moonshayde asked for suggestions on moving towards a more vegetarian lifestyle with a focus on healthy. This isn't the first time this has come up amongst people I've corresponded with...and being the lazy sort who doesn't want to type out the same thing over and over...I thought I'd put it here in a post that I can reference. I know I have several other vegetarians on my f-list as well as omnivores who have an appreciation for good food whether it has meat or not so I'm hoping to get lots of good ideas here. Recipes, tips, your own experiences, whatever you're motivated to share.

Becoming a vegetarian was most difficult for me in the "well, how do I organize a meal without the meat?" department. I'd always complemented whatever the meat dish was with, "sides." Yanno what? A collection of vegetable piles on my plate just didn't feel like a meal. It might be nutritionally sound but it was...lacking. I had to learn to rethink everything I knew about eating and how I related to my food. But, philosophy of food will have to wait for another day.

Recommended Recipe Books:
1. Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas: Classic vegetarian cookbook. Yes, it's from the 70s so it's too high in fat. What really inspired me, though, was her attitude. Until I read this cookbook, and it is a read, I was concentrating on what wasn't on my plate rather than what was. I also felt isolated from friends who weren't at all interested in changing their burger-eating ways. Her delightful sense of life and hospitality completely changed my view. She includes suggested meals, which were inspiring templates that I built off of. The recipes are also fabulous. I never, ever follow a cooking recipe by rote. I always add or subtract, combine a couple of ideas, or increase/decrease amounts. Thus, I had no problem with the fact that there's too much cheese and oil in a lot of these recipes because cutting back on those was second nature.
2. Vegetarian Epicure 2 by Anna Thomas: I purchased both volumes at the same time. For a long time, these were 2 of the 3 cookbooks I owned and used. I find I turn to the first book more often but her chapter on holidays and traditions in this volume is one I pull out every year to remind me what it is I love about them.
3. Nikki and David Goldbeck's American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldbeck: Remember I said 2 out of 3 cookbooks? This was my third one. :) Every recipe I've ever used from it worked and worked well. In fact, I used to have to cook for 25 hungry archaeologists after a day's work when it was my turn for KP duty. These were not vegetarian-friendly people - that's putting it mildly. I used this cookbook everytime it was my turn and I never had a complaint. Oh, they teased me and enjoyed grumbling about how all that meal needed was good piece of steak, but they never refused it or seriously bitched. It's out of print but the link I gave shows there are currently 6 used copies out there for sale. I imagine there will always be a market for it as it's absolutely stuffed with everyday recipes. After reading through Anna Thomas's lush descriptions of food and being a part of tradition, sometimes what I needed was the short-order cooking reality of this book. I ignore all the crap in there about major and minor proteins. It's an artifact of its time.
4. Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey: EXCELLENT nutritional section. Often people going vegetarian are concerned about making certain they still get all the nutrients they need and they've heard scary stories about needing to protein complement at every meal and about somebody's fifth cousin who collapsed from anemia. This is a no-nonsense look at the nutritive values of various foods taken from a scientifically rigorous stance. They're not going to tell you that humans evolved as vegetarians and they're not going to tell you to ignore your diet because, "variety is all you need." No scare tactics, no strong-arming, just facts. I don't use the recipes in the book much because they tend to do stuff the hard way and making my tomato sauce from scratch every night simply isn't going to happen. But the ideas are good launching pads for me.

Those four are the crux of my cooking. I have some other recipe books I love: Ginny Callan's Horn of the Moon and Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook round out my "most often referenced" list. I have lots and lots of others I love, some I'm currently exploring, but those are my tried and true.

I listed the books first because they helped me to arrive at my new shopping lists. I'm not certain I want to put whole recipes here because I don't really follow them anyway but I do have foods that became my staples; those I'll list.

