Catering for vegetarians at a house-warming party, do I need to provide separate food?

[IslandCanary]

Everyone is bringing a dish, so far most of these contain meat/fish (apart from the salad) as we're doing tapas-style.

One couple have just told me they are vegetarian.

Do I need to ask everyone to bring vegetarian dishes instead? Or is it ok to just provide some salad/rice and let them bring a dish they can eat? I don't want them to feel excluded.

I find most vegetarian food bland and unpleasant and would rather have meat/fish dishes to cater for the majority (I'm planning to make spicy chicken wings, someone else is bringing meatballs, another is bringing battered tempura prawns, crispy squid, vegetable risotto etc.

If I need to provide more veggie options does anyone have any ideas?

That's fine, maybe I'm a flexi-tarian but you shouldn't call yourself a vegetarian if you eat meat. Like my acquaintance who says she is a veggie and then I try desperately to cater for when she comes here, or find her a Christmas menu she likes. I honestly think there are some people out there who do it for the attention. That may not be a popular view but every time a lot of us get together, everything to do with the food hinges around her wants. There's a few people in our circle who I haven't told about the "chicken at the pub". Yet.

then there's my other vegetarian friend who could not be more easygoing. When she comes here I say "will you be OK with vegetable chilli (or whatever I'm planning)" and she is fine with anything.

Vegetarians are omnivores as they will eat eggs and dairy which are animal products. A vegan would be a herbivore, by choice although capable of being omnivorous biologically speaking.

barbara- I think that's a little over generalised. The diet of historic man would have varied considerable depending on geographical location and time of year.
In ancient times a considerable amount of meat would have been eaten in Northern climes, particularly in winter when vegetable sources of food were sparse or had to be eaten from stores.
I agree that in warmer climates poverty means that people often eat almost exclusively vegetable protein ( often not by choice).
Inuit people would have eaten a great deal of meat or fish, like our Northern European ancestors, eating deer, seafood of whatever could be caught.
My grandmother was born in 1890, to a very poor family in rural Scotland. Her diet contained little fruit except in the summer months, root vegetables, leafy greens,oats, barley and lots of meat like rabbit, hare, pigeon and other wild birds, caught in the local woods. She lived on the shore, so almost every day she would eat some meat stew containing oysters and mussels gathered from the rocks.

I don't really see the point of the flexitarian label.

Why not just say something like "I prefer eating vegetarian food most of the time but I do eat meat occasionally"?

It's not like flexitarian gives a clear idea of what food to serve a guest in the same way as vegetarian / halal / gluten-free etc does.

speaknowords, a vegan is not a herbivore. A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plants,
Homo sapiens are omnivores, whichever kind of diet they choose to eat.

I couldn't suddenly become a carnivore like a lion just because I decided to.

Totally agree Stitches. Perhaps I'll challenge my friend next time she says she is a vegetarian because she clearly isn't. She's not that much different to me, in that I'm not a huge meat eater and I'm quite picky about my meat.

HoundoftheBaskervilles - who needs alcohol with threads like this?

roussette

Your friend isn't typical of vegetarians, though you probably already know that. In your position I would leave her to organise the Christmas meal or just choose anywhere that has a vegetarian option. She can then decide whether to come or not. It's what I do every year. If the vegetarian option (and there is always only one) sounds unappetising or not worth the £40 a head price tag, I just meet people for drinks afterwards or don't go at all. No big deal.

Oh and I don't know any vegetarian who has a view about how much meat an omnivore eats. I really couldn't care less, except from the factory farming aspect, which is to do with the industry, not the chicken eaters themselves.

Why not just say something like "I prefer eating vegetarian food most of the time but I do eat meat occasionally"?

Why say anything at all. It's making an issue out of something that isn't there.

Why is not eating meat all the time something that needs explaining?

Just a little musing, my grandmother couldn't understand vegetarianism, I think that whoever made the link upthread with the generations before us not being able to afford meat is correct & maybe meat became a status symbol, a bit like the pineapple in Stuart times. She was a mother during WW2 & couldn't understand that people now choose to not eat meat. As a gift when I was a new mother she would present me with tins of pink salmon because to her they were a delicacy as they were hard to get when she was a young mother herself. I loved her very much.

