Menu Plan Monday~ The Non-Haggis Eating Vegetarian

( I've decided to add my menu plan to this post)

I'm looking to add some new vegetarian foods to our menu. This morning, I thought to myself, "Why not look to your husband's roots for new food ideas?!"

You see, my Hard-Working-Hero (HWH)was born in Jamaica. But HWH's roots don't end in Jamaica. His paternal grandfather was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and his maternal grandfather was born in India. Cool, huh? I could even add China to his family tree, but we'll save that for another eating adventure.
We do eat some Jamaican/Caribbean dishes which I'll share in another post.
Caribbean ingredients are hard to come by, we either have to drive 2 hours into Dallas, or wait for my in-laws to send a box from Florida. When we go on vacation to CA or FL, we always stock up on ethnic staples!

A search for vegetarian Scottish recipes seems to always end up at veggie haggis. Sorry, when I ate meat regularly, real haggis wasn't on the "must eat" list , so I'll pass on the veggie versions. I've got to do some more research on vegetarian versions of Scottish foods.

Recipes for vegetarian Indian dishes are much easier to find. Fortunately, I can get the ingredients for Indian dishes easily. (Small town east Texas is not known for it's variety of cultural food ingredients.) I'm familiar with some Indian foods- when I taught in CA, some of my Indian students would bring me vegetarian dishes to try. (kinda miss that!) My in-laws do make roti when they are cooking up a holiday meal. Here's what I've found so far:
Mahanandi- I'm going to try the paneer recipe. It doesn't use rennet, which is an animal by-product in many commercial cheeses. We aren't big cheese eaters anymore, but I'm curious about this recipe. I'll make it with organic milk.

Most Popular Indian Vegetarian Dishes- Seems like a logical place to start.

Indian Culinary Recipes- I like that this site has recipes sorted by how long it takes to prepare and cook them.

Okay, the menu for the week. I'm going to list only 4 meals, because we never seem to get through my entire menu! We always seem to have more leftovers than I planned, even though I'm trying to cook smaller amounts for less waste.

1. Stuffed Shells Florentine~ Tofu, tofu cream cheese, spinach and spices stuffed in pasta shells.

2. Red beans and rice~ didn't get to it last week

3. Calzones or Stromboli~The children LOVE the idea of stuffed pizza, I don't know why I don't make it more often. The dough is super easy in the bread machine.

4. An Indian dish from the most popular list linked above. Depends on the ingredients I can get this week.

Visit Orgjunkie for more Menu Plan Monday ideas