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?

I wouldn't say lying exactly. But exaggerating or choosing to view things in a selective way. For example if half a vegetarian dish is eaten then clearly 'everybody loved it' even though the empty plates of non-vegetarian stuff around it would seem to indicate that they loved the non-vegetarian stuff even more. And people are polite to your face, particularly if you are vegetarian, and say 'Oooh that was lovely'. But if everybody loves vegetarian food so much why are 9 in 10 of us not vegetarian?

And as for 'why don't you go and eat meat with other friends', well that's going to go down really well isn't it? Disinviting my DH from social occasions because there's meat involved.

If you choose to restrict your diet then you have to accept that your choices may be restricted and not expect everyone around you to stick to restricted sources to pander to what is ultimately your decision and your problem.

If everyone else is making meat dishes, if you make a few veggie ones it'll be fine
But if the veggie dishes need to outnumber the meat dishes by say 3:1, then there won't be enough veggie stuff for everyone?

your choices may be restricted
Restricted choice is VERY DIFFERENT to no choice.

I'd rather eat the standard cold pasta/pesto or goat's cheese tart (a restricted choice) than have no food available to me. But if you've all eaten the goat's cheese tart, I have no food to eat. You have taken stuff that you want to eat that specifically disadvantages someone else and leaves them hungry.

It's pretty easy, I do lots of entertaining and when I do a buffet it's about 70% vegie, 25% meat/pesce, and you have to make sure there is enough vegetarian for for ALL the guests to have some if the fancy, then a variety of meat/fish dishes on top for those who chose to eat them.

Overcatering's the name of the game!

There is a world of delicious vegetarian stuff to cook OP, the majority of it delicious.

I don't label either, I make it clear that those dishes with meat in are obvious, and those which do not have obvious meat in are vege, I don't like to feel my food is segregated (I wouldn't be hiding chunks of meat in a salad for instance).

If I have gluten-free guests I try to ensure the whole meal is gluten free so there's no worries for them.

It just take a bit of thought and effort but it's not hard, we have such access to so many ingredients and recipes these days.

(My vegetarian food is FAR from bland and unpleasant btw, what a strange attitude, do you eat exclusively meat then?).

(I obviously meant 75% vegie in my previous post...)

I always work on the assumption that there needs to be enough of the veggie stuff for everyone, plus meat and fish for those that will partake.

I think you can provide some veggie options at little extra cost/hassle

Spanish omelette is easy and cheap to do. At a push you can buy it ready made, Sainsburys do one that isn't bad. Or fancy it up into a frittata - loads of recipes out there.

Lots of olives - you can get the Spanish ones with manchego to go with the tapas theme. I'd also get some of the stuffed peppers a pp mentioned, or a jar of roasted peppers that you can then chargrill in a griddle pan.

I'd do a tomato salsa style salad (Google delias recipe for this, it's awesome) plus a couple of other salad options. Maybe just a bag of rocket salad, some shaved Parmesan, oil and balsamic.

Dips - easy to make or shop bought for ease.

A few crisp/ chip/ bread options. Veggie sticks for dipping.

Patatas bravas or new potatoes roasted in oil with your choice of flavourings (I love garlic and rosemary).

A tiny bit more fiddly but I love pea and mint bruschetta and always make it for parties. On phone so can't post link but it comes up if you google.

Again, for ease, you could buy a couple of bags of ready prepped roasting veg, roast that with some garlic/herbs, add cherry tomatoes for the last 10 mins or so, stir through cooked pasta and crumble in some feta - one of my favourite dishes and much appreciated by people I've made it for including confirmed meat lovers.

Or roast butternut squash and sweet potato, transfer to pan with veggie stock, blitz with hand blender, stir in cream if you fancy, makes an amazing and filling soup.

I would definitely try to make sure that they have more options- as others have said, non-veggies often take the veggie options as side dishes, so there needs to be plenty to go around. I would suggest:
-Tomato and mozzarella salad with pesto
-Vegetable tempura
-Patatas bravas (just omit the chorizo)
-Veggie frittatas
-Stuffed peppers and olives
-Marinaded grilled halloumi
-Grilled corn on the cob
-Flatbreads with hummus and other dips
There's loads of options, and veggie food can be really delicious if done right!

Oooh ooh ooh ive just remembered something that has made me stupidly / geekily excited. I noticed that pardon peppers are now available in Sainsburys, so you can make a big pile of 'pimientos de padron' - heat olive oil in large pan/skillet, the oil needs to be very hot, add the peppers and cook until they get a bit blistered, drain on kitchen towel and sprinkle with salt. They taste amazing and are one of my favourite parts of Spanish meals.

Also if you're doing calamari/battered prawns you can do 'calamares del campo' which is onions and peppers cut into circles and then deep fried, so veggie tempura basically.