Recommended Staples:
1. Mushrooms -- These days, it's so easy to get a huge variety of mushrooms and they're cheap. Well, they might not seem that way at first, but when you remove meat from budget, you'll discover money goes a lot farther in the produce department. $11.00/pound for that yummy specialty mushroom isn't so bad when you realize how little a handful weighs. If you're cooking for meat-eaters or are missing that "meaty" texture, mushrooms are your especial friend. I am partial to plain old buttons, portabellas, woodear, enoki, and oyster mushrooms. All very yummy.
2. Potatoes -- Don't feel like cooking? Pop one in the microwave, top with mushrooms and marinara sauce, add a greenery (salad, brussel sprouts) and you have a quick, healthy meal. If my life depended on proving God existed, I'd offer the potato as my proof. You almost can't prepare it in a way I'll hate, it's filling, and it's comforting. If you're making baked potatoes for the millionth, think outside the box. I love to replace the butter with sour cream and use fresh ground black pepper and dill.
3. Rice Varietals -- Yeah, I keep brown rice around but I'll admit to only using it when I'm going to top it with something flavorful. If it's going to star on its own, I prefer a brown jasmine rice/wild rice mixture. Experiment, enjoy. I found that quickly heating it in a nonstick skillet without oil before cooking increases its nutty flavor.
4. Beans -- You knew this was coming, yes? I'm a lazy git so my vote is for canned. I simply will not plan ahead enough to soak the beans over night and then cook them for 11548723958745 hours. Also, without that ham hock it's damned tough to come up with beans that are satisfyingly tasty. I've learned how to do it but canned work for me. I keep many varieties on hand: black, kidney, white, lima, black-eyed peas, jackson wonder, soy, and fat-free refrieds. I do buy lentils in the dried form since they're easy to make from dried. I know beans can cause gas for people; I'm lucky to have intestinal biota that don't. If this plagues you, that's what Beano is for. :)
5. Tomato sauces -- Often a quick pasta dinner but see above about using it on potatoes and other meals. Anytime I need a quick red sauce-y thing, I can cook up an onion, add a little jarred sauce, spice it and I'm good to go.
6. Greens -- Find a greenery you like and keep it on hand. Mine tends to be spinach. I like it raw, I like it cooked. I keep it around instead of lettuce for salads or topping a veggie burger. If it starts to get old, I cook it. The important thing is to make it easy to reach for something green because they're nutritional powerhouses.
7. Seasonal Veggies -- I really miss when I used to live within walking distance of Whole Foods. I'd stop on the way home each day, find what looked fresh and yummy, and get it for dinner. It's how I prefer to shop but it's no longer convenient for me. One way to avoid food boredom, though, is to buy seasonally. Yes, you can now get zucchini any time of year (and I often do), but don't neglect the possibilities of pumpkins or acorn squash in the winter. They're at their best then! There's something within me that responds to changing foods with the seasons and I'm more creative with a tomato when it's high summer. As a side benefit, eating seasonally tends to be cheaper since it hasn't been imported.
8. Nuts -- Again, flavorful, yummy, and good for you in small quantities. An uninspired salad gets zing with the addition of toasted almonds and a handful of dried cranberries. Pecans become part of banana nut bread if my bananas get a bit too ripe.
9. Frozen Veggies -- I keep a limited supply of veggies that are often hard to find in the off-season but that I either love or consider indispensable. Corn, sugarsnap peas, and brussel sprouts are my main freezer denizens. Actually, this is how I buy my lima beans, too. Canned limas don't work for me.
10. Herbs & Spices -- I grew up with a typical approach to veggies - steam and cover in butter. Yummy but not healthy. You'll find that removing meat can allow your herbs and spices to play a more prominent role in a meal. You can get a greater variety of tastes on a plate and that led to much experimentation for me. I find myself returning time and again to dill, rosemary, oregano, parsley, basil, cinnamon, cumin, onions, and garlic. (yeah, those last two aren't normally considered in this category but they're in almost everything I cook)
11. Flavorful Oils -- All oils have the same number of calories so why not get more bang for your caloric buck? Stir-fry made with a dark sesame oil just tastes better. Deep, rich olive oil makes the pasta veggies better.
12. Cheeses -- I keep a small variety of cheeses on hand. I have never been a fan of cheese as an ingredient; I tend to think of it as a spice and use it to flavor. I normally have Swiss, a blend of Monterrey Jack/Cheddar, and a very hard Parmesan on hand. For holidays, I go crazy with cheese and add smoked Gouda, Edam, and Camembert or Brie to the list. I don't normally encourage snacking on cheese, though, because I don't think it's all that healthy to eat in those quantities. I've recently added mozarella string cheese but that's more to even out my protein throughout the day since I have a slightly low blood sugar. I have yet to learn to enjoy it.
13. Alcohol -- I know, it's incongruous in a list that seems so "sin-free." :) I often cook with red wine, white wine, and dry sherry. (Not all at the same time, obviously.) The alcohol deepens flavors and makes them more complex. A little goes a long way in my experience but sometimes it's just the last little "oomph" needed in any otherwise satisfactory but lackluster meal.

I'm sure I've missed some obvious ones but these are my staples that changed the most on becoming a vegetarian. I still have bread and though my milk is now hormone-free and my eggs come from free-range hens, those foods were staples before I went vegetarian. These are the foods that moved from "sides" to "staples." I'm sure others will have different ones.

A word on eating out. I have found that there are very few restaurants in which I cannot eat. My choices might be too limited for my tastes or their version of vegetarian might not appeal to me, but there's normally something I can down. When I first became a vegetarian, it was damned hard to find "road food." As one going to school in Houston and working my summers in Wyoming, that was a lot of time on the road downing french fries and iced tea from drive-thrus. These days, Subways are everywhere and it's damned easy to find a healthy vegetarian meal in even the smallest po-dunk town. YAY for progress!!!