Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone – Part 1

Vegetarian cooking is for everyone in the family, from baby to the elder, and is not as difficult as you might imagine. Everyone in the family can benefit from a diet high in vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds with little to no animal protein and fats.

Some people chose a vegetarian lifestyle because of political reasons, others because of religious reasons and still others are animal activists. Social, economic and health reasons round out the motivations that are common for choosing a vegetarian lifestyle.

Most vegetarians eat no animal flesh at all; no red meat, no fish, no fowl and no game. Some vegetarians will eat eggs and dairy products while others will eat neither. How you make your meals will depend upon a variety of vegetables that range in color and texture. You want to include high quality oils, sea salts and organic foods.

When you are cooking do not substitute textured vegetable protein, such as tofu or tempeh, for meat in your meals. There are recipes that use those proteins in the meal and the meal is designed for them.

Cooking is chemistry in the kitchen. In other words, mixing foods together is really the same as mixing chemicals in the lab together – there is a specific mixture that will produce excellent results. Using high quality contents makes for delicious meals. Substituting textured vegetable proteins for meat in recipes that require meat only leads to poor tasting meals using a high cost product.