Our Week Without Meat

Our 12 year old daughter Erin has been thinking about being a vegetarian for a while so to support her exploration of that we all decided to try a week without eating meat to see what it was like. It was hard to settle on a menu as most of what Erin likes is meat. Sausages, chicken, pepperoni pizza etc. She's not really a fan of vegetables either. After talking to her about it she decided she wanted to try some new foods along with eating no meat.

The first day started well, we made one of our favourite meals Taco Salad but instead of regular mince we tried Quorn mince. Leigh said it was no different and enjoyed it but Erin wasn't so keen although she ate it anyway. JD and I also liked the Quorn mince.

Another day we made these black bean burgers. They're really good as a meat burger substitute, filling and of a similar texture to a burger. Again we all enjoyed them except Erin who didn't want to try them.

We had some meat-free sausages that we all liked. We'll probably have them again in fact. We had carrot soup with garlic parathas that were delicious, Erin enjoyed those too. We had corn on the cob that Erin likes now and chip butties another day. We had one of my favourites, macaroni cheese, which both the kids have yet to warm to.

For JD and I the vegetarian week was easy, we already like plenty of meat-free meals anyway and it wasn't much effort to change the menu to foods without meat that we'd enjoy. Leigh also found it somewhat easy, over the last few years she's started eating a wider range of foods. She likes stews, soups etc whereas Erin does not as yet. Erin doesn't like the idea of eating meat but struggles to enjoy enough other foods to make being a vegetarian doable yet.

It was nice to have a week with no meat, it made us eat some different foods we wouldn't normally have (like the black bean burgers) and it saved us money on our shopping bill. We might continue with a Meat-Free Monday and experiment with some different veggie recipes.