To resent carrying all of the mental load of catering for DSD's dietary requirements

There is plenty of meat your DSD could eat: chicken, lamb, beef. Most fish apart from shellfish. Does it need to be kosher? If it does, why don't you get your DH / DP to order it from a kosher shop while your DSD is here and freeze it? Everyone can eat it while she's around (it tastes the same as standard meat). She can eat most fish apart from shellfish. Her dad does need to help here. Perhaps you can plan some meals together that all the children can eat. Fish and chips? Spaghetti bolognaise and she has to have vegan cheese? The others can have normal parmesan? Roast chicken? Chicken sausages and mash (your children could have standard sausages and you can freeze the rest of the sausages). Also it would be helpful if her mum sent over some meal suggestions to your DP so that you can find out what DSD actually likes eating. Although she follows dietary rules I don't think the diet is that different from bog standard Western diet. (I had a good schoolfriend whose parents kept strictly kosher and honestly they didn't eat very different food from us bar bacon sarnies). Def her dad should support you - it's so typical for us women to get left to carry the mental load for this stuff :-(

But then the child might go back to her mum who is worried about these things.. and it puts the child in the middle... plus she's old enough to know what she's allowed or not allowed and that would make her feel very uncomfortable.

Ultimately, its down to the DH's lazyness and lack of concern for her feelings.

Actually, I agree with this suggestion, to get your DH to prep DSC's food for the week on a sunday.

Also.. with making three separate meals... We have one part that everyone can eat... so if it was a pasta dish and We have one who can't have pasta anymore... so we do courgette or vegetable ribbons and add the sauce. with a salad. That way everyone is eating more or less the same thing. And we have say three different pie dishes if its a baked dish.. and put the main thing in everyone's.. but different additions in two of them. Its not any harder and we don't have to think of one size fits allll food. An air fryer might be useful in this respect.

Could also get some over night oats receipes.. and encourage the children to make then and add to their individual tastes.. that makes breakfast much quicker and easier.

Vegan spread, vegan cheese would be a way around the meat/dairy clash.
I also found that do ing a really clear explaination of what can and can't be eaten and putting it into chatgpt.. came up with some quite useable suggestions and shopping lists... which I found quite useful.

But yes. Your DH needs to do more

If her dad's not worried about the religious diet then I wouldn't bother either.

Yes smart arse... the other children eat pork presumably.

This sounds super sensible. Whilst the dad ought to be stepping up, he won’t and everyone needs to be fed. Making a nominally vegetarian meal then adding meat is a brilliant idea. I’d be worrying about calorie content of mainly pasta meals given little one is overweight, so maybe sneaking in blended veg for bulk and swapping pasta for salad if they’ll go for it.

For ease, I’d say do days with meat added at the end or no meat days, it won’t do the others harm to skip the meat every now and again, possibly may save money too (and better for the environment if that’s something on your radar, I get that ensuring all the dc will actually eat what you make is frankly more of a priority) Would maybe be good to expand the variety of what the OP’s dc will eat/time to experiment?

The moaning will be adding to the mental load the OP is already resenting. This is why it's for the DP to take on some of the catering and to have milk days and meat days so there's no confusion. The fact that the OP is prepared to go to the lengths she is to look out for her DSD makes it pretty clear she's not going to be serving the girl pork 🙄

Ham? Like pork?

I would stick with some religion friendly ready meals for half the week and then the other half try to stick with some own child friendly/religion friendly meals - maybe three of those if you can find any? Whilst not ideal from a healthy eating perspective, I think that is a better option than resenting your step child. Or, some ready meals and maybe your husband comes up with some meals for his child that you and your children can eat.

Stick it into Claude/ChatGPT and see what it says. It's great for meal planning with restrictions.

Don't know why you're concerned your children moaning about no meat - let them moan surely? Or buy loads of pre packaged ham and chicken and they can add.
At the same time dsd needs to get over it if they have cheese, it just is what it is! If they're teens or preteens they will moan about every single meal regardless so don't wring yourself into knots! Go old school and they get what they're given, with a few sides they can add to, serve it all buffet style and that's that.

Falafel, houmous, middle Eastern etc food. Make your own pizza night. Make your own tacos/fajitas. Jacket spuds with loads of topping available. Toasties and tinned soup!

Do your DC like fish and eggs? Fish and eggs are not considered meat or dairy so I would just do lots of fish and egg based meals (omelettes, tuna sandwiches, grilled fish etc) to get round the timing issue. Obviously the fish has to be a pretty standard fish (has fins and scales) for it to be kosher.

I grew up eating "kosher-style" (rather than strict kosher), which is basically what you are trying to do here, and I've never thought of it as restrictive.

It’s very easy for people who aren’t religious to not care about the religious needs of others. But I honestly think if I was talking to a Jewish person who was telling me that growing up her stepmum used to make her pork chops for dinner I would be disgusted and think her stepmum was abusive.

