Want to be Vegetarian.. balancing diet?!

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You sound kind of like me in terms of taste. I really love bread and pasta. If you want to go vegetarian easily, and this is kind of cheating, you can continue eating what you're eating (the spaghetti and bread) and supplement it with a protein source such as Hemp protein, which is what I use. You can just eat it with milk or soy milk... it becomes a gross looking green sludge, but it's not too offensive to eat and it guarantees you're getting what you need. It's a good idea to eat whole grain breads and spaghetti since they also have higher concentrations of protein and vitamins/minerals. I probably get most of my vitamins/minerals from fortified cereal. It's pretty tricky to get them all naturally but I know kale is very high in many vitamins. These things should get your requirements under control while you learn to make more things that can supply these nutrients in a more natural way.

I like to make enchiladas. You can make them in huge batches and save them in the freezer indefinitely. The combination of beans and corn tortillas forms a complete protein. They're pretty easy to make, maybe 20-30 min plus time in the oven if you buy refried beans. Soups are also a good choice - you can make them in huge quantities and save them for a long time. Split pea soup especially is very tasty and easy to make, also it has protein, but it needs to be supplemented by rice for instance, since peas do not have all of the amino acids.

Also as far as how long to wait, it's really not necessary to wait to go vegan, unless you really love eggs and cheese. Soy milk can give you everything milk can. I've even read about soy-cheese. Never tried it but you'll be fine. Basically the only thing you need to worry about is finding enough tasty things to eat. You have to get your daily dose of yum.

Hope this is helpful. I've been vegan-ish for a month and a half and vegetarian for 4 years, with some lapses.

THE INTERNETZ and life

It should be easy for you to become a vegetarian, considering you like fruits and vegetables.

Make sure you eat sweet potatoes, carrots, and apricots for vitamin A.
Eat cereal with rice milk or soy milk and Nutrigrain bars for Vitamin B12.
Beans, cashews, peanut butter, rice, wheat bread, and imitation meat is good for protein and iron.
Green, leafy vegetables, cereal, and beans are good for calcium.

Boca, Morningstar Farms, Lightlife, Amy's Kitchen, Annie's Homegrown, Tofurky, Yves, Worthington, and Quorn are brands of vegetarian products that can be found at whole food stores, health food stores, and major supermarket chains like Pathmark, Stop & Shop, Shop Rite, and Foodtown.

They have vegetarian deli slices, burritos, lasagna, veggie burgers, soy crumbles, vegetarian imitation chicken cutlets, vegan riblets, and much more.

Burgerking has a veggie burger value meal. It's healthy, if you order it without mayonaise and with apple fries instead of regular fries.
Subway has a Veggie Patty sub(vegetarian) and a Veggie Delite sub(vegan).

Not everyone who becomes a vegetarian becomes a vegan.

However, if you want to be a vegan, you will have to learn a lot of recipes and you will have to eat lots of greens and lots of cereal with soy or rice milk for calcium and Vitamin B12.

Good luck.

Vegetarian

use the one-word-a-search-idea with words such as: bread, cereal, fruit, pasta, breakfast, lunch, sandwich, snack, dinner, casserole, souffle, dessert, and smoothie in the search box of

vegetarian times at http://www.vegetariantimes.com

and veg web at http://vegweb.com

for information on alternatives to fast food places as well as information on the health food stores in and around the area where you live go to happy cow at http://www.happycow.net

you can also search the internet with the phrase "whole grain breads".good luck

http://www.vegetariantimes.com

http://vegweb.com

http://www.happycow.net

http://www.ask.com

http://www.google.com

http://www.yahoo.com