Meatless meals (without peas or chick peas)

brown rice with veggies and mushrooms mixed in
oats with add ins-the possibilities are endless on what you can do!
'taco' salad with lettuce, black olives, tomato, diced onion, ground flax seed, warmed up refried beans and then a splash of hot sauce or ranch dressing (you can also add a few crumbled up tortilla chips to give it some crunch)
couscous with veggies mixed in
grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup
vegetarian chili (you can make it or just buy canned)
egg scrambles-scramble eggs and then add veggies, cheese, mushrooms etc

Here's my favorite vegetarian recipe blog-she does amazing things with oatmeal :happy:
http://www.theoatmealartist.com/

Here are some of my favorite go-to vegetarian blogs:

www.lunchboxbunch.com

www.ohsheglows.com

www.heathfulpursuit.com

www.thugkitchen.com (if you can read beyond all the expletives!)

Tempeh, Tofu, Nutritional Yeast, Rice, Cashew based sauces--all of these are great chickpea-free protein boosters in vegetarian meals!

Soupe Au Pistou is my favourite vegetarian main. Typical recipe here, but you will find more if you google.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/wolfgang-puck/provencal-vegetable-soup-soupe-au-pistou-recipe/index.html

It's essentially vegetable soup with a good dollop of pesto in each bowl. I normally just use a bag of frozen veg with some chopped fresh tomatoes. If it is too much work to make the pesto yourself, but it from a good deli. If your son reacts to white beans (in most traditional recipes) just leave them out.

Another favourite meatless meal is bagna calda, which doesn't contain legumes but does need the anchovy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/bagnacauda_79923

Also quiche and fondue.

What about dairy, can he have dairy? ... You said vegetarian, not vegan.

vegetarian tostada with avocado. It's my go-to meatless meal.

http://www.cooks.com/recipe/pf48b81a/vegetarian-tostadas-with-avocado-and-cheese.html

Oh! I'm baking tostadas tonight!

Yummy! Save one for me! :drinker:

There's lots of recipes online, you can even visit allrecipes.com and look for vegetarian dishes.

Try a local vegetarian restaurant too- see what they have to offer on the menu and take mental notes.

- Pasta Marinara
- Veggie Pizza
- Stir fried veggies and soba noodles
- Dinner Salad (Put in every vegetable you can think of)
- Bean Burritos
- Veggie Lasagna (sometimes I replace the noodles with eggplant - mmmmmm)
- Ratatoullie (basically eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and onions layered up and baked)
- Roasted Veggies (Sweet Potato, Russet Potato, Onion, Squash, and Zucchini tossed with brown sugar and molasses and baked in the oven)
- Chickenless noodle soup (vegetable stock, noodles, carrots, onions, and celery)
- Cold cut sandwiches (lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, pickles, peppers, etc)
- Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup (I do the soup homemade and use fancy cheese)

Want me to keep going? I have been vegetarian for 12 years, and I hardly ever use beans)

- Minestrone
- Corn and Potato Chowder (Cheese, Creamed Corn, and Canned Potatoes - mix and cook for 20 minutes)
- Stuffed Cabbage Soup (I use TVP, but it's optional, Cabbage, tomato sauce, onions, carrots, green peppers)
- Pumpkin Soup
- Wild rice and mushroom sauce with green beans, corn, and carrots

**Edit**

Forgot to give some tofu cooking tips!
Freeze it first, then defrost, it makes it chewier, and less "slimy"
Use lots of towels and squeeze all of the water out - I make it as dry as possible (once again, not a fan of the softer texture)
I like to pan fry it in hot oil until it's crispy and then coat with BBQ sauce.
Sometimes I will also crumble it up and fry it with cheese, onions, and peppers, then wrap it in a burrito roll like a breakfast wrap.

The big thing is to use lots of spices. It doesn't have much of a flavor on its own - mostly just flavorless texture. So it is a blank slate, I use lots of salt and pepper, jerk seasoning if I'm BBQ-ing, curry and cumin if I'm going to serve it over rice with sauce a la Indian food.

These are some of my favorites:

http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2012/11/no-cream-of-mushroom-soup-rosemary.html

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipe/rice-noodle-salad-with-smoked-tofu-and-herbs/

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipe/butternut-squash-edamame-zosui-with-ginger-150-green-onion-relish/

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2009/10/lemony-quinoa-with-butternut-squash.html

http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2012/11/lentil-soup-with-coriander-and-cumin.html

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/black-sesame-otsu-recipe.html

Chili: Beans of your choosing, hot chili beans and a can of crushed tomatoes plus desired spices.
Black beans with cheese and salsa
Rice, cous cous or quinoa with roasted veggies
Pasta with loads of veggies
Eggs and pancakes/French toast
Are you counting seafood as meat? If not, shrimp stir fry is yummy
Cheese (and/or beans) quesadillas/burritos/enchiladas
Wraps made with guacamole and loads of veggies and cheese

You can stretch your budget w/o completely cutting out meat by switching to cheaper cuts, smaller proportions of meat in the dish. Small dice or shred to make sure what little you are using gets throughout the dish. Cheaper meat cuts require a little more work and different cooking methods to make them as tender and flavorful as possible. Roast whole chicken or turkey, and portion out the meat to be used in soup or casseroles. Then you have bones to make soup stock.....