But I get where OP is coming from, this is her dads responsibility. But I honestly think anyone saying just let her eat what you eat is out of order

I’m in a blended family I have one girl he has a girl 6 years younger than mine. I am responsible for feeding my child and he feeds his, the odd time if I’m putting something in for my child I will put something in the air fryer for his also if it looks like they’re gonna eat at the same time, but I’m no nanny, it doesn’t concern me what or when she eats, he gets on with it.

im guessing if you’re all sitting down together for a meal he is just expecting you to do it, if so tell him yous are taking turns from now on. If you don’t all sit down together just don’t feed her, when she says she’s hungry tell her to tell her dad. Oi ‘partner’ your kid is hungry, you need to feed her! Then make yourself scarce till he gets the message.

Well, inevitably you are going to end up with complex mealtimes with that level of "blending" and I say that as someone with a blended family myself.
Your step daughter is only over in the holidays so the least you can all do is make her feel welcome and supported and that her religious dietary needs are respected.

It will be good for the rest of the children to learn to be less fussy

Why though? I’m not religious. I wouldn’t serve pork to a Jewish or Muslim visitors, or beef to a Hindu. But that’s about as far as I’d go.

Yabu to have ever entered into this drama. His dc. His cooking.
Surely when he had a dc with his ex he knew the drill going forward?or was she cooking full time and never him?
Mm wonder why they split ?
Because he is a lazy arsed df ?

Eating in a Kosher fashion as I described is what makes you orthodox. Reform Jews are not orthodox and do not choose to follow Kosher dietary laws "properly". In essence, your step daughters mother has chosen to follow a watered down version of them so cannot argue that it is critical to her daughters religious observance that they are followed.

Your step daughter doesn't eat Kosher and she is not less Jewish because of it. You are doing your best to do what her mother has asked but there is a limit and you have reached it, that is fine. You can only do what you can manage.

If a court order was in place to insist that the Kosher laws are followed in both households this would be entirely different, but I am assuming there isn't one.

Your partner doesn't follow the faith and clearly has no interest in doing so. His daughters mother knew this when she married him! You can encourage her, but should not be a slave to it. If she wants a bit of cheese with her pasta , her father can remind her of her mothers wishes and deal with the fall out if she doesn't like it.
It is important for her to learn early that she will always be slightly compromised by the restrictions that kosher eating involves, this is the idea of it! As a result she will need to make her own choice regarding her level of Jewish observance in adult life, but will be no less Jewish for her choice.

OP work out what is easiest for you in terms of milk days and meat days. Tell your DP what days you need him to do the catering for and whether you need him to do the milk days and/or the meat days. Some of the veggie alternative meats are actually pretty good so maybe on some of the milk days your DS can have the veggie sausage pasta, or the veggie cheese burger etc. no restriction on full dairy cheese for anyone. Insist that your DP takes on some days (is it realistic Friday dinner through to Sunday dinner for him?). I like the idea of the eldest 2 giving your DP some suggestions of what to cook on his days. If DSD is 7, and assume your DS is a similar age, then obviously they are not in a position to cook it themselves.

You say she doesn't practise this religion? In that case, while she might eat certain things with her mum in the other country, why would she be bothered here? I will sometimes not eat things when with friends/family who don't eat them, out of respect, but I wouldn't bother sticking to that when not with them.

And isn't she old enough to do the cooking herself sometimes? Get all the kids (if old enough) to do plan and cook the meals-shouldn't just be on you and your husband if you're both working and they aren't.

If he doesn’t and never did usually do the cooking and meal planning asking him to suddenly do it for his daughter might end up with more stress rather than less.

Calling it mental load to yourself probably isn’t helpful either. It is planning. You are saying you find planning the food options difficult. Fair enough.

By all means ask for his help. He is not a mind reader. Have you asked him? Have you explained you find organising the arrangements for eating hard ?

Anyone suggesting that the child should be fed outside of her religious dietary requirements is completely unreasonable. I think where possible you should cook meals everyone will eat if you’re normally the one to cook. But you need to tell your DH this is what I’m cooking this week, and either give him set days to cook so it’s shared more equally, or say on M T and S I’m cooking xyz so you’ll need to make something for DD.

Fuck that.
If his daughter has a specific diet then he has to prepare for that.
Mind you, your other children sound super fussy!
You need to sit down and have a serious conversation about this because it’s simply not practical to do it alone.

What you are doing is only a half-arsed form of kosher. Are you checking all packaging for kosher certification? Have you koshered your kitchen? Are you using separate milk and meat crockery? Are you buying kosher meat?

Jewish people follow a wide variety of food standards, from eating everything and ignoring all of the rules, through to following every rule.

If she's not following every rule, then the mother appears to have picked a fairly arbitrary set of rules to follow and I'm not sure I'd pander that much to them. I'd not offer pork or shellfish as that is pretty straightforward. But she can either eat the veggie pasta and live without the cheese or go hungry.

It's a Jewish law that life takes precedence, and so if starvation is what is at stake then people can eat rather than keep kosher.

However in this case, everyone can just eat vegetarian meals or the DSD can eat vegetarian. No stress.

Exactly.

P.S. LOVE the username!