Vegetables

June 5, 2008 7:03 PM

I want to become a vegetarian, but my husband will still be eating meat. Any practical tips on how to make this work?

I'm looking for any advice or tips, especially from people who are part of a couple where one person is a vegetarian and the other eats meat. How did you make it work? Is it practical to sometimes make two versions of the same meal, one with meat and one without?

posted by All.star to food & drink (25 comments total)

Re: two versions of the same meal: definitely practical if you make something that can easily have meat added to it, like pastas or salads or chili. Having meals work double duty is a good idea.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 7:16 PM on June 5, 2008

I'm an omnivore, and my partner is a vegetarian (well, she eats fish, so she's a pescatarian). What works for us is that most of the time, when we eat at home, we eat vegetarian. We both cook. If I'm having a serious meat craving, I'll cook that myself, but I don't do that often when she's home.

We've never found the make-two-versions of something very practical, and mostly, we don't. I suppose it would be easy enough to add a meat to the otherwise veggie meal - last night, for instance, we had sauteed greens and qinuoa, and if I'd wanted to, I guess I could have added a pork chop or something. But really, it's not that hard for us, or for me - but then, I don't feel like I need to eat meat in order for the meal to "count." Lots of people do it different ways, though; this is just what works for us.

Does your husband like to cook? I think that would make things easier.

On preview, what Solon and Thanks said, too.
posted by rtha at 7:20 PM on June 5, 2008

My partner and I have never done what you suggest (cooking two versions of the same meal). The consequences of our diets are that I end up eating more vegetarian meals than ever before (which is seriously not bad), and sometimes I'll cook meat alongside. If your husband cooks solely with lard or whatever, you may find his preparation of meaty meals inconsiderate. At that point, just tell him he can't have any of your delicious non-bloody food.
posted by Monstrous Moonshine at 7:21 PM on June 5, 2008

I'm a meat-eating husband with a wife who has been a vegetarian for more than 30 years. We eat vegetarian at home, which is fine with me. I make whatever I want to take to work for lunch, which usually involves meat of some sort. Other times I'll go out for lunch and get my roast beef sandwich or whatever.

I don't mind eating vegetarian at home, as long as it's something, you know, cooked. Spinach lasagne, lentil soup, something with some substance. I can't eat just salad or fruit and feel like I had a satisfactory meal.

The key is, she doesn't mind having meat in the fridge for me to take for lunch (not a rabid political vegetarian, just a personal choice) and I don't mind not having meat for every meal. When we go out together, either I'll have a vegetarian dish, which is cool with me, or I won't, which is cool with her. If you're anti-everyone-who-eats-meat or disgusted by the sight/smell of meat, it may not work out as well.
posted by ctmf at 7:26 PM on June 5, 2008

We work like that, too. I don't eat a lot of meat, and feel better for it, and when I do want meat I'll have some at lunch or she'll pick the meat out of the dish if she wants some - although you can't do that if you're doing it for religious reasons or otherwise don't feel right eating things that have touched meat.

With credit to Michael Pollan, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
posted by kcm at 7:26 PM on June 5, 2008

I'm the meat eater in our house, but I also do 99% of the cooking too.

I find it no problem to either:
- have a meatless meal myself (it's not a rule that I have to have meat every day).
- split a "centrepiece", protein-heavy dish part way through cooking so that there's one sauce, but two versions, one with meat, the other with legumes/mushrooms/tofu/cheese/whatever seems sensible. A lot of pasta sauces, soups, stews and casseroles lend themselves to this kind of approach.
- cook an egg dish.
- make the main event dish vegetarian, and have some meaty leftovers from last night on the side.

I've been doing this for many years, having co-habited with vegetarians most of my adult life, and I just don't really think about it any more. If you plan your meals anyway, it's just another little wrinkle in your meal planning.

I also keep in the habit of having a cast-iron pan that is meat-free, to avoid flavour carry-over.

I suspect your biggest problem, if you are the cook, will be dealing with meat dish preparation. Maybe Mr All.star can learn to cook too?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:30 PM on June 5, 2008

There was an interesting article about this in the New York Times about this a few months back (link requires registration).
posted by invisible ink at 7:33 PM on June 5, 2008

Another versatile meal is tacos. You can share toppings and the shells, just make two different fillings.

You could also make a meat meal one night, so the vegetarian is eating leftovers, and a vegetarian meal the next night so the meat-eater (if he wants meat) is eating leftovers. This is what my mom did.

