Hello Fellow Vegetarians,

I am 36 years old and have been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 23+ years. I have been on JC for about 9 months with 14 lbs total to lose, and it's been incredibly slow for me. I hit a plateau shortly after hitting my half-way mark several months ago, and I have yet to really break it. I now have 5 or 6 lbs left to go.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone can suggest some meal on my own ideas. I'm really having trouble eating non-JC foods, as I'm getting very little guidance from JC on calculating the exchanges on food labels. If anyone has some MOMO ideas for the 1200 cal per day diet, I'd love to hear them. I eat most anything vegetarian, but don't like to eat plain eggs (ie, scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs, omlets). I will eat food made with eggs, though. I'm not much of a cook, so easy ideas are good!

Hi there,
I just had the YUMMIEST meal of my life tonight.
Here's the link (talk about luck with internet recipes!)
http://veganyumyum.com/2007/04/crispy-sweet-and-sour-tofu/
Here is how I modified and counted it:
- used splenda brown sugar instead of molasses
- used baking splenda instead of sugar
- instead of flour and deep frying, just used PAM and pan-fried it
- I added peppers
Apparently, JC counts tofu as a vegetable, not as a protein. But that said, I counted it as two proteins (a hearty helping), free vegetables (the peppers and broccoli I added in) and one starch for the tiny bit of brown rice that goes with it.
Hope this is helpful!

Thanks! Do you know where you would buy the Ener-g egg replacer? Also, according to my JC book, tofu is equal to one protein and one fat. How did you come up with the rest of the exchanges? Thanks again.

Any organic food store should have the egg replacement. In the regular supermarkets, these can be found in the fresh vegetable aisle alongside Tofurkey-esque products. I did a bit of guesswork on the other exchanges, but know what the "free" foods are and how PAM to cook something is free, peppers are free, Splenda is free, etc.

Hope this helps!