LifeOnWry, just to clear this up, I am one of those people who says she has an allergy to cigarette smoke. I know it’s not technically an allergy, but it’s not as easy to say: “I have a histamine reaction, my asthma is triggered and it makes me feel ill.” Most people take allergy to mean “having an adverse reaction to.”
Monty does not seem to be reading the same thread as us.
Vegal girl was highly inconsiderate. I hate it when militant vegetarians/vegans go on about the cruelty and grossness of the food you are currently eating. That’s just fucking rude. On the other hand, my best friend (vegetarian) is coming over for passover, and we’re making sure she has plenty to eat.
Bloom County fans may remember that for a short period of time, near the end of the strip, jerky Steve Dallas was turned into a soft-headed PC weenie. A Sunday strip, in which his girlfriend had slaved over cooking dinner for him, contained the following:
“Whatsa matter?”
“I don’t eat meat, Megan”
“Then eat the quiche.”
“I don’t eat eggs.”
“Lemon custard”
“I don’t eat dairy products.”
“I’ve been cooking for six hours.”
“I’m, a vegan, Megan. Vegans only eat non-exploitative, cruelty free vegetable flesh.”
“Eat my stuffed artichoke.”
“It’s soaked in butter.”
“Eat the peas.”
“They’re squooshy”
“Eat lead(as she points a gun.”
“Megan, baby, that’s just the cholesterol talking!”
My point exactly. Which is why I say I am allergic to milk, since nobody REALLY wants to know that drinking milk makes me a fartin’ machine.
If someone says they’re allergic to something, whether they actually are or not is nobody’s business. As a good host/ess, at least take someone’s claims seriously. As a good guest, make those claims when necesssary or just shut the hell up.
Another unconfrontational vegan checking in. I try by best to avoid having anyone find out I’m vegan because I just don’t feel like getting into an argument. I’ve found that the majority of people “curious” about my diet are doing so in order to start a debate that after 6 years, I’m just tired of participating in. I don’t engage people in debates about eating meat, why would they want to involentarily engage me in one about not eating meat?
People like the bitch in the OP piss me off because they give the rest of us normal vegans a bad name. It also eggs on all of the obnoxious meat eaters who feel as if it’s their “duty” to harrass vegans.
I usually just eat before any social gathering, enough to keep my stomach from growling, but not enough that I won’t be able to eat something if it’s available to me. I’ve found that even informing a host of my diet isn’t a gurantee that food I’ll be able to eat will be offered. Example: Christmas at my b/f’s mom’s house. I’ve been with my b/f for 2 years, and she is very aware that I’m a vegan. Everytime we go out to eat she lets me choose the place, ect. She’s a lovely, accomidating woman.
However, on Christmas, she must have had temporary amnesia because there was nothing, save for the dinner rolls, that I could eat. I was shocked, because she knows I’m a vegan, so I didn’t do my usual pre-event meal, I didn’t feel I had to. I was miserable, trying to keep my stomach from growling too loudly. Luckily, my wonderful b/f snuck me off for a little bit to find something to eat at the mall across the street. I still don’t know what happened with his mother, she never did mention anything about it again, but it definately showed me to never, never go into any situation you’re not 100% sure you’ll be okay (foodwise) in without making adequate preperations for yourself.
And **Ava and Joy ** I’m so glad to have other “normal” vegans on this board.
Oh, and I also wanted to comment about the allergy thing. I’ve just found it easier to tell people I’m allergic to dairy. Alot of the time if you just say you don’t eat something, people don’t take you seriously and the assholes out there will actually try to trick you into eating it. However, if you say you’re allergic, they usually take you seriously and don’t try to fuck with you. They’re also less likely to make you have to defend your position.
Sorry for all of the confusion about the jelly. I told you, I’m a bad vegan - I don’t particularly do it for the ethical reasons, so while I pay attention to the items on the ingredients list, I won’t go mental if I miss one that happens to be vegetarian as opposed to vegan.
