Anyone given up on being veggie? I'm finding it increasingly hard to cook for the family when I'm the only veggie...

[OmniDroid]

I'm cooking so many different meals each week it's exhausting me, and I think I need a simpler life.

At the moment it's my meals that 'give' and I end up with veggie burgers/fish fingers/pasta and pesto/baked potato/cheese on toast.

I have a DH and 2 DCs, all meat eaters.

DC's both at nursery, and no meals provided.

So I'm preparing 2 meals a day, 3 days a week, for each child. Neither will eat sandwiches, so that's 12 hot meals a week: 6 for a baby (10 months) who hates purees, and 6 for a 3.10 year old, who is in the no sloppy food phase. So my standbys of frozen portions of casseroles/fish pies are all rejected.

Then I have to cook an evening meal for me and DH every day.

I'm at my wits end.

I think my separate veggie menu has to go.

I'm OK(ish) with the idea of free-range meat, and just wondered who had given up on veggie hood, and how the people around them reacted...

Just cook one main meal for all of you at night, this can be three veggie meals, two fish meals and two meat meals a week.

Yo shouldn't have to make lots of differnet meals, and if you want to make casserole, then that is what your boys should eat, regardless of whether they like it or not.

I was a veggie for a very short period of time, no one reACTED WHEN i STOPPED BEING ONE, APART FROM SOME PEOPLE BEING OBVIOUSLY RELIEVED![GRIN]

sorry about the caps lock key

no i couldnt stop being a veggie as i am in the meat is murder camp (in my very own personal opinion)the rest of the family eat a lot of the meals i like as well as me cooking them dishes with meat etc dh does a lot of the cooking here anyway which helps a lot as i cant cook anything with animal blood seeping out etc

Thanks all!

I was never a 'meat is murder' veggie, more a global impact / worries about farming practices type, which does help a bit as I have never had a problem with free range meat, or with cooking it. I'm veggie because it seemed - still seems - the natural reaction to those concerns.

I do agree btw that everyone should just jolly well eat what I cook, regardless - I'm having a wobble because DD (10 months) is a terrible eater, and I will fuss a lot to get her to eat, and thus sleep, better...

I just worry about all the difficulty everyone has gone to for me over the years (especially the inlaws who are real meat and two veg types) - I feel like such a hypocrite.

i would:

make loads of veggie bits and freeze them (eg burgers, cheese patties, pastries, etc)
then just reheat them when you make the rest of the dinner.

whenever i cook for a meat eater, i will always make something that is veggie, then make the meat part separately.

I am an ex-veggie
I was never a meat is murder veggie (good phrase) but more of an enviro/sustaino/ethico veggie (not good phrase).

I have found it difficult to do a varied menu of family meals, and so we now have free-range organic meat a 2-3 nights weekly. I know there will be loads of veggies who feed their families brilliantly without even glancing at the butcher's counter, but I was not one of them.

I am a veggie of your persuasion and I think I would stick at it. We are a one meal a night household and I don't cook meat (kids are free to eat it when out if they want it). It is hard when the kids are your age but they do get used to it if there are no alternatives, my kids are 5,6, and 8 now and it is much easier, there is little they won't eat. In your position I think I would worry that there is really no going back if you cave now it would be hard to change your mind later. If you want a veggie / fish based diet and you are the cook then that's the way it should be. If your DH wants to eat meat maybe he cooks a couple of nights a week and they are 'meat' nights for those who want it. i think I am lucky though as DH doesn't eat meat either (gives him migraines) so there is less demand for seperate meals.

I am a veggie and dp is not. The children are. DP and I cook veggie food for ourselves and the children. We all eat the same food unless dp wants to cook something separate which happens sometimes. Even then we usually eat the same sort of food e.g. the children and I have a veggie burger where he has a beef burger or he makes 2 lasagnes - 1 meat and 1 veggie etc. It is very, very rare that I cook something different for the children and that would usually be where dp and I are eating a curry or something special on a Friday night when the kids are in bed. If dp wants meat he has to cook it. If the children decide to be meat eaters when they're older (showing no signs yet and have been veggie from birth) then they also will have to cook it for themselves or buy it while they're out. I personally believe it's really important that children do not treat their mothers as chefs and their houses as a hotel and that they learn to eat a wide range of foods. But also that parents should model healthy eating for their children and eating should be a shared, sociable experience which is all very difficult if you're all eating separate things.