WIBTA if I refuse to cater for my ‘vegan’ MIL?

[Veganornotvegan]

My MIL recently announced that she is vegan. Great. Love that for her.

This obviously came with a request that whenever we cater for her (think Sunday lunch, dinner parties, events, etc.) we cater for her as a vegan. All good so far.

However, she says she’s vegan, but she’s not. Two recent examples when we’ve been out for dinner, she ordered a vegan chilli, but with a side of dairy sour cream (“to make it less spicy”), or a vegan roast dinner, with a side of normal Yorkshire puddings (because “there’s no vegan alternative”).

We are hosting a typical 3 / (4 with cheese course) course Christmas dinner for 14 adults and 4 children, no one else has any dietary restrictions or requirements, and my MIL wants me to make a separate vegan version of everything just for her (no duck fat potatoes, no honey roast parsnips, no meat dripping gravy, etc). WIBTA if I said no / she needs to bring her own?

But the flipside is that OP ends up being dictated to about how she cooks her sprouts. Butter and bacon make them vastly nicer!

@Poobs2022 Thank you very much! 💐

One of the things MN has taught me is that a lot of "vegans" and "vegetarians" secretly eat animal products and then lie about it!

Vegan dont eat animal products.
It's an animal product.

The industry kills (& culls) a lot of bees.
Vegans don't agree with killing bees.

It's also an odd concept IMO.

Yeah but find a vegan not driving a car made of animals is a bit slim though.

Or maybe they get round that because they don't eat cars, so it's ok in their heads.

Well, you made all of those scenarios up in your head. Noone I know who's vegan has ever told me that I hate animals for not being vegan.

In the situation I was relaying (which was not all the stuff you have added) I was asked to cook for nine people, one was vegan, so made vegan food for everyone. Noone asked me to do that but equally it didn't "just happen to be vegan", I chose to make vegan food. And noone complained. The post I was responding to said "I wouldn't inflict that on my friends" which I think is narrow minded because there is plenty of nice stuff you can do that's vegan. And it was two meals out of their whole lives. Breakfast was not vegan (I only did the dinners).

The post I was replying to and quoted was NOT!

That's just personal choice though. I hate my sprouts messed around with. Simply steamed with black pepper. No bacon or butter with them.

I was responding to a specific post, you can easily see that if you click "show more" and then follow that little exchange. I know it can be confusing but if you focus really hard I'm sure you'll get it one day.

@Veganornotvegan - could you do a little tray with parsnips, carrots and roasties done in oil, and some balls of vegan stuffing, cooked ahead of time, and slotted back into the oven while the turkey is resting - then all you need is vegan gravy granules and the nut roast?

MsSara

"I have family who are vegan, vegetarian, gluten free etc. I take pleasure in hosting and love to make sure everyone is catered for. It takes a bit more effort than just doing the same thing for everyone but I find they all appreciate the effort. Just do it Op. Even if you pre make her potatoes etc and heat them up etc."

So lovely to read this. Our Godson's brother is dairy free and I love finding special chocolate or cheese for him.

Having dietary needs can be a pain (for the individual), for whatever reason people have them. So catering to those needs and not making it a big deal can be nice. OP as your MIL is the 'problem', maybe your other half should be helping with the catering for her.

To all those people suggesting OP 'just' does a little extra tray of roast potatoes, an individual vegan main, a little jug of vegan gravy, a small dish of sprouts without lardons, a few vegan pigs in blankets etc... My kitchen is small, I only have a single oven and not many dishes, I have limited funds and cooking Christmas dinner is stressful enough already! Do people really have the resources to add all that extra work for just one person who's decided they don't want to eat some things?

I think you can go with vegan ready meal for protein, stuffing, gravy and make separate roast potatoes without duck fat for her (or get frozen roast potatoes and shove a few in the air fryer if you have one). Put maple syrup on the carrots and parsnips instead of honey and job done. A small amount of extra work but means she gets a bit of everything except mash.