My ex ate meat and I was a vegetarian, and at home he mostly ate vegetarian, too. But he wasn't the biggest meat-eater on his own anyway and is probably the least picky eater I've ever known. I have no illusions that that would work for everyone.
posted by Airhen at 7:33 PM on June 5, 2008

Thanks for all the responses so far!

A note to add: I am not disgusted by meat, or have a problem with it being in the fridge, or even cooking it. I am considering going vegetarian mainly for health reasons (I've found it's much easier for me to lose/maintain my weight on a vegetarian diet).

I am thinking it might be time for Mr All.star to learn how to cook a few meals. :)
posted by All.star at 7:37 PM on June 5, 2008

I'm the vegetarian one in a similar relationship, and we mostly cook vegetarian for dinner, and since we eat lunch separately, my girlfriend generally eats meat then. We've never tried the two versions of the same meal thing.
posted by dhruva at 7:44 PM on June 5, 2008

The reasons I do it are 1) I think it's good for our relationship to share meals and eat together and 2) I feel bad lavishing care on something delicious and carnivorous if there isn't a vegetarian equivalent.

The only thing that really cramps my style is that it seems wrong to use meat stock in a sauce that's going to be put into a vegetarian dish, so I restrict myself to vegetable stock most of the time.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:53 PM on June 5, 2008

I've been vegetarian for 18 years (well, I started eating some fish about 5 years ago) and I've never dated a vegetarian. When I lived with my ex, I did all the cooking. He was a carnivore who didn't really like vegetables much (except peas and carrots), and really only liked typical American comfort food-type meals. I'm the opposite. With few exceptions, I cooked two meals - well, two versions of the same dish - each night. Here are some examples (I don't like fake meats so my substitutions might seem somewhat odd):

Him: Chicken Parm, Me: Tilapia Parm
Him: Sloppy Joes, Me: Sloppy Joes with kidney beans instead of meat
Him: Shepherds pie, Me: vegetarian shepherds pie
Him: Shake-n-bake chicken, Me: shake-n-bake mushrooms
Him: Meatloaf, Me: veggie/bean loaf
Him: Chicken and dumplings, Me: stewed veggies and dumplings
Him: Tacos, Me: black bean tacos

Things that help when you're making meat/meatless versions of the same dish:

* For recipes that typically yield many servings (casseroles, shepherds pie, etc.), get disposable, individual sized casserole dishes. You'll find them at the grocery store where in the disposable aluminum bakeware section. For each version of the dish, make several min casseroles/shephards pies/whatever. Bake one of each and freeze the rest. This will help reduce the cost (and leftover fatigue) associated with making two meals for two people.

* Get mini/individual sized loaf pans for meatloaf/veggieloaf (see above).

* If you are going to eat fish but a box or bag of frozen tilapia. It is a good, versatile fish that isn't terribly fishy and works well in many recipes. I prefer the boxed kind with each fillet individually wrapped. This makes it simple to pull out one or two at a time to defrost for dinner. The bagged kind aren't individually wrapped and sometimes get stuck together, making it tough to take out just one or two.

* Keep cans of beans on hand, they can be added to a ton of recipes in place of meat

If you want more suggestions about turning your/his favorite recipes into two versions (meat/meatfree), make requests in this post or feel free to MeMail me.
posted by necessitas at 7:57 PM on June 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

pardon the typos, there are too many to even bother correcting after the fact. Hard to believe English is my first language
posted by necessitas at 8:02 PM on June 5, 2008

Dishes like lasagna lend themselves to two-batch cooking. Instead of one 12" x 12" pan, make two 6" x 12" pans, one meat and one veg. Same amount of ingredients, same prep time, same cooking time; just substitute on laver of meat for one layer of tofu pr extra cheese or seitan or TVP or whatnot. My girlfriend is a vegetarian and I'm lapsed, and this is one recipe I cook when I'm cravin' carne.
posted by lekvar at 8:10 PM on June 5, 2008

My husband is vegetarian and I am a meat-eater. Like many others above, I usually just eat more vegetarian food than I used to. When we make food at home, we make vegetarian dishes, but if I wanted to, I could cook up some chicken or something and add it to my pasta or whatever it is. When we eat out, we sometimes eat at vegetarian places (but more often than not, they're not, they just have stuff he can eat). He eats eggs and dairy, which makes it a little easier than if he were totally vegan.

He's vegetarian for personal reasons and doesn't care that I'm not, which I think helps more than anything. :-)
posted by bedhead at 8:24 PM on June 5, 2008

My partner is a steak-ivore (seriously, the man needs red meat) and while I'm not a vegetarian, I don't like eating much red meat. The way we do it is he is in charge of creating the red meat meal for the evening, and I'm in charge of the vegetarian part and we snack off each other's plates. If one of us isn't in the mood to cook, we eat what the other is cooking, eat cereal, or order a pizza.

