Vegans and vegetarians

[sugarrosepetal]

This is probably the wrong place to post this but possibly the best place to get the most traffic.

Going off from another aibu post, would I be unreasonable to ask for vegan and vegetarian recipes for weeknight dinners and lunches?

I am an omnivore but the cost of meat is going up in price, plus I'd like to cut down on the amount of meat I eat. This is for a few reasons; dietary, ethics, carbon footprint, etc.

Please help me so I can bring my meat consumption down by at least half.

I'm a good cook but I'm not very inventive when it comes to meat and dairy free dishes.

Thanks.

I love Tesco plant chef range. They do some no-lamb mint koftas, served with rice and salad etc is yummy. Lentil Bolognese/ragu, very nice. Stirfry with loads of different veggies?

YABU to post this in AIBU.

Veggie lasagne is pretty easy to do. I'm vegan and either buy a vegan white sauce if I'm flush/lazy or make a roux with Vitalite and oat milk. Roast the vegetables first for extra flavour.

I always have hummus, beans, vegan coleslaw or vegan Philadelphia in - these can make toasties, sandwiches or jacket potato toppings.

BBC Good Food have 2 recipes that we eat a lot (1) black bean chilli and (2) slow cooker tomato sauce ie good with pasta

Lentil bolognese is tasty (I was sceptical, but pleasantly surprised)

And you can make moussaka with green beans instead of lamb mince

Shepherdess pie (again, lentils instead of meat)

Another approach is to cook as normal, but less meat / more veg eg smaller roast chicken but 4 veg instead of 2

Oh and veggie burgers in a sesame bun with vegan mayo and some oven chips is dead easy as well.

You might get better answers in the dedicated Food & Recipes section than AIBU…
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes

I’m a big Meera Sodha fan though, if you want meat free recipe writers.

Bean chilli served with homemade glucomole etc
Curries with paneer and pea, chickpea, roasted cauliflower etc
Dhal
Lentil and cheese wedge
Homemade pasta sauce with blended silken tofu
Pasta pesto with nuts, edamame, peas
Stir fry with broccoli and cashew
Twice baked jacket spuds
Roasted veg frittata

Pinterest has lots of recipes

There are some excellent vegetarian recipe books out there (and I say this as a confirmed meat eater).

Green lentils in moussaka, not beans

And bean burgers are v tasty. Or even a giant mushroom in a bap

Switch mince for chopped mushrooms +/- lentils in things like bolognaise and chilli. Get used to adapting your old favourites do you can learn to expand.
vegetable & bean/chickpea curry is great too.

I made mushroom and blackbean burgers which freeze well. Can have as burgers or broken up in wraps.

Baked aubergines with passata, black olives capers, parsley, basil, oregano and cheese.

Ramen made with miso with tofu, eggs edamame etc for protein.

lentil shepherds pie or spag bol and chick pea curries are big wins and super cheap!

I used to be vegan, Jamie Oliver’s versatile veggie chilli is delicious, as is his bun cha, look on minimalist baker as they have some great recipes, I love their mushroom steak https://minimalistbaker.com/portobello-steaks-avocado-chimichurri/ I would make it with vegan potato salad (same recipe as normal just using vegan mayonnaise).

Simple, relatively cheap summer pasta: fresh tomatoes (tinned if fresh tomatoes too dear), zucchini, garlic, black olives, frozen peas, borlotti beans (tinned, drained and rinsed).

Start a pot of salted water to boil for the pasta of your choice.

Gently fry a clove of chopped garlic in some olive oil. Add the tomatoes (roughly chopped) and the zucchini. Stir in the borlotti beans. Don't cook long - maybe 10 minutes, so the veggies still taste fresh. Add the olives, chopped, at the end and the frozen peas, so they have time to warm through but not overcook.

You can serve with fresh basil and parmesan, or even grated cheddar if you prefer and want to economise.

Drain the pasta and toss the sauce into it. It will be chunky rather than saucy.

