To get DH to tell MIL the truth?

[Wellysocksbox]

This is awkward. And I apologise to any non-meateaters out there who might be offended at this thread, it's honestly not intended but is a genuine situation.

MIL and BIL came to our house for lunch on the day after Boxing Day (27th Dec). I was under strict instruction to give them "leftovers" from Christmas lunch and not to make a fuss over lunch. Technically, this would have been easy but MIL is a vegetarian who doesn't eat cheese nor "foreign food" ie stir frys or pasta. I know. it's her. She lives off Quorn sausages and chips and vitamin pills.

My own Dmother was staying with us over the Christmas period and on Boxing Day morning at 8.30 am she received a call telling her to move all her furniture upstairs as there was going to be a significant flood risk. By the time we'd all argued about whether to drive her back or not it was too late and the roads were closed due to the flood water. In the end, I took her home by train on 27th Dec, the same day as MIL and BIL came to lunch.

OK, here's the AIBU. I was planning on making a puff pastry tomato tart for lunch, with bits of feta cheese on one half for BIL and plain on the other half for MIL, together with a green salad. However, the York floods put me off my stride and I left the house without preparing anything, leaving DH in charge.

So, I come home later that night and DH tells me that he'd made his mum a salad sandwich and she'd polished off the sprouts and roast potatoes. I went bat shit BECAUSE I'D ALREADY TOLD HIM NOT TO GIVE HER THOSE TO EAT - the potatoes were cooked in duck fat and the sprouts were full of chestnuts and bacon. Apparently she wolfed them down.

And here's the really bad part. DH phoned MIL for their weekly chat and apparently she's now got this craving for meat and she doesn't know where it's come from - she's been veggie for 19 years and this is the first time she's ever been desperate for a bacon sandwich.

I don't know what to do - I feel guilty as it's our fault (up to a point, though) and it's definitely DH's fault for not listening to me - so should we tell her the truth or leave it as our secret and hope she gets over it? I do feel bad though, it wasn't done on purpose, but now 19 years of good work on her part is about to be unravelled.

Just so you all know, esp postchildren, a vegetarian that east fish is a pescatarian :)

Read the whole thread and right from the start i thought that (if she's anything like my mum) she knew there was bacon and duck fat in what she was given, decided to eat it anyway, and enjoyed it.

Now she's trying to pretend she didn't know. Because she's realised that OP will ask what she ate. The funniest one thing to do would be to wait until she actually asks if there was any meat in what she ate and completely deny it.

Stale-mate then
She cant insist there was otherwise it would show she willingly ate meat on the day.

I'd leave her to her drama and not play along.

maybe, you can expect away but, like it or not, other people have different moral reasons for eating one thing and not another.

I know someone who's pescatarian on the grounds that he will only eat something he could hunt and kill himself; he can (and does) catch fish/harvest shellfish to eat, but couldn't do the same with a chicken or a cow.

We have a load of pretty real and even life threatening allergies, so it gets my goat when people excuse their fussiness calling them allergies or become stupidly demanding on the excuse, simply because it gets other people in an unbelieving mood that makes things more difficult for us, who deal with the real thing, and makes other people too worried to help.

Having a very restricted diet, I wouldn't expect other people to cook a la carte for us, we bring our own things not to make things more difficult for the hosts. Honestly, when there is a real health concern you cannot trust even the most well intentioned people to get it right.

Vegeterianism is, in most occassions, an option. And it needs to be treated as such, she is not going to be craving meat like a wild animal just because she had some bacon lardons by accident, she is not ill, and you would have done what every host would have done for a fussy eater guest, but you were prevented to do by a real emergency, so I think pretty much that you should not worry about ruining a perfectly straight record of long term strict (yeah right) vegetarianism.

You can remember this Christmas as the one when the floods came and MIL eat her sprouts with bacon.

Hello, OP here again.

Thank you for even more of your comments! ipaid - DH is definitely not winding me up as he is looking contrite and guilt ridden, which I'm sure is MIL's intention if she HAS twigged and is not looking for a cop out for starting to eat meat again.

DH didn't do it on purpuse. He's a sweet man but thick as shit sometimes.

TheTigerisout Where do you live? Cos I want to come round to your house and hug you

Off to do the school run now. Back later.

Say nothing.

Surely she can't have failed to recognise lardons of bacon. Also, my experience of strict vegetarians so far is that they usually check how their food has been prepared and what it was cooked in. It sounds as though your MIL didn't do that.

I would not tell!

im assuming she is in her 400s or 50s

This made me laugh.

Meanwhile, I'd say nothing. She'll have to admit she knew there was meat in it.

DH didn't do it on purpuse. He's a sweet man but thick as shit sometimes

Sounds like they are as dim as each other: the mother who is a strict vegetarian but eats bacon without wondering what it might be, and the son who thinks nothing odd about giving bacon to the vegetarian in the first place.

I am pescatarian, not vegetarian. For 25+ years now. Quite clear on the difference.
No way I would somehow miss big chunks of bacon in any dish!

I've seen many a veggie change to omnivore because of bacon sarnies - including myself. I don't know what it is about bacon sarnies.

MIL knew what she was eating and she's successfully guilt-tripping.
Make sure you've just fried some bacon next time she comes...

I wouldn't bother getting involved as you weren't there. If she actually ate the leftovers why did she also need a salad sandwich? It sounds like it might have occurred to her the leftovers were non veggie, so she just asked dh for a sandwich instead.
If a person is veggie on moral grounds I think it can actually be quite difficult because others find it amusing if they slip up. 19 years are not ruined due to a single episode.
Another bug for me is that if someone says they don't eat meat, they are often then told they are vegetarian. They might not be as bothered about byproducts because long-term if everyone stopped eating meat the byproducts would cease to exist, but once you have the vegetarian label you are open to judgement at every meal

Vegeterianism is, in most occassions, an option

Not eating meat is as much an option as eating meat. A person walks into a shop/cafe/restaurant and looks at the options and chooses what to eat. They may choose to eat meat, they may choose not to, both are options.

Yes, both are options, but I can tell you that none of us meat eaters ask for steaks or the like when visiting other people's houses.

Tiger Please look up the thread about a guest demanding to bring chicken to a veggie Christmas dinner...

Spoke to DH about this tonight. I asked whether she'd just picked it out of the bowl or decanted it onto a plate. Apparently she'd put it on a plate. How TF can you not see the bacon????????????

She's winding him up. She has to be.