Considering vegetarianism - hints, tips and thoughts?

The single best cookbook I own is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764524836/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/. This is true even though my cooking and eating styles have changed repeatedly during the time that I've owned it. I'm not a vegetarian, but I used to eat like one, and even though I don't any more, if I had to get rid of every cookbook I own except one, I would choose this one. I'm not a fan of meat substitutes. As far as I'm concerned, when keeping vegetarian or vegan, the best method is to re-think the plate. Instead of thinking of it as needing a meatlike entree as the centerpiece, read through some great cookbooks and find other centerpieces. Ultimately you'll very likely revise your thinking altogether. Also: What you miss when you miss red meat is umami. Use red wine, soy sauce, aged cheese, mushrooms, and you'll get that umami goodness. Also: portobello mushrooms are just like big ole steaks LOL

My mom's been a vegetarian for 15 or so years, but recently started eating fish for health reasons. She had felt a lot of anxiety about adding back in fish. I told her "look, there are no vegetarian police, just eat what you want!" So seriously, do what you want. If you want to eat veg at home but allow yourself meat or fish outside the home when it's inconvenient to be totally veg, cool. Eat fish but not red meat? Good for you. You don't need to box yourself into a definition of "vegetarian."

A lot of people are down on fake meat and that's fine. But I really like a lot of it. It continues to improve in quality - when I was a 12 year old vegetarian over 25 years ago, the only option was Tofu Pups, but now there are tons of different sausages, burgers, grounds, strips, etc and I enjoy them in their own right. My partner who eats meat, and many former vegeterians or semi-vegetarians I know enjoy a variety of fake meat products. They're nice when you're in a hurry. They're not meat, but you may enjoy them on their own. Just something to explore.

But if I just cut meat out of my current diet, I'd be left with a few staple dishes - veg pasta and veg curry are nice, but more variety would be needed. Oddly, when I follow a vegetarian diet there seems to be more variety because vegetables become the main event. Soups, wonderful bean salads, hummus (I make mine with cucumber).... Global dishes can give inspiration: I am going to attempt a vegan pad thai this weekend, which I have never tried but the recipe reviews are solid, and I am going for ethiopian next week. Good luck!

I've been vegetarian for a long, long time, and don't miss meat in my diet. At all. Some tips: Go to whole foods or a health food shop and buy dried beans in bulk. They are cheap and make up the bulk of my diet. Cook up a big pot on the weekend, then freeze them in bags. I always have chickpeas, kidney beans or black beans and a white bean (soya or haricot) in the freezer ready to throw into whatever I'm cooking. The Indian section of the supermarket will have them pretty cheap in big bags too, but buying them from the bulk bins is cheapest. They last forever. Throw white beans into pasta, use kidney or black beans for Mexican and chickpeas for curries (Moroccan or Indian). Falafel salad is another favourite - buy the bag of falafel mix from the Jewish food section and they take 20 minutes to make, have with salad and olives and new potatoes and hummous. The tofu available in the supermarkets in the UK is soft tofu. It needs pressing to extract some of the water to make it good. Put it in a sieve with a weight on the block for at least half an hour, then you can slice it or cube it and fry it up for stir fries or as tofu chips. I'm not a huge fan of quorn, it is very fart-inducing. Soya mince, chicken bits etc are better. Sainsbury's and Asda have the best variety, but Tesco is OK too. Linda McCartney sausages are the best of the veg sausages, and are often 3 for 2. I prefer not to eat fake meat 'shit in a box' but I have a preschooler and a busy job so we have it a couple of times a week because it's easy. Lentils are good too, keep a bag of red lentils for dhal or soup and green lentils to cook with vegetables. Build up your herbs and spices. These are essential for good vege cooking. Buy the bags from the Indian section and they are much cheaper than the bottles. If you have room, small pots of fresh basil, thyme, coriander and parsley are easy to keep in the kitchen and like £2 from the supermarket. We get a veg box each week from Abel and Cole. I started getting this many years ago because I was sick of buying the same veges, and making the same meals, all the time. The veg box gives you seasonal variety, usually English, and it's cheaper than buying the same amount of organic veg from the supermarket. This ensures variety for us, as I rarely buy veg in addition to what's in the box. Their eggs are also amazing, although not cheap, as is the yoghurt. Learn to make a couple of signature dishes. I have a sundried tomato pesto and cream pasta sauce that is the bomb, with veges and tagliatelle or fettuccine, and it takes about 20 minutes. Good lasagne is another showstopper, but not quick. Choose something you really like and perfect it so you can pull it out whenever necessary without having to think too hard about it. Mushrooms are amazing. I love mushrooms. Cheese is also your friend - fried haloumi with salad and olives and new potatoes, or mozzarella baked with vege meatballs and tomato/ vege sauce. Always have cheddar and parmesan on hand. Tortilla with potatoes, eggs, herbs and grated veges, topped with cheese and stuck under the grill for 10 minutes is another quick and easy favourite. If ever i'm stuck for what to eat, I google what I have in the fridge and cupboard and see what comes up. You get some interesting ideas that way. Good luck! Try it for a while and see how you go, and most importantly don't beat yourself up if you want some meat one day. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

