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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 5:31 PM, Lisa K.V. Perry <lisakvperry AT gmail.com> 
wrote:

> I am interested in doing more meat-free and low-cost cooking and am open to
> ideas on a new thread or subject if you guys want to throw out some ideas or
> your favorite cook book. We routinely have 2-3 meat-free nights per week,
> we've routinely had red beans & rice, veggie burgers, etc. Need some new
> ideas to shake things up.

IIRC, the first cookbook I liked for meatless cooking was Recipes for
a Small Planet. Later I found Laurel's Kitchen. (And the Laurel's
Kitchen Bread Book is a masterpiece of technical writing; if you can't
make excellent whole grain bread after you read it and experiment with
its recipes, you should stay out of kitchens.) Both of these books do
NOT try to make stuff that would have meat in it if the recipes were
in any other cookbook.

The other kind of meatless cooking is ethnic cooking; many cultures
have wonderful recipes that have no meat or very little, including
Mexican, Chinese, Greek, Indian, and Thai. In fact, just about
everyone -- except maybe the Argentines -- eat far less meat than we
do. Africa, of course, has many different cuisines, and many of them
don't use a lot of meat, though some do (what do you do with a whole
elephant?).

I will have to dig up some of my old recipes. The way I cook now, is
pretty simple since it's just for me: lots of beans and rice in a
crock pot with other ingredients added as they strike my fancy.

Marie