October is... Vegeterian Awareness Month

Even though October is half over you can still get in on the fun of Vegetarian Awareness Month! For two years in college, I was a vegetarian and ate no meat. While those were some of the healthiest years in my life, my family likes meat too much for me to stop making it at meals. But in honor of Vegetarian Awareness Month, I present to you the world of vegetarianism. It saves money, helps health, and tastes good! Making a vegetarian meal is as simple as not putting meat in the spaghetti sauce or making bean tacos instead of spending extra on that lean beef. If you have a garden, its even easier (and cheaper!) to go vegetarian every other meal or so. I've even hid tofu in some of my family's meals, but for beginners you might stick to some of these books and websites I've found useful.

Books	Websites
The Joy of Vegan Baking--probably the easiest way to start with vegetarian is try out your baking skills. This book takes it one step further and uses no dairy.	GoVeg.com--a website funded in part by PETA, GoVeg has a Pretty Cool Vegetarian Starter Kit which has pics of famous people such as Natalie Portman and Paul McCartney and some useful recipes from their VegCooking.com website.
Vegetarian Beginner's Guide-- With 14 menus and 35 recipes, this isn't chockful of food, but it is chock full of information, from myths about being a vegetarian to helping with health issues such as cancer.	VegWeb.com--Not the prettiest site on the list, but VegWeb does have some valuable resources. They also have a forum where people can post articles and talk about vegetarian information. The most viewed recipe is General Tao's Tofu, where there is even a video on how to make it.
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian--I love what the author wrote on his website, and I'll just quote it here: "I wasn’t a vegetarian when I started writing Veg, and I’m not one now. But I have a far greater appreciation for the non-carnivorous world, an appreciation that doesn't feel like a compromise but rather as if I've expanded my culinary universe. In the world of cooking, the available plants are more numerous and arguably more interesting than the available animals, and they're produced and consumed at far less cost to personal health, the environment, and the economy. Every good cook owes it to her- or himself to explore this world, and to make more of it available to his or her family and friends."	VegetarianTimes.com--also available as a print publication at the Central Library, the website has an archive of over 10,000 recipes. My favorite on this website is the list of how to store your foods so they last longer. I always thought you refridgerated tomatoes and didn't apples, but apparently its the other way around! Some small extra places to go: Goop.com is by Gwenyth Paltrow and while she isn't vegetarian, she eats meatless meals alot (check out her MAKE section) RecipePuppy.com has a vegetarian search option