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?

Good idea - seems stupidly cheap for M&S too!

You could probably fit a couple of boiled potatoes, a carrot and a parsnip sliced in half and some paxo stuffing balls in your air fryer, with a little sunflower oil. Pre cook some sprouts and cauliflower the day before and warm up. I wouldn't be surprised if she tucks in to your non vegan offerings, she reminds me of Pam from Gavin and Stacey.

I've shopped for a vegan family member who was staying before and they ended up eating my non-vegan food instead 🤣 - it can be really frustrating to put the effort in when the food then gets wasted (I say this as a veggie who is used to having crap options at events).

Just explain that she can have a full vegan meal (buy a (nice) vegan ready meal with a few sides from M&S or something - places like Cook also do great ones), or a vegan main with the normal sides, but you're not able to cook two entire Christmas dinners.

Save the unnecessary calories and don’t cook with goose fat @Veganornotvegan

Are there more calories in goose fat than olive or other vegetable oil? I thought they were about the same.

I love baked potatoes but if I were to be given one for Christmas dinner instead of roast potatoes I think I'd cry.

She's trying but has the gone for vegetarian in any case, so cater for her.

How hard is it to pop a few roasts in avocado oil in at the same time as the duck fat roasts or to make a separate cup of a instant gravy? Or to pop a nut roast in whilst the turkey is cooking?

Imo you are being extremely unreasonable.

Sounds like she's trying her best to be a vegan, albeit with many tangents, so just try your best at this level. Xxx

They are almost the same in terms of calories. Goose fat is slightly worse for the heart but not enough to justify denying oneself a once a year treat.

MN is not the best place for sensible dietary advice. The skinnies seem to survive on a lettuce leaf twice a week and the not-so-skinnies seem to eat everything in a 500 yard radius. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we eat mainly well and dont beat ourselves up about the odd trip to MacDonalds.

That makes no sense. Why should op change her tried-and-tested roasted veg plans just for MIL, only for MIL to go rogue and have turkey?

Just tell her to bring what she’d like to eat as you have enough to do!!!

'Pop' is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting there!

Apart from the extra work, many people find fitting an entire Christmas turkey - large enough for a dozen or more people - into their ovens quite a challenge; let alone having a completely spare shelf in there for a nut roast!

The tabloids always have articles around Christmas, screaming about how many calories people will consume on Christmas Day, should they have every possible option - and how many more calories that is than you should have per day.

Do most people actually sit there counting/worrying about the number of calories they're having on the one day out of 365 that is, for the majority of people in the country, by far the biggest feast day of the year?!

Yes — basically, all fats are 9 calories per gram.

It might feel like animal fats ought to have more because (a) they tend to taste nicer and (b) we've been told for ages how bad they are for us, but the latter point is disputed (nutritional epidemiology really is a scientific dumpster fire) and in any case the purported issue is to do with saturated vs unsaturated, not calories.

She's the one who's unreasonable. Her choices are hers, and not yours. When I was a vegan, I learned to bring food I would eat, as I just couldn't count on others to meet my needs. For dishes that are easy to do, set some aside before adding milk and butter or animal fats, but don't do any extra work. It's just not reasonable on her part.

Not vegan.
They contain milk and eggs.

If it's not for ethical reasons and she has broken her own rules to suit herself. Make everything the same. Just throw a nut roast in the oven then serve her portion and split the rest with others as a stuffing. If she complains say you had Yorkshire puddings dripping in animal fat because that's all they had. So that's what's happening here.

The choices she has made are still vegetarian even if not vegan - where you have never seen her break the rules by having meat I think you do need to have veggie roast potatoes and gravy. If you have a very small roasting tray for her potatoes you can also bung some parsnips in. Or instead of honey roast parsnips do maple roast parsnips this year, they taste just as nice but everyone can have them. A small pan of vegan gravy using some cooking water from the veg plus vegetarian gravy granules isn't much effort.

The Yorkshire puddings were unlikely to be dripping in animal fat though. It would have been the milk and eggs, making them vegetarian.

As an added note, and the OP didn’t mention them tbf.
There is no place for Yorkshire puddings on a Traditional Christmas Dinner 😂

You'd have to search very hard to find someone fitting the description in your last paragraph. Because you've taken a number of things that may be found in people who follow vegan diets and rolled them into one in order to create the worst possible 'vegan' to take issue with.
Some vegans are very strict. Some vegans try to impose vegan standards on other people. Some vegans believe they and everyone else should go 100%. Some believe 90% is better than nothing and don't care what other people do, and many other approaches too.
Its not uncommon to find people moving towards veganism in their middle age, as part of a general health clean up to help towards a healthy old age. The OPs MiL may well fit this group, as do I, and several people in my circle.
Given most of us are former meat eaters, we wouldn't dream of lecturing people on animal welfare issues. We might also be a little easier on ourselves because the priority is to sustain the new diet, not to live up to a standard we've set ourselves.
For example, I accidentally bought a food product containing milk powder. On discovering it, my choice was to eat it or bin it. I decided the least harm would be to eat it and avoid food waste. I would still call myself a vegan when sharing my dietary requirements mattered, because there's not usually a drop box saying 'vegan unless it's essential to eat something with a trace of animal products to avoid wasting food'.

Going against the grain here (admit I haven’t read all the responses) but your MIL whilst not 100% vegan is definitely vegetarian so meat juice gravy, duck fat potatoes and sausage meat stuffing still wouldn’t be ok. I’m vegetarian and wouldn’t eat them.

I absolutely wouldn’t expect you to provide me with an alternative ‘main’ like a nut roast but it would be nice to be able to eat the majority of the sides. However, if you didn’t feel able to do this, I’d prefer the heads up so I could act accordingly (bring my own etc) Don’t just tell her to suck up eating meat products, it’s mean spirited.

DH and I have has this conversation many times. Hats off to anyone vegan, BUT... We have noticed that those that are Vegan always expect everyone else to cater for them (as in this case, a separate meal for them) but if you go to their's, they expect you to eat what they do. You are NBU even more so since you have witnessed her not being fully vegan.

@Tallgirlsrock of course if you go to a vegan household, who don’t eat animal products for ethical reasons, they aren’t going to serve you animal products!

Grow up!

Well, yes. Because their usual food meets your dietary requirements, it just leaves out some foods you eat that they dont. Whereas your usual food needs some things ommitting so your friends can eat it.