WIBTA if I refuse to cater for my ‘vegan’ MIL?

I would ask if she is vegetarian or vegan and go from there. Im vegetarian and my husband does the roasties and we either do one lot in goose fat and the other not and I don't eat yorkshire pud so don't bother with them. I buy vegetarian sausages or a lattice thing. You can get gravy for all not that has vegetarian on it.

I'm a vegetarian but will turn a blind eye to shared utensils if I have to. Also eating out is usually a like one thing or lump it (usually spicy) vegetarian option so I will have fish. I don't want to eat fish (or any animal) but I either never go out with friends or eat spicy food which I really can't.

I agree with the poster about not being the vegan police and since when did hosts become mean (not OP)? You're the host, so host.

First reply has it. Vegan ready meal. It’s very rude of her to ask you to provide vegan food when she is not actually a vegan. A lot of veganism is supposed to be for environmental reasons. It’s worse for the environment for you to have to get a vegan meal separately for her.

That looks so nice! Yes I second buying this for her! 👆

You are already catering for 13 people in that situation MIL could bring her own vegan meal if what you cook is not suitable for her.

Or Dairylea?

As long as it's naice!

There’s no way I’d be cooking for 18 and making an entirely separate vegan version of everything for one person, if I were you. I don’t eat meat and whenever someone’s been kind enough to host me at Christmas, I ensure that I’m not a pain. Christmas for that many people is really hard to host so she needs to stop being dramatic and bring a supermarket vegan option, like I would. It won’t kill her for one day. Particularly when she’s not really vegan anyway!

Can she have wafer thin ham?

DD1 is veggie. She gets a nut roast and we cook her potatoes and parsnips in sunflower oil. If you take the Turkey out an hour beforehand, it can rest happily in foil while you do the vegan meal. Onion gravy granules, and job done, everyone happy and eating at the same time.

I hate the nastiness and intolerance that is so common in this respect, whichever direction it comes in; but why is it any more or less acceptable for one person to think that it isn't a proper meal if it doesn't contain meat, whereas another person thinks that a plate that contains meat or any other animal product most certainly is not a meal that they would ever dream of eating?

Buy her a frozen birdseye roast dinner and take the meat off!!

I don’t like parsnips with honey tbh. But would it work to cook them without, remove her portion, then add honey to the rest for last 15 minutes.
Mash vegetables, remove her portion, then add butter to the rest.
Vegan instant gravy only takes a minute. I make a single portion in a mug.
Add to a Christmassy ready meal and have vegan ice cream in the freezer.

Vegan cheese board- I wouldn’t even try.

Salted almonds/cashews etc would be a no-effort vegan addition.

I've accommodated my vegan sister in law a few times but it's been easy as it's been a BBQ. She does amazing sides, enough for everyone and I used my mini camping BBQ for some vegan burgers and own made kebabs. But a Christmas dinner would for me be almost impossible unless I pre make and reheat. I think i could use a extra air fryer and microwave the rest. That way there not cooked in the same oven which vegans don't allow. But if she wears leather and eats sour cream then she might be fine with this.

I look forward for my Christmas dinner all year and nearly everything on it isn't vegan.

Exactly! In normal circumstances if you were hosting me to dinner and I started dictating how you did your parnips and the like people would consider me unreasonable. I'm not suggesting OP hold her guest down and force her to eat roast beef, but a bit of honey is verging on moral purity for purity's sake if you have been eating dairy and eggs on occasion.

And I say this as someone who regularly makes veggie food for guests. And Indeed herself.

As a vegan I can clearly say that your MIL is NOT vegan. Vegan means never having anything that isn't vegan, at best she's plant based so IMHO as a vegan, you're not being unreasonable. If she can be unvegan in restaurants it's no hardship to not expect you to accommodate.

@Veganornotvegan Mumsnet is weirdly anti vegan/vegetarian. Lots of people seem to think a meal isn’t a meal unless it’s hot with a portion of meat involved.

Your MIL is trying to reduce her consumption of animal products- this is a good thing, even if she doesn’t get it perfect every time. Be accommodating to her when you host and respectful to the woman who gave birth to your husband

@NellieElephantine

bit spiteful

Id probably do it - but not with things made from scratch. I think you can still get an m and s food order (you can edit it for a while so if it fizzles out you can change it for a charcuterie!) in and the cook ones open tomorrow - we use the cook vegetable gravy for the vegans which you can keep in the freezer, you have to think about storage when catering multiple dietary requirements for a large family at christmas. The cook almonds dessert is also very nice (and gluten free should anyone suddenly need it!)
And the carrots and parsnips - we have some genuine vegans in the family and I switch to maple syrup for christmas and it’s lovely.

It’s not unusual when transitioning to eat some non vegan stuff especially when eating out. So firstly you need to have a conversation with her to ascertain why she is consuming non vegan food stuff and have the conversation about if she is going to be fully vegan on Christmas Day. How you proceed will depend on her response.

As an experienced home cook, you should be easily able to accomodate keeping the veg vegan. Don’t use animal fat for the potatoes, use maple for the carrots and parsnips, take a portion out of the other stuff before adding animal products. Reduce the meat to two types and use the oven space for a vegan main that anyone can share, or buy/make an individual vegan main.

Part of hosting is making sure that all of your guests are accomodated as much as possible and with a little thought, it’s really not hard to make the necessary changes. We have been doing it for decades.

And as she doesn't have any actual vegans there, what possible reason would there be to deliberately make them vegan and - in her (and my!) opinion - less nice?!

The sprouts with bacon and the duck fat potatoes aren’t vegetarian either, and the two items she has mentioned MIL having contained dairy/egg rather than meat.

As ever, I think this problem could be reduced by actually talking to MIL.. “are you happy to have carrots with honey and mash with cream at Xmas, since you are ok with the odd YP?”

If you offer to host you should cater for all. We are a veggie family but we still cater for our meat loving family when we host them.

Yeap. That.

just buy something vegan you don’t cook for hours. In the oven and voilà!

Indeed. And somebody who has decided that they might not want to eat some things, but then again, they might do - so your special catering (and efforts) for them could easily end up rejected on the day and left uneaten, whilst the food for everybody else has to stretch a little further.

We once had a sort of similar situation, but the opposite way around. We were catering for (iirc) 8 omnivores and 4 vegetarians, so we'd done two dishes of the meal - a huge one with the 'standard' meat version of the dish and a half-sized one with a vegetarian version.

Two of the (very frequent) meat eaters - who hadn't expressed any desire to eat veggie for that meal in advance - decided that they particularly liked the look of the veggie one and so helped themselves to about three quarters of it for themselves - leaving four vegetarians only one portion to share between them, and too much of the meaty one. We were all friends (well, supposedly) and they knew very well that one third of the people there were vegetarian and thus had been specially catered for.

I don't think it's unreasonable to tell your host in advance whether you wish to eat meaty or vegetarian/vegan (if they don't already know very well what your normal dietary preferences/needs are) - and then stick to it.

You host so you need to cater but she will have something you can do so…not a vegan version of what you have, something different.