TheKid is decidedly not vegetarian, but many of her friends are (all range 13 - 15 years old). We keep veggie burgers and meatless chicken nuggets in the freezer for when her friends come over, or cheat and order cheese pizzas. I also have a few vegetarian cookbooks that I break out and coerce TheKid to try something new when her pals are over.
We’ve had a few issues with her friends - one sweet girl opened up the fridge to get a soda and screamed. She saw a pound of bacon just sitting there and OMG how CRUEL could we BE! It was just STARING at her! Get over yourself. I will not rearrange the fridge for you. She also decided to put a bunch of PETA stickers (and not the cute ones) on the bathroom mirror. She spent an hour removing them too. I explained to her that she is always welcome in my house, and I will cook vegetarian for her no problem. However, I will not tolerate PETA or ALF propaganda being shoved down my throat in my house.
TheKid and I have talked many times about becoming vegetarianism. In her opinion, many of her friends have done it to be “different”. These are the kids who revel in being different. Call them emo, punk-lite, alt - whatever. Another friend had police trouble for egging a McDonalds (yeah, there is an irony there). Another stood in a grocery store crying about the poor animals who died to make people fatter. Loudly. In her opinion only a few of her friends are true vegetarians, the rest are attention whores.
Sidenote: after her vegetarian friends leave, TheKid almost always has a yen for bacon and eggs or meatloaf. Heh.
Food is a communal thing, and any major changes to the household diet should be discussed by everyone (with special preference to the meal-preparer). For easily prepared meals, sure, accomodate them with no special fanfare. When the requests start getting more elaborate, it’s time for the requestor to put on an apron and start contributing. If they aren’t willing to do that, then they aren’t really committed to their eating plan, it’s as simple as that. Be kind about it, though… it’s good to encourage anything that gets kids to think about nutrition and the environment as well as taking a more active role in communal meals. This will help you have healthy kids who will participate in a healthy family and become healthy, responsible adults.
In my opinion, Dad is assuming more responsibility for his comments and his son’s behavior than he should. And choosing not to cook veggie food for his son while Mom’s not home is unlikely to make Son rethink his choice to go veggie.
Now, since Son really liked eating meat, this may be a phase that won’t last, but on the other way it might. Certainly it may last for a long enough period of time to make treating this as a serious choice and not a whim is reasonable.
And either way, I don’t think that you as parents need to put up with requiems for dead roaches.
Incidentally, it occurs to me that there may be a larger culture gap between you and Dangerosa than you realize. No, noodles aren’t animals, but noodle hotdish very likely contains noodles, ground beef or slices of hot dog, and some sort of sauce (cheese sauce, or tomato sauce, or cream of mushroom soup-type sauce). If taken to a pot luck, said hotdish might be topped with crushed potato chips or cornflakes. It’s a midwestern thing.
Almond butter is GOOOOOOOD! So’s cashew butter. They’re both great on toast or anywhere else you’d use peanut butter (on crackers, on celery, etc.). Sometimes they don’t have salt in them, which, to me, doesn’t taste good so I sprinkle salt on my toast with the almond butter, but that’d be my only caveat. Try it!