I’ve thought about this, and it really was her mistake. Instead of asking “Are you serving vegetables” her question should have been “Are you serving anything that doesn’t have any meat or meat by-products in it?” Then I am sure you would have sepated some veggies before putting butter and sauce on them.
I think that she wanted to hit you with a “GOTCHA.”
Perfect stance. It’s incredibly ill-mannered to be invited to a gathering and criticize the host’s offerings openly.
(Of course, EVERYBODY does the private complaint fests about the too-dry roast or oversweetened dessert, but rarely where the host can hear…it just ain’t polite!)
Reminds me of a party I once went to where the hostess clearly and factually stated MANY times both verbally and through e-mail that she’d be providing some of her homemade wine and that the beer on tap would be of her husband’s homebrewing skills.
So of course, despite these many notifications, half the people who showed up were utterly confused and said things like “You don’t have Miller Lite? That’s the only thing I drink, you know” instead of just drinking what was provided or being discreet and popping out to the liquor store for what they wanted.
You know, for our wedding, everything was vegetarian other than the beef and pork roasts. Everything was also kosher and halal. I knew about the vegetarian family (Hi Opal!), and about the halal guest and I wasn’t sure about any kosher, so I made sure that we accomodated everyone. It isn’t that difficult, but you have to know beforehand. Vegan person should have made her wishes known.
You’re absolutely right. There’s no excuse for it. I could be very spoiled as a vegan in that my brother is the head chef of a gourmet restaurant in town, and he pretty much makes me up a special meal when I go to his restaurant. He asked me to bring along my vegan butter once so that he could cook with that, but aside from that, he’s really good at coming up with some awesome meals for me. I certainly don’t expect every chef to do that at a restaurant (or line cook), and since most vegetarian items everywhere are loaded with butter, cream, or milk (typically pasta dishes), sometimes I just have to deal with it and eat it. If I can’t find something that’s vegan, I’m not going to starve myself - I try to familiarize myself with most menus before I go to the restaurant so that I can find a vegan item, or I try to steer my companions toward places that I know has a vegan item on the menu (TGIFridays has a wonderful veggie grill with pasta now that’s vegan - I try to suggest them to my friends when we go out). I do get annoyed when I hear about my vegan friends sitting in a restaurant bitching and moaning because there’s nothing there that they can eat. It helps to plan ahead.
And Ginger, I would love to have that recipe for the chocolate cake, if you don’t mind passing it along. My email should be in my profile, or if you plan on being at the NoVa DopeFest (I thought I’d read somewhere that you’re near NoVa) in a couple of weeks, I’d be happy to grab a copy from you there. I’m a terrible cook (my chef brother got all of the talent), but I’m always on the lookout for good recipes that I can make.
Maybe I am just flypaper for freaks, because I have had several leather wearing vegetarians verbally attack me over my meat eating.
I finally came up with a response that seems to quiet them down. I glance down and if I see leather shoes, I comment
“Nice shoes, did the cow live you the skin in her will? The reason I eat meat is because if I didn’t there would be all these naked cows from your use of leather.”
Yes, I know it technically not accurate, but it does tend to make them shut up.
With that said, if someone is going to have dinner at my house, I will make every possible arrangement to accommodate their eating habits assuming that I know about them before hand If you don’t tell me before hand I can’t help you as my crystal ball is in the shop.
Bullshit. Because the OP clearly stated that the guest said she was a VEGETARIAN before hand. She only said she was VEGAN AFTER dinner had been served.
I would never try to trick a vegetarian into eating meat, but I sometimes do it the other way (or similar), mainly because I really like cooking and it is great to be able to make something that vegetarians can eat, that non-vegtarians also find appealing.
My absolute triumph though was the time I took a couple of pizzas in to work for an office buffet, my co-worker looked on jealously at people tucking in “Oh, they do look good, but I can’t” (She is coeliac), you should have seen her face light up when I told her they were completely gluten-free (the other people eating them never noticed a thing).
