Trying to eat less meat, where to get protein?

I've never actually seen a documented case of protein deficiency for a normal person unless it was due to a lack of calories. I've doi ne a bit of research on this, but I'm sure that I haven't found every possible case... but I've yet to find one. 

As far as I know, which could be wrong, the cases of protein deficiency are for those of people who have eating disorder or people who are otherwise starving to death.  

Normal people won't get kidney strain or more likely, Kidney stones, but generally speaking, the more protein, the more likely you are to have either issue. It was perhaps overstating the problems of over doing protein. 

When I'm lifting, I do my fair share of protein shakes. I'm mostly presenting a point of view that I don't subscribe to 100%, but that I do find rather worth considering. 

However, I do think that it is good judgement to be a bit wary of the dominant held ideas on protein needs. The people who need most protein should be babies, who grow much much faster than any group of adults.  However, the "perfect" food for babies, human breast milk, has much lower percentages of protein than cow milk, which isn't even considered a high protein food in adult workout circles. 

I think we humans are quite adaptable. A little more salt, or protein, or fat, or carbs than we need won't do much harm. However, I think that the focus on only getting protein at the expense of just focusing on getting a balanced diet is faulty. A diet that is veg*n without any added explicit protein sources should be just fine for any athlete, as long as caloric needs are met. 

It is quite easy to get enough calories on just about any diet, and unless you specifically restrict proteins (such as eating foods in which protein has been specifically removed), then getting enough proteins to build muscle and recover from exersion should be quite easy. 

We recommend eating a variety of unrefined grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, and vegetables throughout the day, so that if one food is low in a particular essential amino acid, another food will make up this deficit ^8,9.

Even if you ate only one food and not the variety of foods typical of a vegan diet, you would probably get enough protein and essential amino acids. Remember, almost all protein sources of non-animal origin contain all of the essential amino acids. You would have to eat a lot of the protein source (if there was only one source of protein in your diet) to meet essential amino acid needs. Table 3 shows the amounts of various foods an adult male would have to eat if he relied on a single food source for his protein needs. Females would need about 20% less of each food due to the lower protein recommendation for women.