Catering for a vegetarian?!

[Magenta3]

My brother's gf is a vegetarian. We're having everyone over next weekend for a get together. My family eats a lot of meat and I feel a bit unsure of what to cook her, and if I'm being honest I don't see why we should change our catering for one person.

I asked my brother to bring along some of their own food for her (he eats meat so will be fine, it's literally only for her) and he seemed annoyed at me. He obliged but I could tell he wasn't happy. When we've been to theirs she doesn't cook meat for us so it feels one sided. She jokes she'd probably poison us as she doesn't know how to cook meat but realistically she doesn't want to cook it, so why should we for her?

It would be very rude to invite this lady to dinner and ask her to bring her own food! The request might be justifiable if she had multiple food allergies and you were genuinely worried that you might accidentally poison her. Providing a meatless meal is really not difficult or prohibitively expensive.

They do, to a degree. Look up information on the human gut microbiome. Whilst much digestion in humans comes from chemical action, some of it is down to microbes and those will change according to the food we digest.

Think about it - have you never had an upset stomach due to a change in food? I usually eat vegetarian food but will very occasionally eat fish. I can't eat too much of it though, because it does upset my stomach. There have been times in my life when I've eaten more fish, and then it becomes easier to digest.

And yes, I know eating fish, but no other meat, makes me pescetarian not vegetarian.

You’re so inclusive and welcoming, would love to be your sister in law…

Well my coeliac chum is coming round for dinner tonight. I've asked her to bring her own food. The rest of us will be tucking into home-made chilli and rice, a nice green salad, corn tortilla chips, guacamole and finishing off with some brownies (made with chickpea flour).

@Hillarious , you rogue you.
That's my attitude to the 'Vegetarian Food', it's just food ffs. Like your meal is a normal meal not some pre-concieved 'Gluten-Free Food'.

Happy to cook for you any time @KirstinBlest

I heartily recommend Bosh!, the Green Roasting Tin and a lot of the Ottolenghi recipes - but you may know those already.

I love vegan and vegetarian food, though avoid Quorn and other fake meats as I prefer the real stuff, especially slow roasted lamb.

At the very least, you could have easily picked up a frozen vegetarian curry, it's not like you'd have to make it from scratch. It's rude to invite someone for dinner then expect them to bring their own food. It pretty pathetic that you couldn't even be bothered to make her feel welcome at the dinner she's been invited to.

Good lord, even the reveered Mrs Houghton (MiL) who wins WI awards for her lemoncurd, makes her own marmalade & is a traditional meat & 2 veg kind of 70-odd year old managed/manages to make me vegetarian food with two veg, pasta, etc when her wayward son (Dear hubby of 18+ years now) brought me home to meet the family 1998 / we visit for Xmas etc!!!! I was vegetarian for 13 years from 1995 & now eat some meat, but not all...if you will a 'flexitarian' (or as one of my sisters calls it: "all lies, she eats chicken").

YABhugelyupyourownbackside!
Get thee to your local Tescos / Sainsburys / Waitrose (not butchers/farm shop) & pick youself up a packet of the finest Linda McCartney from the freezers & wack said pie, lattice, etc. in an oven at approx Fan 170/180/200° for the pack suggested time frame, add some yummy sunday lunch type veg, potatoes that have been roasted in olive oil & sea salt on a seperate trat to the duck / goose fat ones & bingo bango, you'll have won yourself a new future SiL!

Basically, grow-up, behave, be nice...I really hope you've heard of BTECs (also a thing for at least the last 30 years), otherwise we're in bigger trouble than I thought!
What will you do when the apocolypse starts & there's fewer cows for beef???

Don't forget to do veggie gravy too (that's the green tub of Bisto)! Problem solved.

I was veggy for over 10 years. I've also now ate meat for over 10 years. I always told people I would just eat whatever they had minus meat, but to be honest most people were lovely and realised that cooking for a vegetarian is t that difficult! There's a ton of convenience food like Quorn if you want to go down that route, would take you a second to shove on a veggie option. You are being difficult on purpose it seems and your brother will resent you for it. You would be kinder just to uninvite them than to tell them to bring her food with her as though she is allergic to anything on your table...

I used to be veggie for well over ten years. I eat red meat now but no pork but still eat the majority of my meals as veggie. I don't understand how people can't even try veggie food, it's tasty!

You're making this a bigger problem than it is because you see it as a problem and you want to be a martyr.

It's really not that hard these days unless you go out of your way to make it hard

It's easy to shove a veggie option on as unlike meat they don't need cooked through. I still struggle cooking meat as all I ever cooked as a teen and young adult was veggie! It's completely different.

For the curry. Start it off, make the base/paste (onion spices etc) then transfer a small portion of the base to a smaller pan.

Add meat to the big pan for everyone else.

Add a tin of drained chickpeas to the small pan for the veggie

Continue the rest of the recipe as usual. Do the veggie version as you would the meat but with chick peas.

I eat meat. My partner is veggie. When I'm with him sometimes I eat veggie, others we have different foods. His friends are mostly veggie, but have offered to prepare meat for me (ofc I don't accept but still). Shock horror

The absolute best thing you can do to alienate this woman is refuse to prepare her some food. If I were her & you treated me like that, I would dislike you forever and a day. If I were your brother I'd think you'd been a colossal arse.

Prepare her some food ffs. You're the host

You shouldn't be having guests then, that's basic hospitality.