A twitter friend is asking for veggie and vegan recipes as he seems to be contemplating a veggie month.

I’m by no means veggie, but we try and have two meat-free evening meals a week.

Here are some of the things we eat.  (These are on the pink cards in my card index meal planning box… that has pretty much been gathering dust for the last month.) Many of these things are categories rather than specific recipes.

Pie.  Onion or mushroom and stilton.

Quiche. This old Jewish recipe is a particular fave. But I also like quiche that’s mostly tomato – spread tom purée on the bottom of the pastry case before adding the rest of the filling for more tomatoey oomph.

Patates yahni me ellis – a fab greek potato stew, dead simple, store cupboard ingredients, packed with flavour, also vegan.

Dahl. Amongst the first things I blogged about here – the recipe is around halfway down the page. Vegan. I’ll confess, I’m not a huge pulses fan, and I often struggle to eat an entire plate of lentils of any sort of cooking, but dahl is pretty good. As is hummus, which is easy to make yourself, especially if you start with tinned, cooked chickpeas.

Soup.  Leek and potato à la Julia Childs, I made a lot after seeing Julie and Julia. But caution – the recipe calls for parmesan rinds, and if it’s called parmesan, it’s not veggie! (this also means many pestos are surprisingly not veggie.) Other soups that go down well are mushroom, roasted tomato,  things with those little tiny pasta pieces like orzo, and things made with that bag of mixed things in the pulses aisle called soup mix, things like lentils, pearl barley and split peas in.  Pea soup is also a good one, but I usually make pea and ham, so that’s not a veggie night one.

Pasta bake, eg this Simon Hopkinson special that needs you to get almost every saucepan dirty. (Srsly, read the recipe. A saucepan for heating the milk. One for making the roux. One for cooking the pasta, along with a sieve and a bowl.  An oven dish, another bowl)

Noodle salad with asian peanut dressing. This was on the meal plan for this week, and the ingredients are slowly rotting, uneaten, in the fridge still.

Things many veggies are sick to death of, as they are often the only choice. Mushroom risotto. Stuffed peppers. Stuffed mushrooms.  All nice things to have occasionally, however.

Definitely experiment with the grains: couscous, pearl barley, bulghar wheat or quinoa. All need cooking with something like stock to stop them being boring, but you can use this pilaf recipe with any of them, or rice.

Experiment with interesting vegetables, eg fennel.

Make your own pizza.

Roast tomatoes are awesome with anything – how about grilled halloumi and sweetcorn fritters? Or with boiled lentils, which have been jazzed up as follows: finely chop an onion and garlic and soak in red wine vinegar as the lentils boil in stock. Add a dollop of sweet chilli sauce and stir through the lentils.

Stir fry.

Any kind of salad, but we like Greek salad especially.

Fritatta. Omelette.

Roasted aubergine curry, eg this one from Come Dine With Me.  (This, along with the stuffed marrows I’ve done variously, are things that I have cooked and then for some reason not been able to face eating!)