Is it awful to be happy someone has just come down with Covid? [unwanted Thanksgiving guest]

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just heard from heard from my soon-to-be Thanksgiving hostess that the wife of one of my nephews has just been diagnosed with Covid. A mild case, thankfully, not much more than a common cold as far as symptoms go, but it means she and nephew will be quarantining themselves over Thanksgiving and can’t join us.

This news was delivered in tones that would have fit with “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!”

Which is really mean, but ever since nephew married her four years ago she has make every family holiday gathering as miserable as she can. She’s a vegan, see, and a militant and very rude one. There are others in the family with various food issues, but they just don’t eat whatever they dislike/are sensitive/allergic too and enjoy the rest and the companionship with family. LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE.

Ms. Vegan delivers a series of lectures through out the meal, on how bad meat eating is for us and the world and possibly the whole universe. How evil and horrible we are to eat animals. How we don’t have to eat the meat-contaminated versions of dish A and B and C because the ‘pure’ vegan versions our hostess provided for her sake are just as good and probably better, so we could at least take the baby step of leaving the butter out of the mashed potatoes.

Well, no, Ms. Vegan. They don’t taste as good. There’s a reason hundreds of years of humans have added butter to their mashed potatoes…IT TASTES GOOD THAT WAY. Ditto for all the other animal-origin stuff that we ‘slip’ into various dishes. It’s generally {some relative}'s recipe for that dish. We grew up with it, we LIKE it that way, it’s a TRADITION for us.

<pant, pant>

Okay, in fairness we are a carnivorous lot. The first year she came she survey the groaning table and announced that the only things on it she could eat were the cranberry sauce and the olive & pickle plate. And she HATES cranberries!

Our hostess has tried in the years since then. Cooking separate versions of things without the offending ingredients, adding new vegan dishes, once picking up an entire certified vegan take out meal for two (nephew is a sort-of vegan at this point, as in he doesn’t eat meat while she’s watching), but it’s not good enough. Nothing would be, except for everyone else falling into line with her dictates.

And thus thanks to Covid, the rest of us have a new blessing to be thankful for this year!

2

I am not sure I’d be “happy”, just plain relieved!

3

I’d be happy she couldn’t attend, but not because of her reason. I currently have Covid-19. A mild case, to be sure, but it’s nothing to be happy about. I’d be more sympathetic.

4

I think you yourself are not actually happy that she has covid as such (that probably would be an unworthy thought) but you are happy that she is unable to make it to the occasion for whatever trivial and non-fatal reason that may be, and that seems fine.

Who hasn’t thought similar thoughts in the past?

5

N_B hit the nail on the head here. Nothing in your minor rant was about COVID other than, and let’s give credit, said individual’s responsible attitude towards NOT exposing everyone else. While this thread has been moved to QZ, responses to @StarvingButStrong’s feelings about the family member may be more pit like than QZ like, but that’s up to the mods.

Speaking in a non-Pit like manner though, my Thanksgiving with the in-Laws is informed by my wife (vegetarian, but not vegan, and for taste and health rather than morality) and one of her cousins who is very vegan but brings her own food every time. The rest of us eat whatever we find tasty, and with 20+ people and many fine cooks, there’s always something.

The holiday (along with IMHO all family holidays) work best when everyone tries to be considerate, which not everyone will manage to do. May this year be one where everyone succeeds @StarvingButStrong!

6

Yeah, I wondered where to put this. I didn’t even consider QZ, because as you noted, it really has nothing to do with covid, but I was torn between CS (food/entertaining) and MPSIMS (certainly qualifies as pointless stuff.)

How do I go about suggesting it be moved to one of those? Maybe with a title change, if that’s what triggered it?

7

I agree, W_E probably gave more weight to the title than the content of your OP when moving it. There was a bit of disconnect between the two but it’s not like that has ever happened here before. :laughing:

I’d flag your own post or just @ a mod. Probably with your new suggestion of the title, based on where you want to be -

I’d probably go with something like “Vegan or not, -this-Thanksgiving we’re having it MY way!”

8

MPSIMS seems like the more appropriate forum. Let’s move it there.

9

I’d start by never inviting someone like that back but it is your family.

I am a professional cheese maker. I sell mozzarella to the local pizza place. I also make vegan mozzarella for them. The dairy version takes milk, rennet, citric acid and a little salt at the end of the cooking process for flavor.

The vegan stuff starts as oatmeal, water and way too many chemicals for me to type. One serving has twice the recommended sodium content, 100% of the fat and a ton of carbs.

