Eh, I’m Jewish. I do not keep kosher, but i routinely accommodate people who do. I can accommodate vegans just as easily.
I guess, as a picky eater, i also pride myself in being able to offer my guests foods they can safely enjoy. I would be annoyed by a guest who wanted to direct the menu for everyone, but i appreciate learning what each guest needs to be comfortable dining at my table.
I bet. That’s totally brilliant.
If you have an Asian grocery store near you, they’ll often have vegan sauces and packets that are easy to add onto tofu, like mabo tofu or golden curry, or a variety of other Thai/Indian/Chinese/Japanese dipping sauces and marinades.
Pro tip: If the nutrition facts show any grams of cholesterol at all, it’s not vegan (dietary cholesterol only comes from animal products). The inverse may not be true, though, i.e., products with 0 cholesterol may still have non-vegan ingredients.
Anyway, personally I find plain tofu to be one of the hardest things to cook well. It’s just a blob of nondescript tasteless protein on its own and generally needs to be cooked and/or seasoned well to have any chance of being tasty. (As an exception, though, the Japanese like cold tofu with soy sauce… you can find and try that at any ramen restaurant)
You can get partially cooked and preseasoned baked tofu, e.g. from Trader Joe’s and WildWood, which can be a easier to work with.
I also have a bazillion vegan cookbooks I could send you if you really want to try your hand at it. Not that they ever helped me, lol…
One of my favorite meals is pasta marinara. I usually have a side salad and boiled or sautéed vegetables with it. As long as I use olive oil instead of butter for the vegetables, and don’t put parmesan cheese on the pasta, then the whole meal is incidentally vegan. It’s no good if you’re trying to go carb-lite, but it’s not a meal I would classify as “cooking vegan” either.
A specific AITA situation I recall was kind of a flip-flop of the OP example. Instead of the person with dietary choices insisting on a special menu that everyone else must also eat, this person was instead admonished for bringing their own food and either eating it at the table or going into the kitchen to eat it, I can’t recall. I tend to lean more towards these situations being genuine, even if a bit slanted, because so often the scenarios seem too bizarre to be made up.
I’d have to go down to Bellingham, or up to Canada.
I’ve had luck with family-style tofu.
I’ve seen it there, but haven’t tried it. (The tofu I’m making today is from TJ’s.)
I only know two vegetarians IRL. (He’s ovo-lacto, and she’s pesco-ovo-lacto.) I don’t know any vegans.
Your friends are lucky 
A yoga teacher friend of mine was culturally Jewish but doesn’t generally keep kosher either. For Hanukkah she made me (just me! that’s how awesome she was) some vegan latkes, my first experience with them. Still the best potato-y food I’ve ever had!
My father’s recipe for latkes requires chicken fat. 
And an egg.
But I’ve made them with goose fat, instead, and honestly, they would be fine with just peanut oil, and some other binder instead of the egg. The egg doesn’t really important any flavor. (The chicken fat does, but it’s not as if there aren’t other delicious fats.)
Safeway (is that a thing where you live?) often have them too in the “ethnic” aisle, but that’s probably a regional thing. Not all of them even have an ethnic aisle, I think?
What exactly is “family-style” tofu…? I thought you just meant homemade at first, but is it actually a particular dish?
I mean, it’s not going to beat a good burger or fried chicken, but it’s much better than the nondescript beige blob of uncooked unseasoned tofu… strictly IMHO
The very best tofu I’ve ever had was in Japan. It was freshly made. It was mild, but delicious, like a vegan pudding or junket. I realized as i ate it that every other piece of tofu I’d ever encountered was a little stale. I probably dipped it in a bit of sour sauce, i don’t recall. I just remember being overwhelmed at how tasty plain old tofu could be.
Heh. I was just at Safeway yesterday. Lucerne cottage cheese is pretty good, but I wish they carried Knudsen like they did in SoCal.
When I worked in Orange, there was a teriyaki/Chinese takeout within walking distance. They had a dish called ‘family-style tofu’ that I loved. Here is a Google search for “family-style tofu” Jiachang Doufu recipe. The AI overview, which includes a recipe, says:
Jiachang Doufu (Family-Style Tofu) is a classic Sichuan dish featuring pan-fried tofu, savory fermented bean paste (doubanjiang), and vegetables simmered together for a flavorful, hearty meal. The key is using firm tofu, pan-frying it until golden, and creating a thick, savory sauce with garlic, ginger, and scallions.
