As we announced last week, Planet Forward joined the Meatless Monday campaign – a non-profit initiative in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  It’s part of an eco-friendly worldwide movement to reduce consumption of animal products in favour of more plant-based meals to fight global warming and improve our personal health.   As we enter our second week, we will get into some vegetarian pantry basics and a recipe.  As we progress through the campaign we will continue to post recipes, tips and updates on the campaign.

A vegetarian menu is a powerful and tasty way to achieve better health. The vegetarian eating pattern is based on a wide variety of foods that are satisfying, delicious, and healthful. Vegetarians avoid meat, fish, and poultry. Those who include dairy products and eggs in their diets are called lacto-ovo vegetarians. Vegans eat no meat, fish, poultry, eggs, or dairy products.  Just thought I’d get that out of the way.  Our recipes will always be either vegan or lacto-ovo with vegan substitutions.

A vegetarian pantry that is stocked generally contains:

• Grain products: rice (especially brown, arborio, jasmine, basmati and sweet), millet, couscous, quinoa, kasha, wild rice (aquatic grass), buckwheat, barley, polenta, and whole grain flours.
• Pasta and noodles: pasta made from grain products (e.g., wheat pasta, rice pasta), noodles (e.g., udon, buckwheat etc.). Try to avoid quick-cook noodles; these tend to have a lot of the healthy nutrients removed and are often high in trans-fats.
• Legumes: dried legumes (peas, split peas, lentils,  chickpeas/garbanzo, kidney beans, pinto beans etc.), tins/cans of legumes, shelf-stored tofu.
• Nuts and seeds: Nuts and seeds should be eaten quickly to ensure that they remain fresh. Only purchase small amounts at a time. It is handy to always have on hand walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews, pecans and sesame seeds. Peanuts are a personal choice given modern allergy problems. Nut and seed butters are also very useful to keep on hand; consider tahini, peanut butter, cashew nut butter, almond butter etc. Some require refrigeration on opening.
• Condiments/Seasoning/Spices: Braggs amino acid, soy sauce, shoyu, tamari; look for low sodium options.  Vegetable broth/stock cubes, liquid or powder – check ingredients carefully.  Seasonings such as herbs, spices, salt, pepper etc. and flavoured vinegars, dressings.    Mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise should be on hand as well. If you are not going to be eating eggs you can try Vegenaise.
• Of course fresh fruit and vegetables should always be aplenty but they’re not a pantry item.

I think that is pretty much the basics covered.  If you have these options in your kitchen, you will be able to whip up a vegetarian meal at any time.

I will leave you with a quick (and delicious) black bean burger recipe.

Tasty Black Bean Burgers for Meatless Mondays

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