Friday, December 4, 2009

Going veggie

I’ve wanted to eat more vegetarian meals and have tried to cook vegetarian, but my efforts have been half-hearted. Then a couple months ago Clara announced that she wanted to go vegetarian (except chicken – she wasn’t ready to give that up yet). This was good incentive to really make an effort and I’ve been working quite hard to make meals vegetarian as often as possible and trying to learn new ways to cook.

But Richard and Iris are resisting, and tonight there was a major meltdown. I made spaghetti with meat sauce but used white beans instead of hamburger. It was actually pretty good, but a little bland. (Much of my veggie cooking is bland when I substitute something else for the meat. I have to work on this and get new ideas for seasonings.) But Iris was SOOOOOO disappointed! She screamed and hollered that spaghetti with meat sauce was one of her favorite meals and that I “ruined everything!” She had so been looking forward to her favorite meal! I could make two versions of the sauce – one with meat and one without, but it’s a lot of work to make two versions of everything. This is not a restaurant!

My niece recommended a book to me: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. I have some other veggie cookbooks but I haven’t used them much yet.

When Richard cooks, he always uses meat or fish!