My husband and I have been vegetarians for around 40 years now, and our adult kids are both lifelong vegetarians. So, our favorite family recipes are naturally all vegetarian.
My Family’s Diets
Sometimes my husband and I have been vegan (not when our kids were still growing), although most of the time we’ve been lacto-ovo vegetarian. And we’re often a mixture of both. For the past few years, I’ve typically been vegan (except for eggs) five days a week. I’m not picky about being perfectly vegan, but I do try to eat as healthily as possible (allowing for some chocolate treats, of course! ;))
My extended family has a real mixture of diets. That’s never been a problem and we have happy family gatherings with meat eaters and vegetarians together. You’ll find my mom’s wholegrain flatbread recipe that we have during our extended-family gatherings here: Happy Families Can Have More Than One Diet.
Christina Preparing a Sweet but Sugar-Free Dessert
My daughter, Christina, is on a 6-Month Nutrition and Fitness Experiment right now where she eats a gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free vegetarian diet. I’m so impressed with her discipline! She has a link in her main post to a free printable vegan recipe that we all enjoy. She’ll be adding more recipes over the next few months as well.
Favorite Healthy Family Recipes
I’ve always loved to cook and bake with my kids, and that’s been an important part of our family holidays. One of our favorite holiday meals is our vegetarian Thanksgiving meal, which we also serve on Christmas Day. Vegetarian Thanksgiving Recipes and Family Cookbook has free downloads of two of our favorite dishes from that meal.
My husband and I often like to have healthy gluten-free muffins containing oat bran with a fruit smoothie for a light meal. Here’s a post about cooking together that contains a link to my gluten-free chocolate muffin recipe: Creating Healthy Family Recipes.
My kids and their spouses have copies of the same homemade recipe book that I use. Over time, I create new printable recipe pages. If you check my daughter’s 6-Month Nutrition and Fitness Experiment post and my recipes category every now and then, you’ll find some of the latest healthy recipes we’re enjoying.
I hope you have fun preparing healthy recipes with your family, too! 🙂
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We love to cook together as a family, I couldn’t agree more 🙂
Thanks, Abbie! It’s awesome that you love to cook together! 🙂
Nut loaf sounds delicious!
I’m currently dairy-free because it was bugging my new nursling, and it is tough. I’ll have to check out some of your vegan recipes for more ideas!
Thanks, Crunchy Con Mom! My whole family loves nut loaf. Christina and I (I design the recipe pages) should be adding more vegan recipes to FitBodyFullLife.com during the next month! 🙂
Growing up my family was very much a red meat and potatoes kind of family. Just before marrying I was a nanny to a family who eat a lot of vegetarian food. I dropped 40 lbs while living with them and was the healthiest I had ever been. Once married my husband and I continued to eat very healthy diets, and then our second son came along with over 35 food allergies. It turned our world upside down! I was determined to find a month’s worth of meals our entire family could eat and all enjoy together! It has been so worth it. Yet at the same time we learned a very important lesson-Food is not everything. 🙂 Oh how I delight in a great meal!
Thanks for your comment, Renae! That must have been shocking to try to find meals that work with your son’s allergies. I’m so impressed with your perseverance in finding meals that work for your entire family. 🙂
I love that your kids grew up vegetarians and still are. I’m definitely going to forward this to my friend who’s a vegetarian and try out some recipes myself!
Thanks, Claire! I appreciate you forwarding this to your friend. I hope some of the recipes work for you both! 🙂
I’m always inspired by how well your extended family gets along despite different eating habits! It’s a good lesson in how to handle it. Your daughter’s challenge is impressive — is she noticing a change in her health?
Thanks, Lauren! My daughter noticed a huge change in her health. She has Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and had trouble regulating her thyroid levels and weight. Her thyroid levels were perfect at her last checkup, and she spontaneously lost 15 pounds (is at her ideal weight now) without counting calories! 🙂
I just have to point out your parenthetical about chocolate – there are health benefits to it, so it doesn’t have to be the UN-healthy portion of your diet 😉 I’m looking forward to going through your recipes – thank you for the links!
Thanks, Dionna! I do love the new research about chocolate! 😉
I am so impressed that you’ve gone vegetarian for THAT long AND that your kids continued on in that way. That says something about the respect your kids have for you and the closeness you have had. I’m sure they never felt deprived, either, as that is important with anyone’s diet.
Great info. My readers loved it. Thanks for sharing this mommy solution in my weekly linky party.
Check out your feature here: http://www.crystalandcomp.com/2013/04/top-five-mom-ideas-41413/
Cooking together helps so much and it’s a lot of fun
ten on ten to chocolate vegan recipe .a delight to all vegans.
thanks for sharing the useful article
the choclate Vegan recipe !OMG looks amazing definately worth trying !
becoming vegan i accepted to deal with not getting the tastiest food to eat, but this really changed that perception. thank you
Thanks for sharing your gluten free chocolate cookie muffin recipe. I always find it to be a healthier option to prepare muffins at home and I like knowing what goes in them :). Thinking to try with dark chocolate to get those extra nutrients in!
I LOVE cooking vegetarian and vegan things for the kids. They usually love them and are surprised to find out there are no animal products in them.