Much better, but this still wouldn’t have helped me.
It just wouldn’t occur to me to consider dairy products to be meat by-products, because they’re not.
Maybe I’m being a nitpicky jerk, but my profession has taught me to be very precise. “Meat by-products” would throw me. If she had said “animal products of any kind” or something like that we would have been getting somewhere. If I heard that I’d figure there was something bigger going on here and ask for details.
As Zenster said, expecting the average person to have any idea of what “vegan” means is ridiculous. A clarification like “no meat by-products” is no clarification at all.
Ginger, please do us all a favor and post that vegan chocolate cake recipe over in the Recipe Thread. I’m sure a lot of people would be very grateful.
I just wanted to add that people who intentionally bait or (without invitation) attempt to debate vegan or vegetarian people about their dietary choices are basically just as assholish (thank goodness for the Pit!) as militant vegans or vegetarians. What part of “I don’t eat meat.” or “I don’t eat animal products.” do they not understand? Those who feel compelled to draw someone else into an argument about personal dietary practices must have some latent doubts about their own.
To me, it’s much the same as trying to persuade someone that their religion or similar sort of outlook is wrong. IT’S A PERSONAL FUCKING CHOICE! People who are unable to grasp this are flaming fucking jerkoffs. As a chef, I rather enjoy the opportunity to compose a vegan recipe. It tests and expands my non-meatoid cooking skills. Cooks who are so lacking in talent that they cannot adapt or invent a recipe meeting the dietary needs of others should hang up their aprons and break their knives.
comments like this give me pause. While I know that many people do have genuine food allergies, I can’t help thinking that many other people are transforming food antipathy into so-called “allergies.”
If Ferret Herder are a quarter of a serving and felt fine, why did the revelation that the food contained chicken broth set off gastric distress? If you had not been told, would she still have had gastric distress?
There are foods I can’t stand, like liver, mushrooms, olives, and mayonnaise. Hate 'em, won’t eat 'em, detest 'em. But they aren’t deadly, just disgusting. If someone served a mushroom and olive casserole with mayonnaise dressing, I would have a small bit to be polite. I certainly wouldn’t say that I had an allergy or demand to be served something special just to please me.
You make a really valuable point here, and it’s something that occured to me with Monty’s criticism. (I’m not slamming Monty, btw, just registering a caveat.) There are a lot of shades and permutations of vegetariansim and they can be very confusing, especially to an “outsider”. IME–and YMMV–honest misunderstanding is much more common than deliberate offense.
Example: I’m a fairly adept cook but rabid on the issue of at trying to fix things people can enjoy. Several close friends are vegetarians and I frequently eat “veggie” myself just out of preference, so I have a fair number of tasty recipes at hand. No biggie. But my friends are ovo-lacto (is that the right term?) so eggs and dairy aren’t issues. That misled me when a friend who’s vegan came to dinner. I didn’t think twice about butter, etc. It just simply didn’t occur to me. And I felt awful. She wasn’t blindsiding me; it was just an honest miscommunication.
She was wonderful about it, very easygoing and ready to make a meal of the salad. It ended up being fun, and educational as well. I packed up the main course for leftovers, so nothing went to waste, and we had a blast rustling up something quick she could eat: boiled some pasta, lightly steamed then quick sauteed some veggies in good olive oil w/ loads of garlic then tossed it all together for Sorta Pasta Primavera. I shaved parmesan atop mine; she didn’t. Tasted great, had a good time in good company, no problem.
While we cooked I discovered how many animal products lurk in ingredients I’d never considered for an instant, e.g. gelatin, Worchestershire sauce, etc. I’m rambling but my point is, vegetarianism can be confusing but it’s surely nothing that need present a huge, ugly, hairy problem if all parties approach it with a titch of common sense, goodwill and flexibility.
FTR, I have no patience or respect for anyone who uses food to bludgeon other people. Food is basic, the essence of hospitality. People who abuse that are sadly lacking, IMO.
