Calling Vegetarians

If you are having a roast, give her the same, just have plenty of vegetables and Yorkshire puddings. Don't forget the cauliflower with cheese sauce, roasted carrots and onions, yum. I would hate to see everyone eating a roast dinner and get dished up something entirely different.

If you are not cooking a roast, make a vegetarian meal and if you have to, just add a meat dish on the side for those who want some meat.

A Quorn roast would be easy for you and her meal would then look the same as everybody else's. She could then eat the rest cold if she is there more than one day.

It is not easy providing food for a vegetarian as you need to ensure there is no gelatine in the ingredients.

And don't stir her food with the same wooden spoon that you used for the meat gravy! which I apparently absentmindedly did when preparing a veggie meal for DD and a meat meal at the same time

Thanks everyone - much food for thought. I feel sure now that I can come up with something that she'll enjoy.

She might not like vegetarian food that resembles meat. I became a vegetarian at the age of 14 and one of the things I disliked as a child about meat was trying to chew it. I didn't like the texture and have met another vegetarian who said she had the same experience.

DS, DIL and GSs have ditched the meat 90% of the time and they still enjoy a roast dinner without the roast meat. Have to say I was astounded that they have done that. So much interesting, tasty food that doesn't include meat.

One other thing, you can't roast vegetables in the juices of meat and then serve it up to a vegetarian. I use a light olive oil.

Another vegetarian here and I'm not a fan of meat substitutes such as Quorn.

There have been lots of good suggestions including nut roast which is always my choice for christmas or any similar type of meal. I'd be just as happy with all the vegetables though.

I use Quorn fillets etc regularly but I would not want them for my Christmas dinner. As it is a celebration meal I want something more special and tasty and something that looks impressive and more festive.

I feel the "meat" alternative needs to be well flavoured itself if it is going to go with the traditional traditional Christmas veg which are themselves strong flavours. It also seems more festive than something you might eat every day.

Other veggies might be well acquainted with the difficulty in getting decent vegetarian meals out particularly at office Christmas meals.
Restaurants get so busy with traditional Christmas roasts that the vegetarian option can end up being pasta with sauce. The worst was one place offering spinach and ricotta Canelloni, doubtless out of the freezer.

I do feel that if you call yourself a restaurant you should be as inventive with the vegetarian food as the rest of your menu.

At the pub where we have our post Christmas choir meal, the offer one year was a small cheese and onion tart with mild creamy cheese, when others were getting salmon fillets or steak and kidney pies.

I will have words with them again this year when their "fixed price choose in advance menu" comes around.
"Well what would you like to eat instead of meat?
"Well I would like your establishment to present me with a menu of vegetarian choices that you have actually given some previous thought to. "

I will live in hope. It's darned hard to get vegetarian value for money at many places.

Do any other veggies want to join me in this rant?

I'll join you Nelliemoser.

The bowl of pasta & sauce offered as the vegetarian option in so many places is insulting particularly when it can cost £10 or more. I begrudge that kind of money for something I would knock up for my grandchildren if I was short of time.

I have four grandchildren ranging from 7 to 21 years old. Not one of them has touched meat in their lives, and they are all fit and healthy, do lots of physical exercise, dance, play football, and are very rarely ill.
I would say that you should build the meal round the vegetarian and add meat for the others. I speak as someone who had a vegetarian cafe and a vegetarian guest house, for ten years each.
This is what I always used to say to those who used to say that they would be vegetarian but their partners could not give up the meat.
Eating vegetarian is not a problem for anyone now. I do not like meat substitutes.
www.viva.org.uk is a very good website where you will find lots of excellent recipes. Take it as an exciting challenge. You will enjoy a break from meat after Christmas.

Talking of predictability: I was at two lunches last week and I had a little bet with myself that the vegetarian option would be either a quiche or a pasta dish. At the first lunch it was veg lasagne; at the second it was a tart, albeit a very nice one. At the lunch I attended today, it was a medley of mushrooms in a Stilton sauce in a filo basket - a pleasant surprise!

By the way, whatever jokes are made about them, we all love nut roasts at Christmas time.

Anno, my 21 year old granddaughter used to have veg lasagne everywhere she went for a meal so she could compare and find the best one. This lasted for at least three years.

My vegetarian daughter also has a nut allergy which makes eating out doubly difficult.

Mine has a dairy allergy which means anything with cheese or milk is a no no!

You're okay, Galen, because Viva recipes are vegan, but I feel sorry for your daughter, Greenfinch. The first person I met with a nut allergy was some one who came into the cafe and asked if we had a phone, because if she touched nuts we would have to ring for an ambulance. However, she used to come into the cafe every week because we knew what was in everything, and did not use nut oils.

We just have a normal roast but instead of meat we have a greater selection of vegetables, onion rings, onion sauce, bread sauce, stuffing, and gravy made from fried onions, vegetable stock and powdered Bisto. Yorkshire puddings add a bit more interest, if you have the energy.

At Christmas we cook meat for those that are not vegetarian, which I suppose some vegetarians would not agree with but I don't feel comfortable imposing my preferences or beliefs on other people.

For me, being vegetarian means not buying or cooking meat. If you buy it for other people the animal still dies, whether you eat it or not.

My SiL who is a vegetarian cannot touch or prepare meat. How do manage when cooking meat for others ?
Her DH has to cook when he fancies meat or they have guests.

I have no problems cooking meat for other people - and very occasionally I eat meat myself. I did not stop eating meat because it disgusts me to handle it, cook it or eat it. I like meat, I miss eating it and I find vegetarian food, on the whole, to be rather boring.

I stopped (or 98% stopped) about 10 years ago for two main reasons: because I became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of animals being bred to be eaten, especially with the type of intensive farming that exists now, but mostly because I believe that meat eating is a wasteful and probably ultimately unsustainable way of providing food.

Of course, the fact that I very occasionally eat meat (and continue to eat fish) and that I cook meat for other people may be deemed to be hypocritical. To some extent I suppose it is but, to be 100% committed, one would surely have to be a vegan - which is a very challenging road to go down.

Elo, isn't Bisto made from beef?

Vegetarians tend to have a much wider range of food compared with meat-eaters, so it is not boring, Eloethan.
Surely there is nothing more boring than the ubiquitous meat and two veg.
I got fed up years ago, having been vegetarian for over thirty years of answering the question, " But surely you still have turkey for Christmas?"

I'm fairly sure I've checked the back of the Bisto pack and it doesn't have any meat extracts - but I'll need to check again. If you're right, my husband's not going to be too pleased since he's been eating it for the last 12 years or so!

Judging omnivores to have boring diets of the "ubiquitous meat and two veg" is not only wrong (mistaken/misguided/bloody cheek), it is also judgmental in way that is unsupported by evidence.

Not that I'd expect someone who is so judgmental about other people's choices to have any evidence.

Be a vegetarian if you want to but respect other people's choices as well. Vegetarianism is not morally superior to omnivorousness. I doubt there are any actual carnivores among gransnetters, but if there are, good luck to them. It's their choice.

As you were. I didn't mean to wade in like that but I also didn't like to let such a sneering remark pass. Too near to bullying for me.

I think the distinction between carnivores, who only eat meat (or just about only) and omnivores, who eat anything edible, including meat, is important. Just saying.