Add more veggies & legumes, serve w/ rice or another grain. You'll have a complete amino acid profile, be eating less meat, and still fill up on delicious food. For example, I routinely use only 1 lb of ground beef for a large pot of chili (12 servings) and never miss the other pound of beef. Add some corn or corn meal & a little TVP if you're not averse to using soy. In strongly flavored foods it blends in easily. Or instead of chicken breasts w/ a sauce, dice the breast and add some veggies and/or legumes and serve over rice or barley. Essentially turn the meat into "flavoring" instead of "star" of the dish.

He can eat beans. He used to be allergic to soy but not anymore. I thought about trying tofu but I have to learn how to make it. Meat has just gotten so expensive that we can't afford to have it for dinner everyday anymore. My friend only eats meat once a week and everything is organic. She really seems to like it so I thought we would try that.

Yes, he can have dairy. We are trying to cut out meat because of the price of it. We just can't afford to buy it anymore.

Given that beans and dairy are both OK, that you're doing this mainly for cost savings, and you're ambitious enough to consider making you're own tofu, I'd say your best bets are to build most of your meatless meals around eggs, dried (as opposed to canned) beans (they're cheaper, and you can control the sodium if that's a concern; you can soak and cook enough on the weekend for the meals you're planning for the week), grains/rice/pasta/oats (bought plain in large packages or in bulk; don't pay for packages of spices that are mostly salt -- seasoning to taste yourself is much cheaper), and whatever produce is in season (usually cheaper and better quality) or whatever frozen plain (no sauce -- cheaper to make any sauce that you want yourself) veggies are on sale. Add a little store-brand cheese one or two nights a week, maybe a dish with nuts (if no allergies) or nut butters another night if the budget will stretch to that. If you want to do a lot of casseroles and quiches, you might look into whether it would be cheaper to use reconstituted powdered milk or evaporated milk (no one will taste the difference once its cooked).

"My friend eats meat once a week and everything is organic. She really seems to like it so I thought we would try that." If you mean trying "everything is organic," that could easily wipe out any cost savings from skipping meat. You might want to limit organic produce purchases to fruits and veggies whose skin or peels you actually eat (e.g., berries, stone fruit or apples/pears if you eat their skins).

I like meatless savory pies. I made this tomato pie (quiche) recently and it was really good. I only made one pie, and I used a 9-inch crust (not sure if it was a deep-dish crust), and only used one egg (rather than one and a half), and probably a little less of the other ingredients, too (e.g., only about 5 oz of cheese). You don't need to use the special tomatoes and onions they call for.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2010/08/11/yellow-and-purple-tomato-and-piedmont-onion-pie/


Here's a meatless pasta dish I made recently that I really liked, with mushrooms, which can be a little pricey, but in some of my local grocery stores, packaged mushrooms are one of those items that tend to go on sale as buy-one-get-one-free, which would be a good buy for this dish. I didn't use the dill because I didn't think I would like it in this dish. Baby portobellos are sometimes sold as cremini, baby bellas, and Italian brown mushrooms.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2013/02/06/linguine-mushrooms-stroganoff-style/


If you're up for making your own tofu, you might look into making your own veggie burgers, which seems like it would be a lot less work. I don't have any recipes for veggies burgers to offer, but probably some of the sites other posters have mentioned have some.

Here's just one recipe suggestion - it's my 6-year-old's favorite food in the world (she rates it higher than ice cream!). This is my mom's super simple recipe for chili. Throw some canned tomatoes in the blender with onion, green pepper and a little garlic. Put that in a pot and add a whole bunch of whatever beans you have/like (black, kidney, pinto - I usually put in a mix). Add some chili powder to taste and a dash of cumin and voila! I also like to add ground turkey to it, but my daughter prefers it without the turkey. We serve it with shredded cheese on top.

I don't eat a lot of meat. I just do not like it very much. So I have lots of meatless meals. One of my favorites that I eat a couple times a week is a healthly "fried rice". I use Quinoa cooked in Chicken broth, Asian Stirfry veggies, Egg Whites, Low Sodium Soy Sauce, Sesame Oil (if I have it), and Chili Flakes. I just Scramble the eggs first and then throw in eveything else. Really satisfies my craving for chinese takeout:)

I also like to do Quinoa and Blackbeans with Salsa and any veggies I have on hand.