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

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I will fully admit that there is a trend in pop culture to cast vegans as some sort of holier-than-though crusader type. I will say in this thread at least, people have been good about using counter examples that indicate the trope is just that, a trope. Not to say there aren’t people that fully live up to it!

I tend to think, even as a meat-eater and lover of tasty critters, that one day it may actually evolve to the level of our current feeling about public smoking though. When I was young (and I’m younger than a lot of posters), I remember my grandparents and their generation smoking through the holiday around everyone else, and almost no one would object.

By the time I was a teen, it was expected that the family members who smoked would go around the corner as a group and light up, so no ashtrays or smoking in or around food.

By the time I was on my own (and my grandparents generation had largely passed) there was a feeling of pressure on the smokers to ‘do it at home, not here’ during family events, and to be out of sight and smell of the kids if you had to (go outside, or even down the street, not just a corner of the house).

I’m sure to a degree that those smokers of yesteryear felt that the anti-smokers of the past were being judgmental pricks, but attitudes towards acceptable risk and behavior change over time.

Will various flavors of vegetarianism and vegans become so predominant in the future that the majority just shakes their head at the fools of the past in wonder? I doubt it, but it’s possible. And if so, likely for sustainability / environmental issues rather than a philosophical sea change. But it could.

Still, as put clearly by multiple posters, most recently by @LSLGuy, a part of any large (especially family) gatherings, is the unspoken or spoken understanding that this is an event to celebrate the family and come together. Very few families live, work, and believe in perfect lockstep - so to facilitate the joy of all, everyone agrees to minimize conflict. If you cannot (as apparently the OP’s family member cannot) then it is best to not attend.

42

That’s either a typo, or you have the saddest dating history I’ve ever heard of.

43

Ex!!! Not sure where that came from.

44

I met a vegan!!!

My gf’s one nephew (22) is dating a new girl (19) who is a vegan of all things. They showed up at MIL’s house just as we were sitting down to eat. HE NEVER TOLD ANYONE SHE WAS A VEGAN.

Turns out there wasn’t a single item on the huge table that she could eat or drink. My MIL (who until yesterday thought vegan was an abbreviation of vegetarian) tried explaining to her that the turkey was free range as if that made a difference.

I, as is tradition, brought two stuffings; one with oysters, one with just a tiny bit of sausage. Someone brought a green bean casserole with crumpled bacon. The wine wasn’t vegan. The yam casserole had marshmallows. The mashed potatoes had butter, milk, and cream cheese.

Even dessert was offensive. My MIL still doesn’t understand why her jello and pretzel dessert wasn’t ok. Someone also brought figs stuffed with goat cheese, drizzled with honey.

The nephew stuffed himself. His gf sipped water. Won’t be seeing her next Thanksgiving is my guess.

45

Wait, what? She has a very restrictive diet, and showed up without warning anyone? Did she bring her own food? Does she not mind fasting while others are feasting?

It’s fairly common for a Thanksgiving spread to have nothing accessible to vegans.

(Um, we had raw green beans, and cranberry jelly from the can. I think those are both vegan. The cooked green beans had butter, as did the cooked squash and mashed potatoes. The pie shells had butter. Obviously, the turkey and sausage stuffing and gravy were not vegan.)

I’d we’d had a vegan coming, it would have been easy to include some food for them. I could have made some vegan roast squash and a baked potato with little effort, and put out some apples at dessert. Not great, but something. Heck, we could have added a nice Indian chickpea dish, too.

46

Yeah, leaving a guest to starve is extreme. You don’t have any raw fruit in the house? Some uncooked vegetables? I don’t have any great sympathy for someone with an unusual diet showing up without warning, but I’d have found something they could eat.

47

Except the turkey and gravy, everything on our table would work for a vegan, and the dessert, which I prepared aftwr the meal, could have been if a vegan had been present.

