vegitarian or mainly vegetarain meal planning for the clueless

[hobnobsaremyfavourite]

I am pretty sussed with meal planning but am finding bar a few exceptions I am too dependent on meat based dishes. I want to meal plan in a way that is probably 50% vegetarian (other 50% made up of a mix of red meat/chicken and fish). Please can anyone give me some ideas for vegi meals that I can incorporate easily into my plan. DC's pretty good at eating most things and I am happy to try cooking new things.
TIA

I am currently working my way through the new Hugh Fearnley Whittingtonwhatsit book, Veg Every Day, which has some great non meat meals. Some of which even my children will eat.

I do a kind of stand by vege mince, which we have quite a lot, using tvp mince, which is cheap as chips (but make sure you get mince, not chunks)

I blitz carrot, celery, onions, mushroom, pepper, courgette etc in the magimix to about the same size as mince, then chuck in a pan with some oil and sweat for a bit. I use more oil than I would cooking meat as I think it adds a richness that's a bit lacking with tvp.

While that's doing, soak mince by pouring over some boiling water with some marmite or stock, tomato puree and other tasty things.

After a while (this is precision cooking mind) add to the pan of veg. Pour in a couple of cans of tomatoes and simmer for 10 min or so.

I freeze it plain in portions, then add pesto to make pasta sauce, a tin of baked beans for shepherds pie or kidney beans for chilli / burritos, which my children then pick out.

Now I'm used to this sort of mince, meat mince tastes so greasy and horrid.

Good luck!

Me and my dd are veggie, and I rarely use meat substitutes or cook the real stuff for dp! Common meals in our place include pasta with a homemade sauce using lots of veggies, frequently mushrooms, peas, peppers, onions, garlic etc with grated Parmesan and a side salad. Pasta bake, made by throwing a load of veg into aroasting tin e.g. Aubergines, courgettes etc, roasting them, then adding cooked pasta, mixing in some passage and herbs, topping with cheese and baking. Or stir fry, I buy a big family pack all ready chopped up, and often will use some quorn pieces or ready marinated tofu pieces, straight to wok noodles and either a sachet of stir fry sauce or supermarket own brand sweet and sour. Of course you can use veggies you have chopped yourself and just use garlic, soy, ginger etc for flavour, but stir fry is my quick standby that I am often lazy with! An spanish omelette/frittata type thing is great for using up odd veg and cooked potatoes etc. Just fry up some onions, add some potatoes to brown, add peas, anything else you fancy (e.g mushrooms, tomatoes etc.) add some seasoned beaten eggs, and top with cheese if you like, cook the bottom the put under grill to set top. Serve with salad and coleslaw.

Passage was meant to be passata! Darn phone!

And btw, tvp mince is great and really yummy and cheap, but beware its windy side effects! i tend not to use it now for precisely that reason!!!

OK so chickpea loaf in the oven , will be having that later with salad being as the sun as decided to show it's face . thanks for the ideas so far any more gratefully accepted.

we eat a mostly veggie diet although as i find it cheaper & healthier. heres a list of some of the meals i cook -
lentil curry
jacket pot with salad & various toppings
lentil bake
veggie burgers
bean chilli
bean enchilarders
soups
homemade pizza/calzone
i use a bit of quorn in my spag bol then add lentils & carrot, same with shepards pie too
veggie pie
roasted veg with pasta & goats cheese
roasted veg with cous cous
veg lasagna made with chunks of peppers, mushrooms, courgette, red onion, lentils, spinach
moroccan sweet pot, chickpea & courgette stew thing
erm can't think of any more at the minute

Watching this thread with intrest! Am veggie but tend to cook meat for dp then eat the same sides as him. As in usually loads of chips/rice/potatos! Now we have DS whos veggie (7months) ive had a real look at our diet so love all this inspiration!

Scabby that sounds great. Can I have your recipe for the morrocan sweetpot and bean enchiladas??
The chickpea loaf was yummy and the kids troughed it served in wraps with salad. So a positive start.

Hobnobs, could I have the recipe for the chickpea loaf please?
We eat vegetarian almost all the time and favourites include chickpea curry, vegetable korma, bean chilli, bean burgers, nut roast, lentil shepherds pie, frittatas, butterbean crumble, quiches, macaroni cheese, pasta bakes, jacket potatoes with various fillings and oven baked veg risotto.

It's from the Economy Gastronomy cookbook (am crap at links). It was a bit of a faff 1st time but have worked out I can cut corners in future. In the original it's a 2 step process and you have to roast your own peppers, in future I will buy the ready roasted peppers you can buy in a jar.

1st stage
Fry 5 finely chopped cloves of garlic gently, add 3(roasted) peppers chopped finely and 3 x 400g tins of chickpeas. Stir and warm gently. Put this mixture in a food processor and pulse until a coarse.

This is the base mix and can then be used for a number of recipes as suggested in the book. I actually made 2 loaves with it.
To make 1 loaf

Mix half of the base chickpea mix with 1 red chilli, finely chopped, about 20g of fresh, chopped coriander, 1/2 a teaspoon of ground coriander, 1 red onion finely chopped and 2 eggs (beaten).
Mix all the ingredients together and put in a loaf tin, bake at gas mark 3-4 for approx 35 - 45 minutes.
Leave to cool.

You then slice and fry the loaf until golden.
I served it with salad and wraps.
Kids troughed it, bit faffy but delicious.