I think of such dinners as starting from the protein and working around that

Egg based
Egg and chips and coleslaw
Quiche - jackets or veggies or salad
Eggs on a tomatoes sauce thing

Cheese based
Macarooi cheese / or replace some of the cheese and pasta with roasted butternut squash
Roaster veggies with feta
Halomi burgers
Spinach and walnut lasagne
Pasta and tomatoes sauce with goats cheese melted in

Mushroom based
Stuffed peppers
Pasties with spinach and tomatoes
Risotto
Soup
Stroganoff

Bean and lentil based
Curry
Chilli
Dahl
Bean burgers
Mexican beans
Lentil bolognaise or lasagne

Tofu based
Any kind of stir fry with whatever sauces you like - peanut , curry , sweet and sour ( with pineapple is lovely) , rice or noodles as you see fit

Often a teaspoon of marmite adds an extra bit of flavour , eg lentil bolognaise
May also have useful vitamins
Doesn't make things taste of marmite

I’m vegan, honestly I get a lot of inspiration from recipe videos on tiktok. A cheap meal would be a tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce (I get mine from Tesco) and add some veg of your choice - I use courgette, peppers, broccoli etc. Then have it with pasta or rice. Loads of meals can be substituted with a meat/dairy substitute. I made a spaghetti bolognaise recently, just used the ‘this isn’t mince’ and the dairy free cathedral city cheese on top but everything else stayed the same. A tip, to get a cheesy flavour use nutritional yeast within whatever you’re making, the wicked brand from tesco have a good garlic flavour one. This is also good on scrambled tofu.

I would start by making swaps to stuff you already make.

Swap beef for tofu in stirfrys, lentils/vegan mince instead of meat mince in chillies and spaghetti, that sort of thing.

My top tip is to freeze all your veg scraps and when you have enough, use to make a batch of lovely stock.
Use this to rehydrate the old school dried soya protein mince/chunks you get in the likes of Holland and Barratt.
Cheaper, tastier and healthier than the new style veggie mince/meats (which someone is going to come along and bash as UPF any second).

Do you feel clever 🙄

Lovely post OP! I’m vegan and do a lot of homemade soups, I’m a big fan of broth but that’s probs a bit weird of me 😂 I love stir frys, it’s only me in my house so I get the aldi stir fry veg mixes, lentil curries and lentil Shepard’s pie, spag bol with vegan mince, vegetable lasagnas… if I’m lazy chips snd gravy or curry sauce or with a fake meat although I try to limit how much “fake meat” I eat.

My lunches are mainly a mixture of salads, I try to make them creative. I have a smoothie or smoothie bowl for breakfast most mornings.

Agree with tiktok being a good source, so is Instagram and there’s loads of Facebook groups for cheap vegan recipes!

I'm vegan as is my partner and we used to do a lot of cooking and homemade lunches, but due to life getting busier we've now started using Green Chef, which is like Hello Fresh but offers more vegan options. I highly recommend meal prep boxes. I believe Gousto is the cheapest (found that out after I'd started with Green Chef, otherwise I'd have tried Gousto first!). I was skeptical about how useful/value for money they really were before trying them, but they've really made it so much easier for me to meet my goals of more fresh veg every day, less takeaways/lunches out and cooking more. I take a portion of whatever we made the night before for lunch the next day, when I can.

My advice would be to firstly accept you're going to be eating entirely different things.
Just my opinion, but if you go into it with the idea of replicating your meat based meals with vegan/veggie alternatives, there's a risk you'll decide it's not for you.
I don't care what anyone's says, fake meat is nothing like real meat (possible exception being beyond burgers if trussied up with enough relish) and fake bacon? I don't think so! Plus theyre not cheap, healthy or good for the environment if any of that is a consideration for you.
So for me the trick was to buy veg, fresh, frozen tinned, pulses, nuts, beans, rice, pasta and bread, then make sure I'd got a good stock of herbs and spices. After that it's relatively easy to stick the ingredients you have available into Google 'vegan recipes with aubergine and chickpea' for example, and off you go.
They're often super quick compared with waiting for meat to cook too.

Do you feel clever 🙄

@PuddlesPityParty OP deliberately posted on the wrong board to get 'traffic'. Its not an AIBU question, they're just asking for recipes. There is a whole board for food and recipes.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes

This is interesting! I’ve always fancied doing one of the boxes to be a bit more creative with cooking but I wasn’t sure if it was worth it