There's also spinach and chickpeas, I found a great recipe on a site called spanishsabores.com

Gah, now I'm a) hungry and b) looking at flights to Spain

Ah, they do padron peppers in Tesco too (with a warning that 1 in 20 will be really hot). I could eat bags of them - excellent taste "Abecedario*.

As for veggie food being bland - if the food is good I'll generally eat anything happily. If I'm somewhere where the food is not guaranteed to be great then give me mediocre veggie over mediocre meat/fish any day. For that reason if im given a choice before a course/event/flight I'll tick the veggie option.

a couple of really nice salad ideas:

Pea - mint and feta with lime - boil peas, cool, add feta, chop and add fresh mint - squeeze lime over - yummy

Bulgur wheat and Mediterranean veg - cook Bulgur - cool, cook med veg (£1 a bag in Asda) chop up into tiny bits, add fresh chopped coriander - add fresh lemon juice

But if everybody loves vegetarian food so much why are 9 in 10 of us not vegetarian?

Probably because most people don't love it to the exclusion of all other food. Also fear of being different, reluctance to make more effort with food, worry about getting a balanced diet (especially with DC), lack of knowledge about ingredients - loads of reasons actually.

And as for 'why don't you go and eat meat with other friends', well that's going to go down really well isn't it? Disinviting my DH from social occasions because there's meat involved.

Does he object to there being meat involved at all then? Because IME that's not typical amongst vegetarians. And there are very few restaurants that have absolutely nothing for vegetarians these days - it's not sound business sense - so he doesn't have to be excluded at all.

I go out without my DH all the time but I think that's pretty normal for most couples.

I see your original question has been answered, but I just wanted to chip in to say vegetarian food is only bland and unpleasant if you make it so!!

Something else to bear in mind is to have more vegetarian food than vegetarian guests, as doubtless the meat eaters will fancy some yummy veggie food too.

If I was doing a buffet most of the dishes would be veggie friendly and there would be only a couple of meaty things. In this case as people are bringing dishes I'd make a few things, maybe a couple of meaty dishes and a couple of non-meat/fish dishes, in case you get twelve potato salads.

I've been vegetarian for 35 years. FIL's funeral wake was catered and literally the only non meat option was bread. Mil was saying to people how good the food was; every single thing was meaty, even the sandwiches. Not even any salad.

Obviously didn't say anything to her about it, but had to stop to eat on the way home (4 hour journey each way).

"I find most vegetarian food bland and unpleasant and would rather have meat/fish dishes to cater for the majority"

That's a very inhospitable kind of hosting, isn't it? If I have guests at my house, I want them to go away feeling like they've had a good time, good company and have been well fed and watered. I genuinely want them to feel like they are welcome, and not just an unfathomable inconvenience. If I have guests with specific dietary requirements/ethical/religious beliefs I see catering for them as a challenge and an opportunity to expand my recipes.

abel

The thing is, and I've only ever seen this on MN, there is a minority view that when meat-eating hosts cater for vegetarians, this then has to be reciprocated by the vegetarian serving a meat dish when hosting meat-eaters.

The view seems to be centred on the fact that somehow the value of the meat-based dish is greater, therefore even if the vegetarian host served a spectacular vegetarian meal with food everyone enjoyed and could eat, they still wouldn't be "catering" for meat-eaters because the meal didn't contain meat.

High fives MadeOfStars I didn't know they were in tesco too, fab.

I've never actually had a very hot one despite eating my body weight in them every time I visit my Spanish friends, so I tend to disregard that warning! One day I'm going to get caught out in a big way I think.

We get to a point on Spanish holidays where restaurants just bring me a bowl of them when I sit down.....

If you are providing cheese as a veggie option, remember to make sure it is vegetarian. A lot of cheese from Italy, France and Spain is made with an enzyme from calf stomach so is not vegetarian.

And put the veggie food on separate plates!

Was at a catered event recently. They just brought out the vegetarian option first (macaroni cheese) - that was all anyone thought there was. Of course, there weren't many, so not everyone got one. THEN they brought out a shedload of fish and chicken options. I asked if there was a vegetarian option, and they just said, "There was macaroni cheese". End of. I thought that was thoughtless - not of the people who ate it, because we all thought that it was all that we were going to get, but of the caterers who clearly couldn't have cared less.

It says a lot about a host when you're considered an" inconvenience" as a guest. I get the feeling you're rather sniffy about vegetarians - if that's not what you intended to come across, maybe think about how you're coming across to your guests. "Your food is weird, it's annoying, it's unpleasant and YOU are weird and annoying"

Oh and amen to putting the veggie food on different plates and providing separate serving spoons and MAKING SURE people don't cheerfully slap meaty/fishy cutlery into the sole veggie offering - that's happened before and that IS thoughtless.

I love veggie food. Most of the Ottolenghi salads are veggie and I'm not sure that by any stretch of the imagination they could be called bland and boring. For various reasons I often cater completely veggie and am yet to have a complaint. I think veggie dishes often look so lovely on a buffet with all the lovely bright fresh colours and clean flavours.