My picky kids and I ate plant-based for a week. Here’s what happened.

You know the Tolstoy line about every unhappy family being unhappy in its own way? Right now my unhappy family’s way is because I just told them we’re eating plant-based food for a week.

The kids and my boyfriend are less than pleased, but I explained my reasoning: Trading our usual meat for, well, anything but meat, is a simple thing we can do for the Earth. And it’s not like it’s forever; I just want to see which plant-based swaps are doable — meaning, does it taste good? — so that doing better for the planet is both easy and edible. What simple grocery store switches can reduce emissions, the overuse of water, and other bad things without putting me in debt and ruining mealtimes? Because I’ve got enough on my plate without fighting with an 8-year-old about his burger’s weird texture.

They’re not convinced. If you regularly eat loads of vegetables, maybe even vegan, great, but that’s not my family. I’ve got picky kids and die-hard carnivores, so our varying food preferences aren’t necessarily conducive to vegetarian eating.

There’s me, a carb-loving omnivore whose failed New Year’s resolution each year is to eat more vegetables; my 10-year-old daughter who wants to give up beef but is torn between her love of the planet and her love of steak; my 8-year-old son who refuses to eat cheese, chicken, sauce (any), tortillas, several vegetables, and pretty much all foods beginning with the letter M; and my boyfriend, a strong carnivore who could be the pickiest of all.

But I’m the one who pays for groceries, so we’re doing this. I went to King Soopers, Whole Foods and Nooch Vegan Market to find Colorado-made, plant-based products to put to the test. Here’s how our week of giving up meat went.

Monday: taco night

It occurred to me that plant-based eating could be, you know, just regular old vegetables, so in addition to tacos made from Hemp Way Foods Original Hemp Burger Crumbles (Kittredge; $6.99 at Whole Foods) and Jack & Annie’s Jack Pulled Pork (Boulder; $7.69 at Whole Foods), I made a control taco of straight cauliflower and carrots.

I presented the fake meat tacos to my children the same way any good parent would: I lied to them. I knew they’d hate it before they tried it, so I said, “Here’s a beef taco, and here’s a pork,” and then gauged their reaction.

No one was fooled. The hemp burger crumbles looked like lentils and rice, but they also tasted like lentils and rice, which was a plus. They took on the flavors of the taco seasoning nicely, and I could see how these could be used as a pinch-hitter for meat in a variety of dishes. They inspired the raving compliment of “Not as bad as fish” from my daughter.

The smoky, jackfruit-based pulled pork, on the other hand, wasn’t as good. It did somehow resemble pulled pork, but the texture threw us. I tend to dislike fake meat trying to emulate real meat, and not one of us could finish this taco. The winner of the taco wars? A tie between the hemp burger crumbles and plain old veggies.

For dessert, I cracked open a vegan chocolate tasting bar from Boulder’s Moksha. We all agreed that this was vegan eating we can definitely get on board with.

Tuesday: sushi lunch

As it turns out, I am in love with vegan sushi. I’d eat Wellness Sushi’s Kakiage Supreme Rolls (Denver; $9.99 at Nooch Vegan Market) all day, but at $10 a pop, they’re a splurge. I like that it was sweet, spicy, creamy and crunchy (tempura veggies go a long way), and all of those special touches made it even more fun to eat than regular fish sushi.

Wednesday: kids’ meals

Much to my embarrassment, my children are incredibly picky eaters. I’m convinced it’s because, pre-kids, I was one of those childless people who believed if you exposed kids to a wide range of foods, they’d eat a wide range of foods. Now I know that exposing kids to a wide range of foods only provides them with more foods to hate.

To make dinnertime even more challenging, my kids are picky in the least complementary ways. If we have mac and cheese, for example, one eats it as Kraft and God intended, while the other won’t touch the cheese sauce and eats plain elbow macaroni. If we make pasta with sausage or meatballs, one eats only pasta; the other only meat.

For this dinner, I gave them Kids Table Classic Mac (Denver; $8 at Nooch Vegan Market) and Jack & Annie’s Jack Nuggets (Boulder; $6.55 at Nooch Vegan Market). The results were mixed.

If you don’t think of the classic mac as mac and cheese, it’s good. But that’s the problem. It was more like mac and Dijon, and mac and Dijon is a miss for both of my kids. The cheese lover missed the cheese, and the naked macaroni lover hated the mustard flavor. I actually enjoyed the mac and Dijon and went back for seconds, which was good since the kids weren’t touching it.

The nuggets, made from the same jackfruit we disliked in the pulled pork, were great. I don’t eat regular chicken nuggets because, come on, who knows what’s in those, so these were actually preferable to their meaty counterparts. My daughter ate several, my son a couple, and the neighbor kid who came by cleaned up the rest.

Thursday: breakfast

Part of my kids’ breakfast routine is mixing yogurt into oatmeal. This is their only point of convergence in the a.m. meal, as beyond that they like different cereals, styles of eggs, and anything else they can think of to make my life as difficult as possible before I’m fully awake.

I bought Silk Dairy-Free Blueberry Yogurt (Broomfield; three for $5 at King Soopers) for their morning mix-in and, shockingly, it was well-liked. Described as “creamy, would definitely eat again,” it may have gone down better than our regular Kroger brand yogurt.

Friday: burgers & ice cream

Compared to our typical pound of ground turkey or beef, Hemp Way Foods Original Hemp Burgers (Kittredge; $6.10 for two at Nooch Vegan Market) are expensive. Like the crumbles we used in the tacos, these patties are made of mostly lentils, brown rice  and hemp hearts, so don’t go into it expecting a burger taste or texture. That’s why my daughter and I liked them, though. These burgers weren’t trying to be anything they’re not, and we thought the lentil-y, rice-y discs were tasty.

My more meat-minded son and boyfriend, though, weren’t fans. They tolerated them but made it clear they’d prefer to never eat them again. “Meat should be meat,” I heard more than once. To stop their griping, I brought out the big guns after dinner: fancy ice cream.

I live and die by Right Cream ice cream (Denver; $12 a pint), but I’d never tried a vegan flavor. The salty caramel and oatmeal cookie-loaded pint was delicious, and three out of four of us liked the vegan ice cream just as much as their normally incredible flavors. (The 8-year-old isn’t into oatmeal cookies. Of course.) I don’t really believe that buying premium vegan ice cream is saving the Earth or anything, but it’s not not saving the Earth, right?

Saturday: date night

My boyfriend loves to go out to dinner. But he does not love to go out to dinner when fake meat is involved. I took him to Edgewater Public Market because they have two vegetable-focused stalls, Gladys and Meta Burger, and thinking that maybe professional chefs would be able to sway him to the plant-based side.

We got a celery-root Reuben from Gladys and a Buffalo “chicken” sandwich from Meta. I loved the Reuben, which had all the same rich flavors of the real thing minus the grease and fat. Because of its snappier, fresher taste, I think I’d even choose the celery root version over corned beef or pastrami.

The “chicken’s” texture got to me on the Buffalo sandwich, but the bun and sauce were both very good. Boyfriend disliked everything and consoled himself with a vegan Oreo shake.