And if I do go through with it, what alternatives to meat do I have, bearing in mind I'm in a fairly traditional part of England and have access to just normal shops, not specialist ones locally. Is tofu, for instance, a good alternative to chicken (and where do you get it, because I've never seen it for sale!)? For tofu, ask at Tesco, etc. The Tesco where my grandad lives (which is a similar kind of place) thought they stocked it when I asked, only to figure out they'd stopped carrying it at some point. I think tempeh is probably too much to hope for. Your supermarket almost certainly stocks Quorn, which vaguely approximates chicken if you need transitional food. My cooking has slowly migrated towards the South Asian over the years, mostly out of personal preference, though you should have all requisite ingredients fairly readily available. If you're worried about access to ingredients, there's a Delia Smith vegetarian cookbook which doesn't require anything remotely exotic (my copy is old enough that calling falafel 'falafel' was too exotic--they're 'chickpea cakes' or something). Vegetarianism is pretty well-entrenched in Britain at this point--you're right that you're probably working with a somewhat restricted array of ingredients/products compared to many places (London, the US), but things like the BBC Food website keep vegetarians in mind and in Britain I never really worry about finding something to eat, since, if all else fails, there's probably a cheese and tomato sandwich somewhere in the vicinity. I was raised in the US by an English mother, which means a lot of American meat dishes just don't have, I don't know, cultural resonance for me. I stopped eating meat 12 years ago and really haven't been tempted. Unless you put me in the vicinity of sausage wrapped in pastry, so sometimes I find myself comically tempted in Britain or Canada. (Also, somewhat unrelated to your incipient vegetarianism, there's one place here in Minneapolis that has vegetarian shepherd's pie on the menu. It's like a siren calling to me and I have to repeatedly remind myself that I hated shepherd's pie as a child.)

I am a confirmed meat eater who lives with a confirmed vegetarian. That makes me a vegetarian roughly 98% of the time. This is a situation that's been going on for more than 20 years. I eat meat when I go out (though not always, as vegetarianism becomes a hard habit to break with time) or when a friend serves it in her home (as I am reluctant to cause offense by not being grateful for what someone else puts in front of me). You too can have a rule like that! Say: When I am in control of my own situation, I will eat as a vegan/vegetarian. When I am with others, I will gratefully accept what is offered to me. That said, I love lots of fake meat products. We still eat chili dogs in our home, too, only using soy hot dogs and chili beans and cheese. We still eat sausage (and I cannot tell the difference between Morningstar Farms and non-vegetarian sausage, except in terms of greasiness and saltiness, which is a welcome change actually). We eat chorizo (Soyrizo is awesome!) and make tacos and adovada with Quorn. And who can tell the difference between a Quorn nugget and a regular chicken nugget? Anyway, you might give the meat subs a try as a transitional thing, or you might wait until you're craving meat and then try them. But again, there are no rules except for those you impose on yourself.

I have been a vegetarian for thirteen years, and I eased into it. I gave up red meat first, because I'd never liked it much so it was easy to give up. The last things I gave up were corned beef hash and chicken tacos (about a year after I started this process) and tuna fish (more than five years later). It's now been six years or so since I had any meat, and I don't miss it. Easing into it might make it easier for you. I became a vegetarian for basically the same reasons as you: I am uncomfortable with being a participant in unnecessary violence. It is sort of persnickety and I have felt that really hard when traveling, especially to developing countries. I feel like a picky spoiled brat sometimes. But I keep reminding myself: I am lucky enough to have choices, and it's okay to make this choice, even if it isn't available to everyone. Reminding myself about the environmental impacts of meat helps a lot with the "spoiled brat" thing, too.

You could also take a minute before eating a meaty meal to have a mental moment of acknowledgement and thanks to the animal. This reminded me of something, namely that not everyone will get it if you say you're vegetarian. I've got "vegetable" soup in a restaurant that had chicken in it, a margherita pizza that the chef put chicken on "as a free extra", and there was the time I was staying at a friend's and her mother was cooking. She said "I believe you're vegetarian?" I said yes but honestly don't go to any trouble. She said no its fine, went and made dinner, and then when she called us all in she said "Ok, billiebee, for you I have chicken." (Which was what everyone else was getting, so to this day I can't really get her thought process there.) My friend was mortified but I thought "the chicken is already dead, and this person has kindly made me a meal, so her feelings are more important." I decided that to throw it out would be more disrespectful to the animal than to eat it with gratitude. So be prepared to compromise sometimes. It's all helping.