48

It’s possible she just didn’t want to put anyone off to make special accommodations for her, and she just wanted to spend some time with her boyfriend and his family. Some/many of the vegans I know will fill up on vegan food before attending a dinner party just in case there’s absolutely nothing they could eat. As a host, of course, I would prefer to know if any guest has any food restrictions/allergies, so I can make sure something is provided, but I also understand some guests don’t want to make a fuss, especially if they’re living in carnivore country where the entire concept of vegetarianism, much less veganism, is foreign and a host preparing something “vegan” may not be fully informed of what foods/food products contain animal products (like, say, gelatin or honey – though I’ve known [nearly] vegans who were okay with honey, which is not vegan by definition. Hell, even some beers and wines might not be vegan if filtered using isinglass finings. Some ultra-strict vegans may even avoid refined sugars that may have been processed with animal products [bone char]). So I can see the new girlfriend not saying anything so as not to be perceived as “uh oh … one of those” as it seems that in @kayaker’s circles vegans are pretty much unknown. But, yeah, the flip side is that it may make the host (depending on their personality) feel a bit awkward not having a guest eat at the dinner table.

49

I have a friend who buys vegan sugar to use at home, but eats the food i prepare for her that includes regular Domino sugar.

stuff about me and my friend

I always make her a pie when she visits. I make good fruit pies, and it’s only slightly less-good for using palm oil shortening instead of butter in the crust, and leaving out the butter that i usually dot the fruit with. She almost never gets to eat pie.

(I pride myself in being able to accommodate dietary restrictions, and also have several good vegan savory dishes in my repertoire. But i know she especially likes to be able to eat pie.)

Yeah, if she’s a very strict vegan, she probably can’t eat anything on lots of tables. I guess it’s a tossup whether to just eat in advance or bring your own food.

50

As an alternate explanation, we have the above. On the face of it, it’s all on the nephew. Alternately, the nephew may have mentioned she was vegan and MiL spaced it, or, as stated a moment later -

Was told at some point but didn’t -understand- to the point of assuming it would work out.

Then again, if I was bringing a serious gf to a family affair and they had any strong food preferences, I’d make sure to bring something and/or ask for a specific dish made within those constraints.

On the gripping hand, I was an idiot when I was 21. Less idiotic than some, but still an idiot.

51

My youngest sibling is vegan and since they live with my folks. There’s always vegan options at thanksgiving. I actually made the cranberry relish vegan this year as well. I don’t mind doing this, since fortunately my sibling isn’t one of the militant kind and doesn’t tell the rest of us how to eat.

52

That sure explains a lot of misunderstandings and sub-optimal performance in that period of my life.

In hindsight it’s cringeworthy how clueless I (and presumably most everyone else) was about various things at that age. Despite my thinking of myself (like presumably most everyone else thought of themselves) as being solidly into skilled capable adulthood.

53

Wrong Holiday. That’s New Year’s Eve.

54

I could almost be a vegetarian…strict vegan sounds awfully complicated. I don’t eat all that much meat. But I couldn’t give up butter.

Growing up we were clinging to the bottom of the middle class by our fingernails. My mom always bought margarine. I told my grandma I liked eating toast at her house, because she had the best jam. Turns out it was the butter that I really liked. Once I moved out on my own, no matter how little money I had, I only bought butter. There is no substitute. My brother was using some butter substitute when he was weight training, and he thought it was decent. Nope. It was awful.

But I love almost all veggies. I like beans (not so much garbanzos – it’s a texture thing). Fungi. Fruits. All good.

55

It was my MIL’s home and she just wanted to relax and enjoy the meal. We all brought various dishes and MIL cooked the turkey. Nephew and his gf showed up as we were sitting down to eat.

I messaged my gf’s brother (the nephew’s dad) asking wtf. Nephew never told anyone that he was coming or bringing this year’s gf. She insisted she wanted to meet his family. He purposely told nobody she was vegan, as he doesn’t want their relationship to be “serious”. He’ll have a new gf next Thanksgiving.

56

Sounds like he needs to grow up some.

57

Nephew emerges as quite a jerk in this matter. Hope he doesn’t inflict himself on someone new until he grows up a bit and gets some basic human civility. That is a rotten thing for him to do to the young woman in question.

58

Yikes! Does the girlfriend know their relationship isn’t serious? Did she know there wouldn’t be any food? What a shitty way to treat her.

59

I don’t know. If she’s observant she knows now that their relationship isn’t serious. I was just happy to meet a vegan.

And yet he’s had a continuous stream of attractive women over the years. He’s the black sheep of the family, I guess.

60

Can someone please explain this one to me? How is wine not vegan?