Meatless Meals
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Just because you’re doing meatless meals doesn’t mean you have to feel deprived. These veggie-packed meals are flavorful and make it easy to put a healthy meal on the table any time.
I love doing meatless meals for several reasons. The most important one for me is that I am not overburdening animal production. I love animals. And although I eat meat, I don’t want to eat meat from mistreated animals, put any money into the mainstream animal production, or eat a ton of meat just so I can be happy with no thought for any other creature.
When I eat meat, I want it to be from well-treated animals, that were killed humanely and processed well. Not mass-produced meat. So I buy my meat from local farmers that I can talk to about their procedures. And I want free-range meat, not grain-fed meat, so I can get that this way as well.
- Discover the key health, environmental, and budget benefits of eating meatless meals and when they work best for your lifestyle.
- Learn the most common mistakes people make when going meatless—and how to avoid nutritional gaps and bland dishes.
- Get answers to your top questions about protein sources, meal planning, and transitioning to more plant-based eating.
- Find actionable next steps to start building meatless meals into your routine, whether you’re going fully vegetarian or just reducing meat.
Meatless diners
Free-range local meat is expensive. And meat, in general, is expensive. So I want to make sure I’m getting the most bang for my buck with my food dollars. I use my meat sparingly to help my waistline as well as my bottom line. I find that when I eat too much meat, I gain weight. I’m already overweight so I try to watch it and have reasonable portions of meat and not for every meal. You can make some cheap meatless meals like these.
We have meatless Mondays often, but we usually have a vegetable-only meal about 2-3 nights a week. Then other nights we will have vegetables with grains. And a few nights a week we have meat and vegetables.
Meatless recipes
There are so many wonderful meatless meals you can make. If you don’t have a ton of time, check out these quick and easy meatless dinners. You can make meatless meals in only 15 minutes too!
You can cook up some pasta noodles or spaghetti squash and toss it with some roasted garlic, some fresh pesto sauce, or some glorious roasted tomato sauce for a quick meal in minutes. Some other great ideas for spaghetti squash are stuffed spaghetti squash lasagna and creamy spinach stuffed spaghetti squash.
You can make a wonderful vegetable lasagna that is grain-free using zucchini noodles instead of pasta. We LOVE using spaghetti squash for meatless meals. This stuffed spaghetti squash lasagna and alfredo style creamy stuffed spinach spaghetti squash are two of our favorites. And this butternut squash mac and cheese will send you singing. It’s a butternut sauce on regular pasta. Even my daycare kids couldn’t tell it had vegetables.