My family member became veggi as a teen & my grandmother was totally confused about it, she would class wafer thin ham as 'not meat' & didn't know what to do with pasta so she served it with roast potatos, veg & gravy. She also tried to pass the veggi a salmon mousse saying it was more mousse than salmon :)

My point being that my parents were the generation of her children & perhaps there's still an ingrained suspicion that will take time to grow out, that why would people reject the most valuable part of the meal. Even as a child my DP if he was full at a restaurant would be told to eat the meat as its 'the expensive bit' & leave the rest. If a part of society still has inherited ideas on the value of meat then they will be a bit bemused when people who hold a different value system refuse it. This thinking will eventually die out hopefully but could explain why people caricature veggies & make their choices seem second best. Also why they are so surprised at veggie food being delicious.

Totally agree suburban. Non-vegetarian vegetarian friend is a tad irritating with this so I must get a grip. Other veggie friend is a delight and just how everyone should be, not making a fuss as to what the veggie food will be, I usually do choices anyway and lots of salads that anyone can eat.

The irony being that factory farmed chicken is probably cheaper to produce and poorer in quality than good quality pasta these days.

Most of us are a delight, roussette, until we're asked if we eat fish. The we can clear a room in seconds.

Roussette - was that my sister by any chance? claims to be a vegetarian, doesn't really like vegetables, insists on chicken tikka pizza (wrong on so many levels) eats bacon rolls, ham sandwiches, tuna, fish pie etc etc. Drives me up the wall, especially when friends and family assume I'm the same sort of vegetarian.

Sounds like a close vegan relative.

Hosting her for a month over christmas ( she lives abroad) I took massive pains to source all vegan food, made a special christmas dinner no butter, cashew cream puddings, oat milks, full breakfasts, checking labels etc. keeping portions of veg separate so they wouldn't be tainted by butter etc. A lot of effort ( and cost) on my part.
Fairly disappointed when we called into nice local cafe for a cuppa and she ordered a knickerbocker glory, normal ice cream. double cream, the works, even had a cadbury flake with her hot chocolate. Wolfed the lot down in seconds.

Not happy about that.

I have another vegetarian friend, a real fusspot, checks labels on everything, yet will happily eat a doner kebab when she is drunk. And the odd bacon roll .

As I say, these are omnivores people are describing and not vegetarians or vegans.

I'm puzzled as to why no-one challenges them.

But these vegetarians who eat meet aren't vegetarians, they are annoying people. Vegetarians are not annoying people, they are people who don't eat meat and fish.

I shall be challenging my chicken eating friend (more like an acquaintance). I did say, when I saw her at the pub with her coq au vin or whatever it was, "Oh I thought you said you were vegetarian?"

She said "I just fancied some chicken". Totally irritating because when I had a barbecue she was so OTT about her veggie skewers not getting near the chicken skewers, .....we had a seperate barbecue but she kept asking if anything else had been cooked on it. It hadn't.

Fascinating to hear about your grandmother's life in rural Scotland pearly Gives an insight on the type of diet we all would have had a few generations back. I used to collect mussels and winkles from the seaside when I visited my grandparents and DGranny would cook them for us for lunch - eating the winkles with a pin On a youth hostel trip in Cornwall I once rustled up a delicious moules mariniere with some mussels from the shore and a bottle of wine and some crusty bread

I think people have a right to choose their dietary preferences for whatever reason, and also to some extent a right to change their minds, and to decide how strict or consistent they want to be with it. But obviously there can be more annoying or less annoying ways of doing all this?

pearly ... that's why I said "by choice" and then followed that up with the point that they are still biologically omnivores. Did you actually read my post?!

The trouble with saying, "I thought you were vegetarian" is that you'll get the response you got - "I am vegetarian, I just fancied some chicken".

When you next cater for her (if you can bear to), I would cook as normal and ask her to bring something vegetarian for herself just in case she doesn't "fancy" the meat on offer.

I wouldn't normally advocate being so mean but it's people like her who muddy the waters, leading others to believe that vegetarians eat fish and sometimes chicken and bacon when they feel like it.

I would probably do chicken if she eats chicken! And I only buy good chicken, I'm fussy with my meat too.

Is there a name for part time vegetarians? yes, fussy bloody eaters who give actual vegetarians and vegans a bad name