  I've been a vegetarian since 1975 which, not coincidentally, is the same year I graduated from high school and moved away from home.
It's nice to know that I've been a vegetarian for longer than I was ever a meat-eater. If you're interested in knowing why I became a vegetarian, please feel free to write to me and I'd be glad to go into it in excruciating detail. It's been my experience, though, that people--particularly people who eat meat--are not interested in hearing about this and, in fact, quite often find harangues about the evils of eating meat quite off-putting. It seems to me that the best way to persuade people over to my point of view (at least as regards diet) is to demonstrate how healthy and tasty and ethical a vegetarian diet is with the example of my own life. Nobody like an uninvited lecture. My husband is not a vegetarian but he is impressively supportive of my diet choice. Not only is he okay with not cooking meat in the house, he also specifically chooses restaurants for us to eat in that have some vegetarian choices on the menu.
What a guy! Since the spouse does eat meat and likes that flavor, we have made some compromises on the kinds of foods we eat at home. For example, we use Morningstar Farms "Breakfast Patties" (a meat-y tasting vegetarian product) in spaghetti sauces and tacos--when I'd probably be quite happy without that stuff. It's pretty heavily processed and is high in fat. Apparently, though, it's a fairly convincing meat substitute. Every one of the people I've served this stuff to (all meat-eaters) has liked these Morningstar Farms products.
It's not what I'd probably choose just for myself but it's a reasonable compromise. As I mentioned on the American Housewife at Home page, I cook most of our food from scratch. For the past couple of years, we've really been getting into Indian food a lot. What a discovery this cuisine was for me!! Incredibly delicious-- and so many MANY different vegetarian recipes. Here are some of my favorites: Daal Spicy Indian Potatoes Curried Squash Soup Labra ....actual recipes will appear in future blog entries! If you're not familiar with Indian food, don't let these recipes scare you. The spices are different from what you're used to, but once you try it you'll be glad you branched out. Even my sainted mother (a midwestern meat-and-potatoes kind of gal if ever there was one) found that she really liked Daal and Spicy Potatoes once she'd tried them.
In truth, I don't use actual recipes much anymore. When you cook a lot you develop a sense for which spices tast best with different kinds of foods and how much you'll need. The best thing is to cook a lot and experiment. If you're home all day, you'll have time to do that. Of course, if you don't like to cook (strange, but I've heard it sometimes happens), you probably aren't cut out to be a housewife.
In that case, go to a good restaurant for your meals. Just about anything's better than most of the prepared foods you get in grocery stores. 
