Veggie Meats

The boy has been trying and really liking vegetarian “meats.”  He tasted a sausage patty at a grocery store and really liked it.  My husband told him that it was a veggie sausage and he was fine with it.  We did worry that maybe once he ate them again, he wouldn’t be so thrilled.  I will tell you….he LOVES his veggie sausage.  Plus, I don’t feel bad about letting him have sausage every morning at breakfast because he is getting a full serving of veggies to start his day.

The veggie sausage was going really well and so I thought that I would try something else along the vegetarian line.  The boy WANTS to like hot dogs.  He has friends that eat hot dogs and he really wants to be a part of the crowd.  He doesn’t because of what he was told that they contain.  In fact, unless it was a turkey hot dog cooked only on the grill, he refused to eat it.  Well, while shopping in the grocery store today, I came across vegetarian hot dogs.  They looked just like the real deal.  I was a little concerned when I took it out of the package because I could see that it didn’t quite look like a real hot dog.  I told him, before I served it to him, that it was a healthy version of a hot dog.  He was setting the table and took his plate over to the table.  He said that his mouth was watering because his food looked so good.  He ate every bite.  I told him that it was a veggie hot dog and he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders and said, “OK.”  Sometimes eating healthy means making switches from the food you used to eat (like sausage) or foods you want to eat (like hot dogs) to healthier versions.  Let’s hope I continue to have such great success with yummy and nutritious foods.