Tips for Adding Vegetarianism into your Diet

I have been a vegetarian my entire adult life. People often ask me how I stick to it, and why I do it in the first place. Here are some helpful hints and tricks I have discovered over the years.

A few words on plant-based/vegetarian/vegan diets

This post is intended to offer some (hopefully) easy tips for people who are already interested in incorporating more veg meals into their diet, it is not meant to evangelize. I don't think a vegetarian/plant-based diet makes one healthier or morally superior by default by any means. Food and eating is deeply personal and cultural; what you eat is your business. I don't deny for a moment that the majority of influencers and bloggers touting a veg diet tend to be super privileged in one way or another. I myself have a lot of thin and class privilege which has no doubt made my own commitment to vegetarianism more accessible and sustainable all these years.

My own reasons for a vegetarian diet have changed a lot over the years. I started as a teen growing up in a rural-ish community in BC; I joke that I adopted a vegetarian diet mostly out of boredom. In university I want through a Buddhist phase, so you know, it became a spiritual thing.

Nowadays? It's a mix of a few things. The environmental aspect appeals to me greatly, and it still feels right for me spiritually. I also think it's a lot of habit--if I were to go back to eating meat, I would have to train my body to eat meat again. Lastly, I love animals- cows and pigs are pretty cute and I don't personally care to eat them.

Adapt, don't Overhaul your way to Eating Vegetarian

Honestly, the vast majority of recipes I make for regular meals are originally meat recipes...the cauliflower broccoli chicken casserole you all probably had growing up? We just use extra broccoli and no chicken. Chicken pot pie? Just don't use chicken and add extra veggies! If a recipe calls for beef or chicken broth, just use veggie.

A lot of the blogs I follow and all the cookbooks I have are not exclusively veg, but I still check all recipes cuz more often than not you can take out the meat or sub something else in no problem.

Misc. Tips and Observations

Figure out a couple quick, easy, tasty vegetarian meals (lots of solid recipe sources below) that you can add to your cooking repertoire, before you know it you are doing one vegetarian meal a week and not even thinking about it
I would recommend making straight vegetarian meals--don't try all the beyond meat stuff and plant-based proteins as a straight swap. Such plant-based proteins are generally expensive, and even though its gotten a lot better in the last couple years especially, its still hit and miss for folks used to having meat in their diet and you don't want to waste $ on something you might dislike
Also, I'm not convinced the fake meats are any healthier -- filling sure, but not much nutritional value
If you need something to bulk things up, I generally find that cauliflower can sub in for chicken, mushrooms for red meat, and lentils for ground beef are pretty quick sub-ins. Olives are divisive, but they do have that nice meaty texture. Adding beans (white beans are so bland but go with lots of stuff and take on flavour well) also bulk things up and are of course healthy
Things that go a long way to make things tastier include roasting the nuts or beans (especially chickpeas, we hate raw chickpeas for the most part, much nicer on a salad after you roast them), fresh lemon or lime juice where its called for, using fresh herbs and using the full amount of spices they recommend in whatever recipe you follow
If you are dining out and the restaurant is not exclusively vegetarian, ALWAYS ask if something is vegetarian if it is not explicitly stated on the menu as a vegetarian item. For example, lots of Vietnamese restaurants have Veggie Pho, but they often still use chicken or beef broth. Similarly, western restaurants will have like, tomato soup but use a chicken broth base
A lot of vegetarian cookbooks overcomplicate things...you end up in an endless cycle of soaking cashews or looking for obscure ingredients (kelp powder, anyone?) or spending 48 hours making some intricate veggie broth that you really don't need...would def recommend starting with blogs or renting cookbooks from libraries before committing to buying a cookbook

RECIPES

Blogs

Cookbooks

I love Julie van Rosendaal's cookbooks! She's Canadian based in Calgary, her stuff is good and easy.
Here is her blog
Spilling the Beans is one we use a lot by Julie van Rosendaal
The Smitten Kitchen cookbooks are also good

Other Recipe Sources

Canadian Living often features quick, accessible, on-trend vegetarian meals in their issues every month--they never let me down!
I save recipes I spot online on my Evernote, though you could easily start your own personal digital cookbook via google docs or Pinterest. Recipes that I go back to frequently I straight-up print out and save in a binder

Recipes I use regularly
Here are the 'autopilot' recipes in our household when we can't be bothered to really think about cooking.

"My favourite vegan wrap" with spiced roasted potatoes
"Chicken meatballs with peppers and creamy orzo" (this is one of the rare instances where we use veggie balls OR vegetarian meatballs
Quick and Easy Black Beans and Rice (admittedly, we really like beans so this might not be as appealing for new vegetarians? We usually chop up some tomatoes for the side and my spouse will add a scoop of guacamole to be a side to this dish as well! OR we sometimes just mix baby kale with lime juice and a little olive oil and serve this 'salad' with this and call it done)
We also make ourselves a lot of vegetarian pizza! easy to do, can change up sauce and toppings easily, pretty quick to do!
We often make a meal of veggie spanakopitas from frozen appetizer section, then we make the lemon roasted potatoes and greek salad as a side. More often than not we also buy the tzatziki out of laziness but its pretty easy to make