Delicious Ideas For Diversity In The Kitchen

How do you plan meals for a member of the family that eats meat and members of the family that do not? This can be quite perplexing when sitting down to plan the menu. But with some helpful ideas, menu planning will become less stressful.

Last night we had stuffed green peppers. Two of the peppers were stuffed with the traditional hamburger, rice, and tomato sauce ingredients. The other green pepper was stuffed with black beans, rice, and tomato sauce. Same meal, different ingredients.

(Disclaimer- I also follow a gluten free diet)

To help ease the anxiety of trying to please everyone- 

• Start simple
• Search through cookbooks and online recipes
• Research what others share in their menu plans

Start Simple

When I speak of starting simple, I mean to start with simple recipes such as pizzas, spaghetti, and a mac and cheese dinner. 

For example-

• Pizza- use Boboli for one pizza, just as an example, there are a wide variety of pizza crusts to choose from, and a gluten free pizza crust for another. My husband likes sausage on his pizza. I cook his sausage and gather together and get my vegetables cut up and ready to go. Spread on the pizza sauce, add your desired toppings and place in the oven. A dinner that both of you will love.
• Spaghetti- while your spaghetti sauce is slowly simmering, cook the hamburger. Cook your spaghetti noodles in two different pans (one for gluten free) thus avoiding cross contamination. When noodles are ready, drain and place back in the separate pans. Divide the spaghetti sauce in half, and add to the noodles. Also, add in your cooked hamburger to one pan of noodles. Simmer. Allow noodles to soak up the sauce. Serve with a side salad.
• Stuffed peppers- see picture above

Cookbooks

Searching through cookbooks will help you discover some new ideas. Vegetarian cookbooks are great place to start. Find a recipe that sounds appealing to you. For your significant other, add ground hamburger, chicken, or sausage to the same recipe. They will be happy and you will be able to try new recipes.

Online ideas

When I am researching online for ideas, I search through You Tube videos and blog posts. Last night, I discovered an idea for another dinner. Quesadillas with a side of nachos. Can't wait to try this.

Now to you-

Please share with us how you prepare dinners in your home when one of you is a vegetarian and the other is not.

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