Feeding your meat eaters

Hi Marnie,
I also have to cook for meat eaters every day. Here's a secret I accidently discovered that's saving me a lot of money. Instead of telling them that eating meat is bad blah blah blah, I just started cutting down on it. Like now, if I make chicken soup I do it the Campbells way, I just wave a chicken over the pot. There's very little actual chicken in it. Lots of nights I'll make baked beans or split pea soup with grilled cheese sandwiches or other vegetarian entree.

The key to sucess is to do it gradually and with no fanfare, like just start cutting back on the meat portions and increasing the vegetables. Then add in more vegetarian fare. By doing this slowly I've "trained" my husband to eat a large salad for dinner a couple of nights a week now. I started with just a small "side salad" and it slowly grew to be the whole meal. Before we got married my husband hated salad and his favorite "vegetable" was macaroni and cheese.

If I had made an announcement that we're all going vegetarian (much less raw!) they'd have revolted and probably would be weighing their pork chops at the table by now. I buy very little meat anymore and my meat and potato lovers haven't even noticed! Tweet