Please help me with my vegetarian meal plan

[muminthecity]

I decided to become a vegetarian about a month ago, and its great. I don't miss meat at all, I love all vegetables and have had fun experimenting with different recipes. However, DD is not a vegetarian and is somewhat fussier than me. She will eat most vegetables and carbs (except couscous,) and quite likes quorn mince in a bolognese but dislikes all other quorn products. She eats plenty of meat at school, at my parents house and at friends' houses so I don't think I need to buy or cook meat at home, and I don't want to!

So I need ideas for meals that will please us both and are nutritious and filling. Most evenings we get home late so I need meals that can either be prepared and cooked quickly or ones which can be cooked at the weekend and frozen then reheated. So far I have the following:

Jacket potatoes with beans and cheese
Quorn Bolognese
Pasta with pesto, broccoli and salad
Vegetable pasta bake

All looks a bit boring to me! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Macaroni cheese. Cauliflower cheese. Lots of different soups, butternut squash soup and Jerusalem artichoke soup very seasonal atm. Vegetable or chick pea curry. Vegetable lasagne or quorn mince lasagne. Bean enchiladas, Omlette, chips and beans, Quiche, new pots and salad.

Chilli made with quorn mince, or tins of beans and lots of vegetables. Have you tried tofu? It can be nice in a sweet an sour sauce with lots of veg and served with rice. Hope all this helps!

Pizza is quick.

Thank you, these are all great suggestions, don't know why I didn't think of pizza and cauliflower cheese, those are two of DD's favourites!

Fevertree - I've never tried tofu but I'll give it a try!

how about a risotto? mushroom or pea/feta?

We tend to eat a lot of curries - pea and paneer, chickpea and spinach, or this
Cauliflower and lentil curry

None of them take a long time to cook from scratch but they all also freeze really well, so when I make them I do a big batch and freeze in portions.

DS (6) really loves this spinach pasta which is really quick to make, and very tasty.

It's worth making up big batches of cheese sauce for the freezer. Then you can make a macaroni/cauli cheese very quickly. DS really likes lots of "freezer veg" (peas, sweetcorn, broad beans...whatever!) cooked up and mixed with cheese sauce and used as a baked potato topping.

Have a look around on the Good Food website, there are loads of really good recipes on there, many that are very quick to prepare.

We are not vegetarian but do try to have at least one or two meat-free evening meals a week.

Especially heading into winter, soups (with crusty bread) are probably quite a good option - either quick to make or make in advance and reheat

A few of my favourites are

tyne-teas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/mushroom-soup.html

tyne-teas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/curried-parsnip-soup.html

tyne-teas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/tomato-soup.html

And we like this mozzarella and/or feta salad wth boiled potatoes all year round

tyne-teas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/feta-mozzarella-basil-and-tomato-salad.html

This is ours for this week:

Today - dhal, rice, salad
Tomorrow - tofu and noodles in Thai curry sauce, with sugar snaps and baby corn
Weds - veggie risotto
Thurs - veggie chilli
Fri - veggie bolognaise
Saturday - out
Sunday - veggie roast dinner

These are all great, thank you so much.
Remus - your meal plan looks lovely, can I ask what your veggie roast dinner consists of? Do you just have the potatoes and vegetables with gravy or do you have something to replace the meat part?

It depends tbh. Goodlife nut cutlets (frozen aisle in Waitrose) are lovely. Sainsbo's do an own brand version too, which are okay but not as nice as the Goodlife ones. Other times it might be stuffed butternut squash, or maybe stuffing mixed with sauteed vege, chestnuts and cheese and baked like a kind of loaf thing, or veggie sausages. But tbh just all of the trimmings without a meat replacement is pretty good too. :)

We aren't veggie but have one veggie week in four ( plus three veg days a week) to reduce our meat consumption ( and up the veg)

A typical veggie week for us would be

Monday- chickpea and butternut squash tagine with flatbreads ( tagine can and should be done in advance- it's better the day after)

Tuesday- cherry tomato, goats cheese, spinach and basil on puff pastry sheet and baked. Not gourmet but delicious.

Wednesday- minestrone

Thursday - noodle and veg stir fry

Friday- egg, chips and peas

Saturday-spinach and red lentil dhal and rice/ flatbreads

Sunday - Sunday roast - I do a chickpea loaf ( usually with some of yesterday's dhal mixed in- you can slice and freeze too - it's nicer in fact to slice and freeze as when you fry the slices up they get a crispy coating and a little black around the edges) and roast lots of veg - carrots, potatoes, parsnips, with buttery swede mash, and some steamed and peppered green beans, topped with vegetarian gravy ( from a packet I'm afraid to say)

Lots of other favourite veg options-

Soups- leek and potato, broccoli and Stilton, tomato, carrot and coriander, winter veg, Thai squash soup, asparagus, courgette, lentil, mushroom, - leading into more stew based soups- barley and winter veg, laksa, ribollata, ramen, Mexican bean, ottolenghi chickpea tomato and bread soup- there's just loads of options.

Speaking if ottolenghi- his medjera is beautiful cheap veggie cuisine, as are many of his recipes.

Vegetarian lasagnes are quite varied too- squash and roasted red pepper , kale and mushroom, quorn, roasted veg, aubergines lasagna( Jamie Oliver does a nice aubergine lasagna)

Veggie family here. This week's meals :

• orange soup (carrot lentil and sweet potato - spicy with coriander and flat bread to serve.
• green flan (leafy green veg, onion, cumin, feta, 1-2 eggs all cooked together and bunged in flan dish.... Jus roll if I cba to do shortcrust myself)
• pressure cooker lentil 'bolognese' sauce for pasta
• chickpea/pepper/sweet potato/tomato stew served in wraps hot, baked with cheese on top
• ratatouille
• corguette and pesto risotto
• leftover tomato based stuff (the ratatouille, the bolognese) revamped into either a curry or chilli depending what else I have in.

Will also do a batch of chickpeas in the pressure cooker so have some home made hummus for snacks/lunches and make up a batch of chickpea/bean 'burgers' to freeze for post football lunch on sat.

We're a veggie family too. This week we've had/having a Quorn sausage and chickpea stew, lentil spag bol, vegetable and paneer curry, jacket potatoes with cheese and beans, veggie pizza and salad.

I've got various vegetarian meal plans on my blog if you want to take a look.

We're a veggie family but with fairly fussy kids, one of whom doesn't like Quorn. This week we've had:

Mon: green pasta bake (cooked pasta, pesto, peas, cabbage/cooked spinach/broccoli, sunflower seeds, all mixed, with cheese melted on top)
Tues: economy mini pizzas for kids and visiting friend, corn tortillas with a tin of Heinz fajita beans + cheese and yoghurt for adults
Weds: Baked beans and scrambled egg on toast
Thurs: Macaroni cheese
Fri: dunno - not my responsibility to cook tonight!

We eat too much cheese because the kids aren't keen on beans/lentils or eggs in any form except scrambled. I'm making some progress with sunflower seeds and some nuts, and they have progressed to eating small quantities of lentils if well smothered in pesto, but I think too much cheese is a real problem in fussy kids veggie diets (not saying your DD is fussy but I think my kids are a bit).

Good luck!

soups
curries
stews
veggie moussaka
stir fry
pasta
risotto
salads
homemade veggie burgers (lentil, beans, nuts, tofu...) + homemade potato wedges
pitta pizzas