It is surprisingly easy to adjust to very diverse eating habits, honestly.
posted by arnicae at 8:40 PM on June 5, 2008

eat separately. seriously.

my last long-term partner and i were both vegan and after a few years together wound up eating separately anyhow. i realised that just because we were both vegan didn't mean our bodies processed food the same, or needed the same type or size of meals. sometimes we'd eat together, but not every night -- there's always going to be some overlap.

and plus: no one has to bear the burden of "all the cooking" :)
posted by tamarack at 11:29 PM on June 5, 2008

Just like lots of others, in the last six years of living with a pescatarian, I've found I just end up eating less meat (at dinner time) that I would otherwise. Sometimes it's a pain but most of the time I just enjoy the benefits of a slightly healthier diet.

Whilst double quantities of meaty/meat-free lasagna, stew, pasta sauce or whatever sound fine in principal, I usually can't be bothered with the splitting. Anyway, most of these things really need the meat from the start to work properly and I can't face double the washing up.

Some double-duty meals that do work for us:

Macaroni cheese (sprinkle a bit of bacon/pancetta over one half)
Fajitas (one with chicken, one with quorn) - with lots of side dishes to share
Burgers (beef for me, seared tuna for him) - again, lots of trimmings in common (cheese, relish, salad, etc.)
posted by dogsbody at 2:30 AM on June 6, 2008

We're a mixed household. I've been a vegetarian since childhood and my partner eats very few veges (he calls himself, appropriately, a meatatarian). Are you a good/ decent cook? I ask because I thought it would be difficult to cook meat and adapt the vege dishes I cook, but it really wasn't (with a good meat thermometer, of course!).

I cook, and generally cook two versions of the one meal and usually make enough for at least two meals each (for lunch or dinner the next day as well). When he wants a steak I'll just make something else for myself (last time was stuffed capsicum, but sometimes I just want a big plate of steamed veg).

We have two of everything - two cast-iron pans, two non-stick pans, two woks, two 8" x 6" dishes for lasagne or mac and cheese - and one is denoted 'vege' by silver duct tape.

Some meals we have fairly regularly:
Tonight: Moroccan lamb/Moroccan chickpeas and veg with couscous
Last night: Bangers, mash and peas (vege sausages and extra veg for me)
Spaghetti (bolognese and primavera)
Lasgane
Stirfry (beef or chicken/ tofu and veg) and rice or noodles
Crumbed chicken/ crumbed mushrooms
Burger and chips (mine is an egg-burger)
Tacos (beef or chicken/ refried beans)
Pizza
Shepherd's pie (mine has lentils and curd)

Good luck! It's not hard once you get into a groove.
posted by goo at 3:07 AM on June 6, 2008

I eat meat but my partner doesn't and I do most of the cooking. There are some meals where it is really easy to do two versions - bangers and mash, for example - and if people are coming round I'll often two one meat and one non dish but mostly we just eat vegetarian. I adapted really quickly from a pretty meaty diet to a pretty unmeaty diet. I always eat meat when we go out for dinner and sometimes make it for my lunch or breakfast so I don't feel like it has been banished from my diet.

If your partner is one board - and he should be, I'd be worried if he liked meat more than you - then it really shouldn't be a problem. It is nice to eat together and to eat the same thing. Just get yourself some good vegetarian cookbooks (there are loads of them and plenty of Asian cookbooks are heavily vegetarian anyway.)

Also I don't eat fish but she does eat fish so if you both are still going to eat fish you've got that as well.
posted by ninebelow at 3:41 AM on June 6, 2008

Aside from the many practical suggestions above, my mom (who is a vegetarian) makes food for herself which can be the side dish for my father (who assumes he hasn't had a meal yet if there isn't a flesh portion). For instance a grilled asparagus, pepper and feta salad is the meal for her, but Dad gets it served with a chicken breast. Mom does not bother to make two versions of any dish because it's too much mess, effort and food for the two of them. The exception is pasta. Red sauce keeps well, so it's no problem to keep a big pot of it on hand and then quickly dress some of the pasta in grilled vegetables instead of gravy and meatballs.

