You should not invite a vegetarian for Christmas if you have no intention of catering for them?

[Trueheart1]

You should not invite a vegetarian for Christmas dinner if you have no intention of catering for them?

I am a vegetarian. I went to my MIL's for Christmas dinner and all I could eat was Brussels sprouts, peas, carrots and potatoes. Without gravy!

The stuffing, gravy etc.. all had animal products.

There were 14 of us in total and 3 of us were very disappointed vegetarians.

I usually host and make sure everyone is catered for. I felt quite irritated, as I had offered to bring any part of the meal and if she had told me she was not catering for the vegetarians, I would have done it.

My MIL is very traditional and supports fox hunting. I suspect that she does not agree with being vegetarian and this was her passive aggressive way of showing that.

In every other way she is lovely and a great MIL. She wants us to come again next year. How do I politely make sure this does not happen again?

Vegetarian diets are not faddy (what a stupid comment!)

I am a meat eater, and would never let a guest go hungry.

sittinonthefloor, another rude poster. Am I not allowed to choose to be vegetarian? When I did eat meat, I couldn't eat pork because it made me throw up. Beef and lamb would give me terrible stomach pains. Chicken was the only meat I could eat and I found it disgusting.

The OP offered to take food but nasty MIL didn't want that. Even if she could not be bothered to make or buy a veggie option why not make veggie stuffing? Why not make veggie gravy? Why on earth should someone have to be grateful for a few measly veg and some potatoes?

Viviennemary, you don't cater for faddy diets. Well good for you. So people who actually care about animals shouldn't be catered for? I don't regard being vegetarian as a faddy diet. I am in my 60's and would say at least half of my friends and family are veggie. It's hardly unusual today is it?

I'm very surprised that not catering for three of your invited guests with known meal requirements, plus turning down the offer of one of them bringing along a prepared dish that can be enjoyed by the said three guests can be considered 'doing one's best'. I would be embarrassed myself not to offer a vegetarian alternative.

I think it was incredibly rude of her, especially as you offered to bring food you could eat.

Having said that, if you usually get along brilliantly, then with family members it's not worth it. Always, always pick your battles, is my feeling. Either host next year, or just quietly bring food you can eat and state with a smile that you WILL be cooking food, "so everyone can enjoy a Christmas lunch... but I'd not dream of putting you out." Fait accompli, just like hers.

She was rude, yes. But families that get along most of the time are gold dust. Sounds as though your blood MIL is evidence of this. It's worth letting this go in the interests of family harmony, as she won't alter her views.

I think anyone would be embarrassed unless they had done it deliberately. I would be upset.

Next Christmas, I hope somebody invites zzzzz round and provides everyone but zzzzz a christmas dinner and gives zzzzz a plate of boiled veg. Of course, zzzzz is so polite that the host will be thanked profusely.

It is more work!

No it isn't - I do this every year.

Opening a pack of veg suet instead of beef suet when you make the pud is not more work.

Making pastry with butter or veg fat is not more work than making it with lard.
Roasting with oil is not more difficult than roasting with lard (and my meat eating DF always did this as it made better potatoes in his view)

Separating some gravy before the meat juices go in - I'll give you that, its a whole 30 seconds to put some in a separate jug.

Adding a pre made veggie item to the big shop for Christmas - a few seconds.

Letting a guest bring a veggie item they offered to provide - no effort at all

The oven is fully consumed with 12 meat items? Many veggie premades are microwavable or is the microwave full of meat as well? Or how about swapping one of those 12 meat items for a veggie item? Or if one of the items is already a vegetable expand that and make it a more complete dish?

Honestly the excuses people find to blame and avoid catering for a subset of guests is just staggering.

I eat meat. That's a choice. It's rather hard of thinking to say that vegetarians are making one, because I could perfectly well eat their food (do by choice, a lot of the time) whereas the same doesn't apply. They don't think hmm, it's Tuesday, I don't want to eat meat, for the most part. Most veggies I know are so because they think eating an animal is wrong.

I don't think eating meat, if high welfare, is morally wrong. I'm an animal, and we eat one another. That's the food chain, and in nature, no animal gets into middle age, either. Nature is cruel, while high welfare farming is less so. That's my belief. But other people I know and respect absolutely believe that eating meat is wrong - that they're killing a sensate creature without cause or reason. Who am I to sneer that that's a fad? It's their moral belief, and to think they should casually eat a dead creature, killed for us to eat, when they think that is morally unconscionable... well, that does seem to me to lack empathy to a startling extent.

And if someone is vegetarian long enough, meat can literally make them ill.

It is more work! Every shelf of my oven was full as it was, I had about 12 different things on another thing would have been the last straw - gravy especially!

Really - so you would only cater to meat eaters and just serve 3 boiled veggies (no main, no gravy, no stuffing, no parsnips) to almost a quarter of your guests? (3 of the 14 were vegetarian). That sounds like a very inhospitable dinner - especially when OP had offered to take food.

zzzzz, sorry but MIL is nasty.

Lunde - no, my oven is full of : roast potatoes , roast parsnips, steamed carrot with coriander, slow cooked red cabbage with sultanas, braised sprouts with chestnuts, bread sauce, red currant sauce, 2x stuffings (one veggie) pigs in blankets, gravy, turkey! All from scratch. I think that's enough even without the turkey and gravy! If someone wandered into the kitchen with a nut roast I'd struggle! Pudding is fruit salad, Christmas pud (not suet because I prefer it with butter) and brandy butter.

And mince pies and custard, followed by cheese! No one would be left hungry!

I usually make the veggie option on Christmas Eve or early Christmas morning. It then only needs heating for dinner. A nut roast can be heated in a microwave

Amazed by that statistic. I know as many veggies as non-veggies. Not many vegans though, to be honest.

In neither region nor the Far East would complaining about the food provided by your host be acceptable, in my experience anyway.

But we are not IN the bloody far east ARE we?

And as has been said, some bisto instant gravies ARE veggie.

And no, 20% of the UK population is not vegetarian. Must be a typo. It's more like 2%.

Actually, thinking about it a bit harder, re @bananas post. It could be as much as to 4 to 5% now, as there are more veggies now. Still not 20% though.

There are loads of things you could get for a vegetarian, much more than 2 decades back (and beyond.) It would not have been hard to cater for the OP. But I don't think the woman did it deliberately.

I’m relieved when people like zzzzz and viviennemary make it clear they have neither the skill nor the imagination to cater for someone with different food preferences from them.

It makes it easier to decline invitations

My MiL also thinks that vegetarianism is a nonsense. That said, she is meticulous in catering fully for the vegetarian parts of the family and simultaneously for me (coeliac) despite the considerable hassle involved.

If you invite someone to lunch you do kind of have to feed them.

Lunde - no, my oven is full of : roast potatoes , roast parsnips, steamed carrot with coriander, slow cooked red cabbage with sultanas, braised sprouts with chestnuts, bread sauce, red currant sauce, 2x stuffings (one veggie) pigs in blankets, gravy, turkey! All from scratch. I think that's enough even without the turkey and gravy! If someone wandered into the kitchen with a nut roast I'd struggle! Pudding is fruit salad, Christmas pud (not suet because I prefer it with butter) and brandy butter.

You obviously cater very well so that vegetarians have plenty to eat even without a specific main course.

This MIL did not - hence the 3 boiled vegetables being the only non-meat containing things on offer. OP could not even have pudding as it had been made with animal suet and the mince pies made with lard,

How do you steam carrots in the oven?