Veggie "Ground Beef"

My girls have decided they want to try being vegetarians this year. So I started looking into meat substitutes and what I can make at home. Store bought stuff is actually more expensive than real meat. Aren't veggies supposed to be cheaper than meat?

A lot of veggie meats use Textured Vegetable Protein. I'm not sure what that is, I've never seen it at a store before. But I found Soy Meat at a Mexican grocery store and I figure it's a resonable substitue. (I wonder how they use this in Mexican cooking...)
Found a recipe for vegetarian "ground beef" so I gave it a try. Of course, the texture isn't the same as meat, it was a little gooshy and spongy. But the flavor wasn't bad at all, really, not bad for fake meat.

So I threw it into spaghetti sauce. If you didn't know it was in there, you can't really tell.