Since I had several comments regarding the difficulty in getting the men-folk in our lives to go meatless for even just a couple of meals a week, I thought I'd relate again how I did it.
First of all, it's kind of like quitting smoking. If you try to make them go cold turkey, you get a back-lash.
Instead, I recommend a slow and steady stealth approach. The first step is to just reduce the amount of meat in a meal and up the vegetables and other ingredients.
A typical family dinner in my house used to consist of pasta with 1 pound of sausage in it. First I reduced the sausage to 3/4 of a pound, adding more pasta and veggies, then 1/2 pound and now I often make it with 1/4 pound or no sausage at all.
If you're making a roast, meat-loaf, burgers, chili etc. do the same thing. If you originally started with 2 pounds of ground meat for the family burger night, reduce to 1 3/4 pounds and add more veggies, etc., then 1 1/2 pounds etc.
You can easily substitute more beans for meat in chili. Meat-loaf is great because you can hide a lot of veggies in it (great if you have difficult kids). I saute up a bunch of carrots, celery and onions, puree it well (if my daughter even suspects that a vegetable is present she won't eat it), then add it to the meat along with whole-wheat bread-crumbs.
Another trick is to add substances with "meat-like" textures. Filling up the void left by the meat with Portabello mushrooms in a pasta dish gives them the feel of meat without the negative health consequences. Same thing with beans. Tofu is also a good substitute, although I must admit that I'm not much of a tofu fan and don't cook with it myself.
I also like to make my "almost meat-less meals." These meals have meat but just a touch of it. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, bacon or pancetta is great for this. Saute just a wee bit of bacon in a pan, add some steamed green beans or asparagus and pasta, and the whole dish has a bacon flavor.
That's not to say that I didn't have difficulties, and some pretty big battles. I can't tell you some of the knock down, drag out fights I had over my husband over eating fish (which he doesn't regard as "meat.") But, by standing my ground in getting the whole family to eat better, I eventually won the war.
My husband last night ate a meal of Cod, with zucchini, tomatoes, red onions and brown rice with no complaints.
My oldest son was the first one to go vegetarian in my family. That made it a bit easier to shift our meal emphasis to vegetables and salad instead of meat. Congratulations on getting your family meals moving in the right direction.
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