SD, 10 years old decided to be vegetarian

[NotAVegetarian]

Am I being unreasonable to not want to cook 2 different meals for my 10 year old sd who has decided she wants to be vegetarian. She's very adamant about it. We are a family of 6, and meal times are busy enough. I hate the thought of now meal planning and cooking 2 different meals. Arghh! AIBU or should I just pull up my sleeves and do it. I do most of the cooking in our house. At the moment I've told my husband he can do her meals, I have bought vegetarian food for her and tonight I kept pasta aside for my husband to sort out her dinner but I felt bad.

My 6yo dd went vegetarian. I found the slow cooker handy. One large one small. Make something where the base ingredients are the same but put veg sausages / quorn mince in one. Meat version in the other.

Or sausage and mash. We did a fair bit of fish as I said she needed to keep eating that.

How often is she at your house? If it’s only a couple of times a week then why not make veggie meals for those days for everyone?

@QueenArseClangers she's home with us 3 weeks at a time and then with her mum for 3 weeks. The 3 weeks are hectic with 4 kids and their various activities. I am hoping it's a phase, but she seems very determined at the moment. Think I'm going to leave this up to my husband to deal with.

I don’t see why you need to cook two meals for her - there’s so much good, healthy vegetarian food that you could make. I think you’re being a bit mean to be honest. Ten is plenty old enough to make a conscious decision not to eat meat and you should try to respect that and make her feel welcome/included nonetheless.

You need to respect her decision and it may not a phase at all. But you can make it as easy as possible by getting DH to do it, by batch cooking stuff she likes in large quantities, sometimes having everyone eat veggie and doing meals with one element that can be changed like sausages.

She’s choosing not to eat dead animals. That’s completely okay and loads of people become lifelong veggies from an early age.

I think fair enough to get your DH to do it.

I don’t think you should have to impose vegetarian meals on everyone else for the whole 3 weeks (and I say that as a veggie myself)

Would the rest of the family like to try a veggie only meal maybe once a week? Veggie chilli/bolognese can be v nice when done well and taste fairly similar to meat ones/

I am vegetarian ( well I’m not- I eat fish, but mostly veggie) and my kids and DH are not , and I do most of the cooking so I am coming at the same problem from the opposite side. It does take more planning and I can see why you aren’t happy, but there are ways to destress it. Tonight we had pasta in a creamy sauce- they had added bacon, I didn’t. Sausage and mash- I just have veggie version. Stir fry- I fry the meat separately and add tofu to mine. I make cauliflower cheese , I have it as my main, they have it as a side. Things like veggie stew ( with veggie meatballs) can be batch cooked and frozen, there are lots of new tofu / Quorn products around now which make things easier. You will need to watch her protein intake and make sure she gets enough eggs/ milk/ nuts etc and if she perseveres with it - get her trying out recipes and cooking things that you can freeze.

You could see it as a chance for really healthy eating and embrace the change

So Dad has to cook her meals and you cook everyone elses!

How to alienate a child who lives with you 50:50, if she was diagnosed with coeliacs or became a diabetic would you do the same.

How to alienate a child who lives with you 50:50, if she was diagnosed with coeliacs or became a diabetic would you do the same.

😂😂 how to be over dramatic

Thanks, the batching cooking is a good idea! I can then just defrost as and when.

@takeittakeit I would never alienate her, I adore her! I'm just exhausted by the evening and really don't feel like getting caught up in cooking two different meals each evening. The batch cooking is a good idea though.

Just cook 1 meal that's vegetarian. Simple

Don’t worry about takeit- a perusal of posting history will show they rarely post anything remotely supportive to step mums

You sound really negative and unsupportive :( it's not that difficult to cook without the meat and add it in after you have played hers up.

With that many children you are lucky you don't have children with multiple life threatening allergies. Then you'd have some serious cooking to do

Eat more veggie food as a family at home. It’s healthier and better for the planet.

There are some easy cheats. Quorn burgers, “fish” fingers etc to make things easier after a long day.

It’s easy enough no? Substitute meat/fish for quorn, any meat based pasta sauces she can have veggie pesto, if it’s really impossible to make a quick substitution then stock the freezer up with ready meals and do one for her when necessary. And perhaps see it as an opportunity to do more vegetable based meals for everyone.

Ok from experience... at first we embraced it. 2 different meals. Lots of vegetarian options etc. But dss is autistic and likes meat, one of the few things he will eat. So then it became 2 to 3 different meals. As sometimes we have to cook dss something separate. We became exhausted. So we stuck to one main meal and where it was meat, we gave her everything we had except the meat. Which was often a plate of vegetables. We gave her the choice to cook something separately . We tried to embrace it. Today she's turned around and said she's eating meat again... being veggie isn't worth the hassle.
I completely sympathise. I'm not sure we did it right but we tried! She ate spag bol tonight. You wouldn't have even known she's been a vegetarian for 7 weeks.

It does sound like a pain. I wouldn't cook 2 meals every night though.
There's lots of great vegetarian recipes out there (I eat a low meat diet) but at the same time I don't see why the whole households meals should change around one person (allergies aside).

I'm, maybe harshly, of the view that if someone is old enough to make a decision on their dietary choices then they are old enough to muck in and help arrange it. (E.g. at meal times if you're doing fish fingers then DSD can help and get her own ones out and put them in the oven with supervision)

Could you not just cook one veggie meal for all? I’m a vegetarian and my partner is a coeliac. Rather than faffing around making separate meals we just make one vegetarian gluten free meal or one gluten free meal where the meat can be easily substituted like sausage and mash

I turned veggie at about that age. My mum made me learn to cook and I cooked every weekend for the whole family. Best thing she ever did. Support and life lessons.

3 nights a week cook a veggie meal for the whole family, it's not hard and it's a great way to get veggies into everyone. Two nights a week cook something adaptable (like pps suggestions about using different slow cookers, meat sausages and veg sausages), two nights a week SD eats batch cooked meals (by DH) from the freezer. One night a week SD cooks for the family. That's only two nights a week where you have to do anything extra.

My DS decided to go veggie at 6 and it was an informed choice (we had a long, long discussion with him to make sure he understood why he'd made this choice) but I insisted he eat fish fingers, mainly to make life easier for his friends' parents. I also told him when he couldn't eat certain sweets due to the gelatin etc, to try to put him off, but it didn't he just didn't eat them.

At 10 he went completely vegetarian. I either fed the whole family a vegetarian meal or did 2 meals exactly the same but one with meat. This worked well and was not too much of a hassle.

22 years later he's still a strict vegetarian.

My DS 12 went vegetarian about 6 weeks ago... I too insisted he eat fish which he's accepted. I cook family meals but substitute the meat for fish, eggs, beans/pulses, cheese, tofu or quorn... Its working well so far. Plus we frequently have veggie meals anyway.. Cheese & tomato pizza or pasta, omelette or stuffed peppers.

I agree with the poster who said that she helps you with her meals. If she's old enough to make a conscious decision, she's old enough to take some responsibility for it. She might get bored too.
And I second what others said about making one base meal and adding meat for everyone except her. I'm not a meat lover, so that's what I do. Sometimes, I make something easy veg for myself, depending on my mood.
My partner makes omelets some weekends and I don't like ham, kids don't like onions/tomatoes and he likes everything. So he makes 3 omelets. But ok, that's the only time he cooks, I wouldn't do that every night....