It tastes nothing like the real stuff, I can’t even get hubs to taste it if I think it felt off during the process.

I typed all that out to say that if she eats prepared vegan food often, she probably won’t be a problem much longer.

10

My wife and I just got back from visiting her family. Was very busy. One person we did not see because of schedules was her nephew. He’s a good guy I guess, and a wonderful father from what I can see. But he has this tough guy persona that really grates on me.

My Wife and I are going to have a couple of cousins over for T-day at my recently deceased mothers house. It’s close to them, and far from me, but I have things to do there.

One of the cousins is a vegetarian. Fine, no problem, we are ordering Chinese (make it easy) Well get a few vegi dishes and maybe a beef with broccoli or something. Some hot and sour soup too. Whatever. She is not judgmental at all.

I a have another dear friend that is a vegitarian. When I see here we normally hang out at a bar near her place. We split a pizza. She always says to get whatever I want on my ‘half’. Bah, I’m fine with a vegi pizza. And just do that.

OP, the militant people really bug me. The vegetarians (not vegans) I know are very low key. We make allowances for each other. But no butter in mashed potatoes is right out. That’s crazy.

11

We don’t have any veggie/vegans in the family, but there are a lot of drinkers on my side and frankly, I don’t like being around them. I’m not anti-alcohol, but when the alcohol dominates, I’d rather be elsewhere. Like, start out with Mimosas and Bloody Marys, then move on to wine or beer or whatever, then Jello shots, then mixed drinks… Really? You can’t socialize otherwise?

This year, Thanksgiving is with the non-drinking side of the family. Christmas, on the other hand… :roll_eyes: We’ll make an appearance, then split. But I guess that’s why they never want to come to our house . Ya think?

12

I have no problem accommodating any dietary need (other than, say, koshering the whole kitchen). I consider it an entertaining challenge, not unlike teaching a class with blind, deaf, EFL speakers, and other students, or leading an linpatient psychiatric group that includes depressed, manic, and hallucinating patients. Fortunately, no one has harrangued me/us about having meat or something else on the table.

13

I can sympathize with the OP. My older stepdaughter turned into a militant vegan* a few years after my wife and I got married. Holiday dinners were accompanied by lectures and PETA pamphlets. So yeah, anything to reduce the usual amount of stress that accompanies any holiday get-together is cause for celebration.

* She’s still vegan, sort of, but much more chill about it.

14

Much more chili would be better. :hot_pepper:

15

It isn’t awful if you have those feelings because you aren’t the one that invited her.

However, I would like to ask the “soon-to-be Thanksgiving hostess” why she would invite someone who, “ever since nephew married her four years ago she has make every family holiday gathering as miserable as she can.” If it is for the sake of the nephew, I think that is a mistake. It’s his wife and his problem, not the family’s problem. I’d invite him and not her and leave the decision up to him.

16

My daughter is a vegetarian*, as is her husband, but they are totally chill with whatever anyone else chooses to eat. I love preparing Indian food for them or going to an Indian restaurant with them.

*She blames me for her vegetarian awakening. She lived with us for a few months at one point, and she came to love our chickens and their personalities. She would take a chair and book down to the chicken yard and read with them. She stopped eating chicken then and thought a lot about her diet in general. Her husband (fiance at the time) was already vegetarian for health reasons, so it has worked out well.

17

Normally I think of you as one of the wisest dopers on delicate interpersonal situations. This however seems to interpersonally-challenged me to be offering the ultimate poisoned chalice to the person you’re trying to help. There’s no way the nephew wins, or even saves face, once both the wife and the rest of the family know what invitation was made.

Admittedly, it’s the wife who has maneuvered the whole family into this no-win box canyon. Everybody else in this pitiful little psychodrama is but a victim.

My vote for “least bad but still shitty option” would be to invite neither nephew nor wife and inform him privately of why. And publicly make sure he knows and is tangibly shown that he’s fully loved and appreciated in other ways that don’t involve family dinners at my house.

18

Louis L’Amour would be proud of this sentence. :laughing:

Short of having nephew’s wife wear a ball-gag, I think you are correct. Hug nephew, tell him you’ll miss him at the table. No reason for everyone to suffer.

19

Somehow the juxtaposition of ball-gag and L’Amour works better than you probably expected. :slight_smile:

20

Sorry, you have now met the “mean Jasmine”, LOL. I know he would never accept under those circumstances, but he needs to do something about his bitch of a wife. The best way for him to “save face” and, in fact, be something of a hero is to do exactly that. Until then, he can share the same doghouse with her.