I would accommodate her , however if she went to put something non vegan on her plate I would be “ oh MIL please don’t have those potatoes they aren’t vegan “

I suppose it depends on budget but it you wanted ready made vegan stuff so you could concentrate on the rest then this could be an option ?

https://www.cookfood.net/products/vegan-dinner-for-2?utm_source=google&utm_medium=shopping&utm_campaign=vegan-dinner-for-2&&utm_medium=ppc&utm_source=google&utm_term=&campaignid=18794886401&adgroupid=168156038629&utm_campaign=Shopping%7CNon%20Shop%20Locations&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=18794886401&gbraid=0AAAAAD_P-4g3Ge5LBOFHggyKiWgdZYN5m&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImvv-x5KukAMVr5BQBh0dJAa_EAQYAyABEgKlDvD_BwE

I'd get her some vegan alternatives and she can decide whether or not to break her rules on the day.

I wouldn't provide an equivalent for everything.

Sample message : Hey MIL, I'm really looking forward to seeing you ! Unfortunately I won't be able to sort an alternative for every dish, but I'll make sure you have at least some vegan options to pick from. Feel free to bring some of your own as well !

Yes, that's what I was trying to say - but I may not have phrased it very well!

People are telling OP that she can 'just' prepare her veg differently and she 'doesn't need' to add fats or animal juices/products to them - but that's how she likes to serve them! And as she doesn't have any actual vegans there, what possible reason would there be to deliberately make them vegan and - in her (and my!) opinion - less nice?!

Well just because it hasn't happened to you personally, that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen to anybody else!

Most vegans are happy to live and let live (and I'm aware that some of them would find that phrase very ironic - but I'm talking about humans); but some of them are indeed preachy and unwilling to freely accept other people's simple choice for themselves to be omnivore.

Fair enough if you were the one hosting and you chose the menu - I presume nobody was imprisoned or forced to attend against their will if they objected?!

I just looked at the Ocado site and they do a few vegan roasts, pies, side dishes (including sausages) and gravy. I think you could put together a nice meal for her from these, and maybe include a simple vegetable in your own meal and do her a baked potato?

You host so you need to cater but she will have something you can do so…not a vegan version of what you have, something different.

Indeed. And somebody who has decided that they might not want to eat some things, but then again, they might do - so your special catering (and efforts) for them could easily end up rejected on the day and left uneaten, whilst the food for everybody else has to stretch a little further.

We once had a sort of similar situation, but the opposite way around. We were catering for (iirc) 8 omnivores and 4 vegetarians, so we'd done two dishes of the meal - a huge one with the 'standard' meat version of the dish and a half-sized one with a vegetarian version.

Two of the (very frequent) meat eaters - who hadn't expressed any desire to eat veggie for that meal in advance - decided that they particularly liked the look of the veggie one and so helped themselves to about three quarters of it for themselves - leaving four vegetarians only one portion to share between them, and too much of the meaty one. We were all friends (well, supposedly) and they knew very well that one third of the people there were vegetarian and thus had been specially catered for.

I don't think it's unreasonable to tell your host in advance whether you wish to eat meaty or vegetarian/vegan (if they don't already know very well what your normal dietary preferences/needs are) - and then stick to it.

Yeap. That.

just buy something vegan you don’t cook for hours. In the oven and voilà!

If you offer to host you should cater for all. We are a veggie family but we still cater for our meat loving family when we host them.

And as she doesn't have any actual vegans there, what possible reason would there be to deliberately make them vegan and - in her (and my!) opinion - less nice?!

The sprouts with bacon and the duck fat potatoes aren’t vegetarian either, and the two items she has mentioned MIL having contained dairy/egg rather than meat.

As ever, I think this problem could be reduced by actually talking to MIL.. “are you happy to have carrots with honey and mash with cream at Xmas, since you are ok with the odd YP?”

It’s not unusual when transitioning to eat some non vegan stuff especially when eating out. So firstly you need to have a conversation with her to ascertain why she is consuming non vegan food stuff and have the conversation about if she is going to be fully vegan on Christmas Day. How you proceed will depend on her response.

As an experienced home cook, you should be easily able to accomodate keeping the veg vegan. Don’t use animal fat for the potatoes, use maple for the carrots and parsnips, take a portion out of the other stuff before adding animal products. Reduce the meat to two types and use the oven space for a vegan main that anyone can share, or buy/make an individual vegan main.

Part of hosting is making sure that all of your guests are accomodated as much as possible and with a little thought, it’s really not hard to make the necessary changes. We have been doing it for decades.