Cooking vegetarian meals doesn't have to be intimidating! There are a lot of easy ways to go about doing things. To get started and get yourself really used to doings thing focus on trying to make simple vegetable based meals so that you can get used to cooking vegetarian. Don't just think about replacements for things, instead focus on vegetarian foods. The temptation to focus on faux chickens and burgers is great, but it gets expensive quickly and eventually you get tired of eating these things, and still don't know how to go about cooking anything different.

One of the most time consuming, difficult, and frustrating parts of cooking healthy meals, vegetarian or otherwise, is dealing with the food prep. All of the ideas here will become much easier if you use a food processor to do your food preparations. This will handle the dicing, slicing, grinding, pureeing, mincing, and everything else for meals.

It's often easiest to start out with one pot meals and then work on making dishes with multiple components later.

For a very literal one pot meal, try making some great soups. One of the key differences here when making a vegetarian soup is to remember to use a vegetable broth, not a meat based one. If you have a food processor you can throw in your ingredients to be diced, like potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. It's easy to find vegetarian minestrone, chowders, and stews to make easy to cook and delicious meals.

Stir fries are the fall back of the vegetarian diet! Whenever you don't know what to eat, it's very simple to go about throwing a bunch of vegetables in for a great stir fry. You can use tofu cubes or edamame for some protein here. Again, if you have a food processor, use it to chop up some of your favorite vegetables, like peppers, broccoli, carrots, snow peas, asparagus, bok choy, zucchini, or onions. Whatever you like goes! You can make your own sauce fairly easily or buy one at the store, or pour all of this onto some rice or noodles.

Don't just stick to salads, but they are a great way to mix up what you're eating and make a very easy meal.

Wraps are another great way to get a lot of nutrients into your food! This is also another great food where you can customize the ingredients to your mood at the time. Try using hummus for a spread, some lettuce, olives, red pepper strips, zucchini, shredded carrots, onions, asparagus, and whatever else you desire.

These are just a few of the many options available to you for great easy to cook vegetarian meal ideas. It doesn't have to be hard, and you don't have to feel deprived, to eat a vegetable based diet. Always experiment and mix things up so you don't get tired of what you're eating, and to keep your diet full of different nutrients.