If you’re unsure about trying a vegetarian diet because you think it’s boring or tasteless, read on. According to two local restaurant owners, meat-free fare is anything but.

 

“For all those years I was vegetarian, I had no problem having an exciting menu,” said Phil Merrick, co-owner of the Burlington bakery and restaurant August First, a vegetarian for 30 years.

 

The key, Merrick said, is learning how to mix ingredients, and to “just play around with it.”

 

In order to play around with your food, you need the time. Tim Elliott, owner of Stone Soup in Burlington, understands that and gave a few helpful tips.

 

“Short grain brown rice is my personal favorite," he said. "It can take some cooking time so if you set yourself aside one or two cooking days at home and put the time in to make a batch of rice, to make a pot of beans, to prep some veggies, and have them sitting in your fridge, it kind of makes it more doable.”

 

Making large batches ahead of time allows for a well-rounded meal most nights of the week. For dinners, Elliott prefers to pair his rice with beans.

 

“Start a pot, dump some canned beans in there, curry paste, tomato paste, coconut milk and a little bit of cashew butter and nut butter, add any veggies you want in there; carrots, tomatoes, green beans, peas,” Elliott recommended. “Simmer it and then you’ve got a pot which goes with the rice and will last a couple days.” The pot should stay on low heat for 30 minutes or less.

 

Another easy meal idea is homemade soup. Elliott broke down his favorite recipe for Miso Soup.

 

Chop carrots, ginger, garlic, and arame seaweed, he said, and throw the any scraps into a pot of boiling water to create a savory stock. Place the prepped veggies in a pan to simmer. Then, strain the scraps out of the stock pot, and add the stock to the simmering vegetables.

 

"Add miso paste, a little bit of tamari, tofu cubes, and I always make it hot and sour with some red pepper flakes and vinegar. Then, at the end you can throw on some fresh greens,” Elliott explained.

 

Merrick also suggested homemade soups, and said it's is easy to make an array of soups with any of the three main bases: vegetable, tomato, or cream; then add your veggies of choice. 

 

If whole grains are more your style, Merrick explained that it is relatively uncomplicated to make your own bread.

 

“Making bread is very simple," he said. "You can mix up flour, salt, water and a little yeast, if you know the right proportion and the right sequence of events.”

 

Then, ideally on your fresh homemade bread, you can put any number of things.

 

“The obvious things are cheese and vegetables," Merrick said. "You can do any range of that. The sky’s the limit. Whether you like spices, or whether you like other things. Put all the vegetables, add some cheese. You can eat that cold or grill it.” 

 

After being a vegetarian for two and a half years now, I have also learned that having a diet based around vegetables often means doing a lot of mixing and matching.

 

With the wide variety of veggies, dressings, and sauces, you can use the same base products every day, but switch out ingredients to keep things fresh.

 

Stir fry is a great, simple example. You could sauté peppers and onions one night, mixed with a stir-fry sauce and placed on a bed of rice. The next evening, cook up some pasta, and add cooked zucchini and broccoli. Adding crushed almonds or walnuts can also spice up this dish.

 

Elliott also suggested a solid, simple finger food that’s quick and easy to make, called marinated tofu.

 

“Take extra firm tofu and cut it into quarter inch thick sheets. Cover the whole bottom of the pan, like tiling a floor, so there are no spaces or cracks,” he said.

 

“Then you make a marinade with tamari, water, sesame or olive oil, and ginger or garlic. Bake it in the over for 30 or 45 minutes till the liquid is gone. And that will sit in the fridge for a week and it's good enough to just eat it straight up.”

 

A vegetarian diet is multi-faceted, and it can be modified based on your particular flavor palate and what can be found in your pantry. There are many intricate and simple at-home meal options.  But Elliot, who was a vegetarian for most of his life, suggested the most important ingredient is time.

 

“It’s an investment in time and it’s a real learning process," he said. "It takes a while to acquire a taste for things that are less fatty, less salty, less processed, but I would say my recommendation would be to make commitment to it and give it some time. Try out a lot of ingredients.”

 

 

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