Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA

pourmeanother, I'd be happy to try to help! :-) First though, just to clarify, by "meat" do you mean all animal flesh or are you still able to eat fish during this time period?

Assuming you are cutting out all flesh, then your main protein sources left are: beans, nuts (like your almonds...a good substitute!), grains, and dairy products.

The easist route to take, if the time period isn't long, would be to use soy-based meat substitutes in place of meat in recipes. The Boca company makes many good meat substitutes (like veggie burgers and fake chicken burgers). However, the Harvard School of Public Health recommends only 4 servings of soy per week, so I wouldn't advise eating a lot of soy longterm.

If you are talking months of not eating meat, then starting to open up cans of beans and using them in place of meat in recipes is probably the way to go. Garbanzo beans have a good, meaty texture. Black beans are also popular...so you could start eating more bean and rice burritos. You could also try hummus...many people like that. When you eat beans as a main protein source, make sure your diet also includes breads and rice (preferably whole-grain breads and brown rice). A lot of Indian (as in India Indian) recipes are vegetarian, so if you like Indian food (and you like to cook, which I don't), I recommend trying some Indian recipes.

When you need a quick, good source of protein, you can eat a peanut-butter sandwich or an almond-butter sandwich. This will give you complete protein quickly.

I recommend you also start including more broccoli (cooked) in your diet, and raisins, to increase your iron intake...eating them along with oranges or citrus to improve iron absorption.

Since I assume you eat dairy products, you should be getting enough vitamin B-12, but older people have reduced absorption of vitamin B-12 and so all people over 50 years of age should consider a vitamin B-12 supplement. One tiny pill has around 4000 times your daily value of vitamin B-12, so you don't need much!

I hope this helps!