The search results also return a SDMB thread by @NoCoolUserName, Feb. 2009: Recipe needed: Jiachang dofu (Family style tofu).
Sometimes not-meat is the thing.
Really? I once lived by and volunteered for a local tofu shop (in the US) and even fresh from the factory, I didn’t particularly like plain white tofu. It’s like eating eggwhites doused in soymilk. Their flavored tofus, spreads, and soy-sage patties were great, though.
Maybe I’m just picky about my flavors and textures, or maybe the Japanese one really WAS that much better? I’d believe it… I never once had a bad meal in Japan… even their 7-11 foods were way better than most of what I could get stateside.
But still, if I were in Japan, I probably wouldn’t waste a meal on just plain tofu
Huh, interesting. I’ve definitely seen and maybe even eaten similar dishes at Chinese restaurants, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it called that. (It kinda resembles “Buddha’s delight”?)
Looks tasty.
I’ve never been able to cook as well as any Chinese restaurant though… probably don’t have a wok hot enough? Then again, you could give my aunt nothing more than a warm car roof and she’d still make an amazing meal. Excuses, excuses…
I’ve seen ones in the other direction as well, where the meat eaters are offended if the v-an brings their own food, or doesn’t eat anything because the host deliberately put animal products in literally everything on tha table.
I don’t feel like I go very far- we make sure there is a main dish that doesn’t contain meat. Depending on which people are there, it may have cheese. We make easy modifications to side dishes - for example, we don’t add butter to the corn or we put some sweet potatoes in a different container and leave out the marshmallows.
My brother’s three kids are three of the non-meat eaters - and my brother and his ex-wife are the assholes. Someone asked my brother once what his son would like for a holiday dinner - my brother said “He’ll be fine with salad and spaghetti with garlic and oil”. Sure, while everyone else is eating all kinds of seafood we’re going to give him salad and spaghetti. His sister was overjoyed one time when I made a meatless lasagna and took the half-tray that was left over home with her. She had never eaten lasagna in her memory because her mother always made it with meat- although at any given time two of her three kids didn’t eat meat.
Of course. I’ve seen those ones too. Somehow this thread has focused on vegans who demand that the hosts accommodate them. But sometimes the hosts are the ones being unreasonable when, as you say, people with different dietary needs or choices accommodate themselves. Or cases where a host makes a specific dish/dessert for someone with a restricted diet, and the other guests eat it all before the one the food was made for could have any. I’ve read ones where a mother-in-law intentionally put, say, nuts into a dish, and then ‘forgets’ to tell their son’s allergic wife about them. (‘I thought she was faking, and just being picky!’)
I really dislike orange sweet potatoes (‘yams’) with marshmallows. I prefer white sweet potatoes with some butter. (If I’m ever invited over. )
One accommodation I remember was when I went to a party in Hollywood. Someone in the Biz, named Rothstien, had a sign on his cupboard: ‘Please do not use the plates in this cupboard. They are KOSHER. There are paper plates on the counter for your vile pork-infested products.’ And there was a cartoon of a pig’s face with a tear coming out of one eye. The pig said, ‘*sniff* God made me, too. And boy, was He good!’
I baked the tofu, and then made a stir-fry with bok choy, green onion, carrot sticks, a few cloves of garlic (chopped/minced), and some ginger out of a jar. Oh, and a handful of whole cashews. I made a sauce of two tablespoons of water with 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce mixed in. My wife says, ‘You can make this again!’
Relevant bit from the ongoing thread on Morrissey concert cancellation:
“But I shall leave the Harpa Concert Hall to their cannibalistic flesh-eating bloodlust.”
Never heard of him or The Smiths. Were they famous? Did he get away with that demand at all the venues he played at?
Not my favorite group, but the Smiths have had a large following.
In my experience, most people with food restrictions are good and handling it without trying to be a burden on others. I’ve only had a handful of bad experiences with obnoxious people who expected everyone around them to cater to their restrictions.
They will change your life!
…no, wait, that’s the Shins.
I think you mean The Shaggs.
Uh yes.