Wow. Ew. All this talk about rennet. I’d never heard of it before this thread and now I find out it’s from baby cows? I’m not a vegetarian but I’m strict about not eating baby cows. Damn.
I’ll have to start looking for those alternative rennet source labels.
How old is your daughter? I learned to cook at an early age. Perhaps she’s old enough to prepare some tasty vegetarian dishes the whole family can enjoy.
Sure, hence my explanatory phrase about ovo-lacto vegetarians and vegans. I was trying to clarify that these are two different entities all together. Then there’s plenty of ovo-lacto vegetarians who seemingly have no problem with rennet, but when cooking for self-described ovo-lacto vegetarians, it’s best to err on the side of using strictly vegetarian cheese.
edit: And I know you’re not picking on me, but I don’t understand the second half of your statement. I’ve never particularly noticed Dopers picking on vegetarians for not being “vegetarian enough” or something like that. I know some vegetarians who are pescatarian (or whatever the word is, meaning they’ll eat fish but not meat). It’s certainly not up to me to call anybody on hypocrisy. Plenty of veggies are not moral vegetarians, but have gone a vegetarian diet for health or other reasons.
There are both vegetable and microbial “rennets” that perform the enzymatic reaction necessary to curdle and set cheese. Here’s a bunch of different kinds of rennet you can get for your home cheesemaking operation.
Perfect way to end your “friendship”.
Get everyone to help you convince her to host the next meal. No doubt it’ll be the vegetarian “option” for everyone.
Make a big show of looking and poking through the whole plate. You get extra points if you re-arrange everything by food group beside your plate.
Then throw the hissy fit. “Where’s the meat? Salad isn’t food! Salad is what food eats! How come you vegetarians get a whole meal while I have to make do with only half of one?”
Stand up, swirl majestically “You call yourself a friend!” And storm off like a diva.
Woman Triumphant! I mean Woman Tiumphant! Not diva no way nuh-huh didn’t say that and you cant prove I did.
bugger
Don’t forget to film it and put it on you tube. Hell, I’d *pay *to see that scene. 
You’re not the OP? Oops. Yeah, villa’s recipe is what I restated. Sorry bout that. :smack:
There were a few threads like that, but that was kind of a long time ago. I remember comments like “Ha! You call yourself a vegetarian, but you drink beer! Beer has isinglass, which is made out of fish! You’re a fucking hypocrite!” and “Oh sure, you’re too humane to eat a poor cute fuzzy animal, but you’re more than happy to kill plants for food. Ever think of the plants’ feelings? Huh? Huh?”
Don’t ask me for a cite. I’m not sure the search engine even goes back that far.
Those were some trainwrecks. They also had their share of vegetarians arguing with each other over who was the real vegetarian - “you can’t call yourself a vegetarian - you eat fish.”
(I have a friend who describes himself as a “bad vegetarian.” I’ve seen him eat steak. But he tries to limit the amount of meat he eats - and fish and steak are equivlent in his mind as “exceptions.” He doesn’t turn down food at dinner parties and few of his friends know he even tries - but there isn’t meat in his own house.)
In fact, this one has been surprisingly civil - I was expecting at least one “militant meat eater” to demand that the OP had done the wrong thing by not putting bacon in every dish because vegetarians aren’t worth catering to (this vegetarian obviously wasn’t, but in my experience, that’s the exception). Or one vegetarian to take the extreme “meat in any form on the table is simply offensive when you have a vegetarian guest” view.
I was at a dinner party recently - I’m gluten intolerant, one guest was kosher, another was a vegetarian. It was a pleasant party and everyone got plenty to eat - although half the guests couldn’t eat at least one thing on the table. There was some amount of “oh, no thanks, I can’t eat that” but there was no whining about it.
It may be my imagination, but it seems to me that in the past seven years, the boards in general have become more civil.
Naw, I believe ya. 
Thanks for the link, Astroboy14. I know what I’m eating next week after Passover finishes!
I am an adult leader of a church youth group and on Sunday evenings we have dinner together and then go about our evening.
We ask members of the church if they would like to get to know the youth by possibly cooking dinner one night. About 20-30 kids and the church re-imburses.
I cooked for them last December and made potato soup. Two huge pots. One for the vegetarians and one for the rest. These are teenagers so not strict vegans, but they avoid meat.
My dinner was the first to have a choice for them and got alot of questions from the other students and leaders. My potato soup has chicken bulion in it. So I made a batch without.
I cooked for them again three weeks ago and we had burgers, fries and picnic type stuff. Bocco burgers for the veggie kids. Not to complicated.
Over the past two years I have been with this group I have seen the veggie kids eat many salads and pb&j sandwhiches without complaint.
The last two weeks when dinner was served it was meatless lassagne and then meatless spaghetti. Not sure if the sauce meat flavored or not, but no visible ground beef.
I was suprised at some of the kids in the group. Upset because there wasn’t any meat in their food. A few asking why the veggie kids were catered to since it’s their choice to be that way.
True, but holy cow, give the host family a bit of credit for recognising we have non meat eaters in the crowd and then slow down and take into account how many dinners that have been served that these kids haven’t been able to eat, compaired to the TWO that you just didn’t want to eat because somebody specifically said “we knew there were non meat eaters here, so this has no meat and they can eat too”.
Yes, it would have been easy to make half with meat half without, or two smaller pans. But these people aren’t used to it and I’m sure out of being flustered just went with the total no meat option.
That’s funny. The nice thing about being an omnivore is you get to eat everything.
But if your little darlings want to consider themselves true carnivores, go ahead and accommodate their special dietary needs next time. Serve them plain hamburgers with no bun, lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard, ketchup or fries.
There you go my little meat-eater friends. Enjoy. Here’s a little grass for you to nibble on as an aperitif. I understand you carnivores use that to help you throw up.
<evil giggle> You could always have a baconade - an older sort of fun, a dinner where all the dishes are somehow pork based
Hm, a nice ham broth based creme potage of beans, a salad with bacon crumbles, a between course assietes volounte of the chicken livers wrapped in bacon, and the water chestnuts wrapped in bacon and perhaps canteloupe wrapped in prosciutto. A really nice bourbelier of pork with pommes landaise [diced potatoes and westphalian ham sauteed in goose fat] and stuffed artichokes … i can feel my poor capillaries screaming in terror at the thought of it… :eek:
Dont know any pork based desserts unless you want to try to make gelatin out of pigsfeet and make a jello construct out of it :dubious:
I went non-meat a year and a half ago, and the only thing I really miss is bacon. However, having read about this “baconade”, I think I’m cured of the temptation for a while.
With the right tone of voice that would be extra, super-duper COLD! I like it.
Hmm, yum! I know it’s against their carnivorous little principles, but be sure to put carrot slivers in it. They’ll gobble it up, I’m sure.
Well, each dish is fairly yummy, one at a time… it is pretty overwhelmingly bacony!
In a sense I can sort of understand the medieval baconade, when you slaughter you try to use up as much as possible while fresh, even though pork cures beautifully as sausage, bacon, dry ham[prosciutto] and smoked parts. I can remember my mom describing slaughtering day on her fathers farm back in the depression where anything that couldnt be salted dried smoked or preserved was pretty much eaten as quickly as possible.
To be clear, this is what I’m talking about:
Of course other people can eat the lemon spaghetti, but it was made for the vegetarian former friend.