn pieces etc

tofu: cubed and fried until a bit crispy. Can dust with cornflour (with paprika or something) for even more crunch
portobello mushrooms honestly I just put them in the oven for 20 minutes. Butter and garlic in the 'hole', or soy sauce, or just salt and pepper. She most often gets these if the rest of us are having salmon pieces because they cook in the same time and take the same flavourings

The challenge is really that the meat eater is VERY fussy so things were already tricky - of the list above he would have a ham in pitta and plain pasta with cheese (no sauce).

Would the meat eater have say vege Bolognese, chilli,cottage pie, lasagne so can be eaten by all.
If your having meat, mash and veg just swap out the meat with vege sausages or Quorn fillets.
Vege burgers could maybe be eaten by all.

Would the vege be happy with same thing a few nights a week so do some batch cooking.

That's really tricky. My three are not fussy, but the things they dislike do not overlap - I used to threaten to make a spreadsheet, when they were small, and once something was recorded as 'like' or 'dislike' there would be no changes permitted!
We are all very fond of beans, so that helps a lot

I went veggie at 13 and was the only veggie in the house then.
Your 8yo will need more support than I had but the general plan was:

2 dinners per week - whole family eats veggie (would need to be things from your list)
1 dinner per week - I had a supermarket readymeal
4 dinners per week I had a batch-cook item from the freezer.

Each weekend I would make at least 4 portions (often more) of something batch-cooked to portion up and put in the freezer. I was required to do this solo but it would be reasonable for the 8yo to have adult help - not to expect the adult to do all the work though!

It was a long time ago now so I'm afraid I don't remember details of exactly what. One of them was a ratatoille-style sauce with lots of roast mediterranean veg with tomato. One was a mushroom and celery sauce - these could be served with either pasta or rice. You could also make a quorn or lentil bolognese style sauce that could be either served on spaghetti or could be topped with mash for a cottage-pie type meal. There must be a lot more options now than there were in the 1980s!

I’m sure we’ll be doing a bit of that but it’s horrible ultra-processed stuff so I don’t want it to be my main fall-back.

I managed this for a few years. We always still ate as a family. About 3 days a week we all ate vegetarian and the rest I did similar but meat free versions for one. Would be much, much harder for vegan.

So things like pasta with some kind of cheesy or tomato sauce we all ate.
Spag bol I made with lentils / soya mince for us all.
Roast dinners the vegetarian got veggie sausage or quorn roast plus veg gravy, everything else the same.
Grilled halloumi instead of pork steaks or fish.
Goulash made with sweet potato instead of meat.
Casseroles using root veg instead of meat.
I found tofu very difficult to get right
I only make vegetable soups anyway.
Pizza home made just avoiding parmesan and other non veggie cheeses.
I also did extra if I was making something just for DS and froze in single portions so there was a quick easy meal to heat up.
Puddings were tricky as many favourite bought puddings are not vegetarian. Fruit crumbles etc fine.

DS no longer lives at home but when he visits I resurrect the veggie favourite. I strongly dislike fake meat but he doesn't seem to care about the processed rubbish and eats it.

Yes lots of substitutes are unfortunately maybe do the same meal as everyone else I'd having and just omit the meat for them

Also about the fussy eater. Mine were dreadful from age 3 upwards, much my shame.

I did find that from around 12/13 onwards the level of faddy picky eating improved gradually until both DC ate like civilised adults and would happily try and eat most things.

Fortunately he does love veggies and would quite happily have a “meat and two veg” meal without the meat. But that’s lacking in protein!

Curry. We all eat meat, but even so I used to make a selection (meat, seafood, veg, dahl) which would then last for 3 main meals (Mon/ Wed/ Fri or whatever). This worked really well when veggie relations came to visit.

A friend's daughter went veggie and she lived on cheese and eggs, and whatever of the main meals she could eat.

Hmm. In that case I guess it's meat plus any veg that he'll accept while the veggie has some protein (mushrooms, beans, cheese whatever) plus that veg plus more veg.
I'd suggest creating a kitchen wall calendar up to whatever point you think both will be able to cook their own meals, and crossing off the days.... 🙁

I’ve managed to become more accepting of the fussiness recently as it felt like a personal failing on my part. Hoping there will be light at the end of the tunnel eventually!

I do want to support the younger one’s choice to be veggie but at the moment it does feel a bit like another headache!

We have one (10 year old) vegetarian, and annoyingly I quite often turn to quorn for her meals, which I was adamant I wouldn't do, but time is not on our side most evenings. So if we were to do hunters chicken for example, she'd have a quorn fillet with the bbq sauce a veggie bacon type thing wrapped round, and cheese. With roast dinners she either has some slices of quorn, or an extra big portion of cauliflower cheese. I use the engevita b12 flakes in her sauces or sprinkled on to her food, as they are good for replacing some of the nutrients she misses out by not eating meat, and don't taste of much, just a slight savoury taste, so it doesn't impair the flavour. We will all eat veggie chilli and bolognese, shepherds pie, so those meals are easy as we all just have the veggie version. (vivera mince is the best we've found, quorn mince is gross) if I do a casserole or stew, we just do her a seperate portion with mushrooms or "quorn pieces" instead of meat. And I tend to do stuff with lentils and beans alot. She wasn't keen on lentils and trying different beans and pulses to begin with, so I had to keep reminding her, that if she wasn't willing to try it and make sure she was getting enough protein, she would have o switch back to meat, and this made her less fussy, as she hates the thought of eating meat. She knows the importance now of making sure she's getting a good balanced diet, and is really good at trying new foods and learning to like the veggie alternatives, as it's not as simple as just avoiding meat and not replacing that with something else. Simple things like snacks, she will have a hard boiled egg and some spinach leaves, or some nuts, before she has biscuits or fruit, as I worry about the level of protein and iron in her main meals sometimes, and this way I feel like if she's not had the most protein rich meals that day, I know she's had something elsewhere to bulk it out. She's been veggie since she turned 5, and tbh is probably the healthiest of all of us, because I am so conscious of making sure she gets enough protein, B vitamins etc. When we all came down with the flu, we were ill for a week, whereas she bounced back within 24 hours. I said it must be all the spinach and extra vitamins I put in her food!

Thin self? Sounds as if he’s not eating enough!

Air fryer with two drawers is a good option here. Cook a vegetable side dish (es) and then so a meat option in one drawer and a veggie option in the other.

I’m thinking some variation on this way of carving up the week will have to be how I think about it:

Maybe something like:

3 x simple meals both will eat (beans on toast, beige dinner, cheesy pasta etc) - we often end up with these kind of meals on weeknights that they have clubs etc as we need quick and easy, DH and I often eat a different meal later)

1 x family meat based meal with a veggie substitution for the meat (e.g tofu, bean burger)
1 x family meat based meal with a different veggie meal (e.g. batch cooked stew)

2 x family veggie meals (stew, curry etc) with a different meal for the fussy meat eater (which is similar to what happens currently anyway to accommodate the fussiness).

So looking at it like that the only extra work is a supply of single portion batch cooked meals in the freezer that I can warm up and one night a week having to cook a meat substitute alongside meat.