I eat meat; Guy doesn't. Because of the issue of shared pots (which goo identifies) and other issues, I just don't cook meat at home (although ocassionally fish). When either of us cooks, it's vegetarian; when it's delivery, anything goes. That works for us.
posted by crush-onastick at 6:11 AM on June 6, 2008

I'm the omnivore, my husband's the vegetarian; I'll eat non-meat stuff, but don't really like beans and tend to feel run-down and icky if I don't get a fair amount of protein and red meat. We get by mostly by alternating meat/veggie cooking days and eating a lot of microwaved leftovers.

I must say, though, as the person who does most of the cooking, I haven't found it to be either easy or fun. Even though many meals can be made in both a meaty and a meatless version, this often takes nearly as much work as it would to make two completely separate meals (two+ pots, two sets of dishes, most cooking steps done twice = ~2x the effort). As someone noted above, vegetarian meals also tend to have a different "shape" than meaty meals-- less "main protein dish + starch/veg side dishes", more "protein/starch/veg all intermingled in one or two central dishes". This means it's surprisingly hard to find economies of scale or simple substitutions when you're cooking both cuisines at once.

I've also found that having different mental tracks for "feeding the husband" vs. "feeding myself" means that I tend to give my own nutrition short shrift. It's easy to plan complicated, nutritious meals when someone else is eating them; but when it comes to meat stuff, I tend to slide back to the bare minimum that'll give me the protein I need-- plain grilled chicken breasts and nothing else, etc. I'd be worried in the same way for a vegetarian doing most of the cooking for a meat-eater-- it's just harder to devote care and time to feeding oneself than it is to feeding someone else.

It's not a huge point, but I also really miss the greater sense of family unity that comes when everybody gathers to eat (roughly) the same meal-- often, eating at our house feel more like meeting a friend at a cafeteria than sitting down for a family dinner, and I worry that our someday-kids will take the different meal habits as license to demand that their own idiosyncratic cuisines (raw vegan? Atkins-only? I shudder to think) be catered to, as well. Everyone's experience will be different, but I would definitely recommend that anyone in a currently-meat-eating couple think hard about logistics before taking the plunge into vegetarianism.
posted by Bardolph at 6:29 AM on June 6, 2008

And another thought: Don't know where you are, but here in the Northern Hemisphere, it's summer, or close to. This means grilling. Lots of grilling. And it's unbelievably easy to make a delicious dinner for both veggie and omnivore this way. I'll put some meat on the grill for myself, and then veggies for my partner (and me). Good veggies for the grill include portabello mushrooms, zucchini, delicata squash (so good!), peppers...We make little foil packets with chunks of sweet potato, garlic, onion and rosemary and throw those on the grill. Asparagus. Oh, and our new favorite, which is not a vegetable and not a meat: haloumi cheese! It doesn't melt like cheddar or something - it get beautifully brown and sort of crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. Slice it and brush it with olive oil and onto the hot grill with it.
posted by rtha at 6:34 AM on June 6, 2008

I am the meat-eater in my household, and my husband is the vegetarian. Our situation works because he does the vast majority of the cooking, and I am more than happy to have dinner made for me even if it does not contain meat. I never enjoyed red meat much anyway (aside from the occasional hamburger) and prefer to stick to chicken, turkey or fish, so I end up taking care of my own meat needs. If I want it, I will buy deli meat, tuna, or bacon and make it myself.

Figure out what (if any) fake meat products your husband enjoys. I tend to dislike the impostor bacon, but the hamburger-esque Morningstar Grillers (especially the vegan ones) are delicious, and fake corn dogs from Trader Joe's are also very good. You can also find crumbly hamburger substitutes to use in spaghetti sauce, tacos, sloppy joes, and many other things. Try stuff out! It will save you the trouble of having to make two separate meals if he is open to trying veggie products. Tofu can also substitute easily for many meaty items, like in stir fry dishes.

One word of caution, though you might not need it: Make sure your husband understands that you can still go out to your same favorite restaurants together. It's easy: you will just order a vegetarian item instead of a meaty item. I had the veggie decision sprung on me and am ashamed to admit that I reacted badly; I thought our days of restaurant dining were over because he would never be able to find anything to order and we'd have to stay home and cook everything ourselves, but many restaurants have several vegetarian-friendly entrees and if not, many are open to substitutions. It's not as scary as it might seem at first.

Good luck! It becomes easier and easier as you go along. I hardly ever think about our eating differences now.
posted by meggan at 1:27 PM on June 6, 2008

What worked for me (veg) is that I do all the cooking, and he eats my veg cooking. When we eat out he eats what he wants. It's not like non-veg people can't eat veggies!
posted by mahamandarava at 3:34 PM on June 6, 2008