A: My first advice is to look around your kitchen and see what foods in your house are already meatless, such as pasta, fruit, rice, bread, beans, cheese (if you choose to still eat cheese), cereal, vegetables, potatoes, and other such foods. Even the most hardcore meat-eaters are probably still going to have these foods in their house. You can cook many meals with just these foods and get all the nutrition you need. When your dad makes dinner does he make side dishes to go with the meat such as rice, veggies, mashed potatoes, bread, rolls, cornbread and the like? You could just eat these things and maybe fill in the gaps with a simple bean or grain dish you've made.

If you do need to buy some of your own foods, the cheapest foods to buy are rice (regular is much cheaper than instant), beans and lentils, and bananas. Peanut butter is a good, relatively inexpensive source of protein, and you may already have some in your house; put it on bread, crackers, sliced apples, bananas, or anything else. You really don't need any of the exotic, more expensive vegetarian foods such as tofu, frozen meat substitutes, fake cheese, or frozen vegetarian TV dinners.

Maybe you could show your dad how many foods in your house are already vegetarian and show your willingness to help out in the kitchen. I became vegetarian when I was fifteen, and cooking my own food was just about the only way I could get anything to eat, unless my mom made some really good side dishes with dinner. If you're not an experienced cook and can't afford to buy a good vegetarian cookbook, try the following recipes sites:

http://www.nikibone.com/recipe/vegan.html
http://vegsource.com/
http://www.vegkitchen.com/
http://vegweb.com/
http://www.vrg.org/recipes/

I hope I was able to help out, and good luck! After a couple of years my parents finally accepted my vegetarianism. I still had to cook my own food, but now they respect my decision to remain vegetarian.

Good luck and take care,

Steph, publisher of The Cheap Vegan

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