Vegetarians

If they do it again, threaten to eat them.

Andrew

Andrew Randle
The Hi-Fi Doctor

We had vegan friends a few years ago and they were the same. Absolutely no concessions were made by them. They had a holiday in India and we picked them up from the airport, and my wife had prepared a beautiful vege meal for them. They complained because they thought they could taste Oxo cubes in it! Then we spent a long weekend with them and after a couple of days of what seemed like the same food for every breakfast, lunch and dinner I smuggled a pork pie into the house. The female went into a big huff when she spotted the wrapper. It was as though her house had been defiled! They spent Christmas with us and insisted on cooking their own dinner. You know what Christmas day is like at the best of times so you can imagine what it was like with 2 women sharing a cooker trying to cook 2 completely separate meals at the same time - she wouldn't even share utensils!

They used to lecture us about the wasteful processes involved in producing meat, and how unhealthy it was but they smoked!

We had the last laugh however. We had a party and my wife caught my mate with a slice of ham in one hand, and a piece of cheese in the other. He begged her not to tell his wife!

Many vegetarians don't eat meat for reasons other than their health -- objecting to killing animals for food, not wanting to contribute financially to an industry/activity that causes suffering, wishing to tread lightly on the planet, and so on. For such "ethical" vegetarians, it's just as repugnant to buy and serve meat to guests as it would be to eat meat themselves. Think of it this way: Say you have Jewish friends who ask you to prepare a Kosher meal if they come to visit. Would you expect them to serve you a non-Kosher meal when you're invited over just because you're not Jewish?

But I do understand your point -- feeling like your extra effort is not being appreciated -- so perhaps your veggie friends could make up for their non-reciprocity by, say, keeping lots of good spirits flowing throughout the evening. (That's what my wife and I do, incidentally.)

Joe

[This message was edited by Joe Petrik on Fri 29 October 2004 at 16:31.]

TomK - I see you're in Linlithgow - do you know this place:

http://www.champany.com

Definitely not one for our vegetarian colleagues and friends!

Fortunately, these friends of ours are not the "bible bashing" sort so our times together are pleasant enough.

Now, to pick up on one of Joe's points:

Quote:
"Think of it this way: Say you have Jewish friends who ask you to prepare a Kosher meal if they come to visit. Would you expect them to serve you a non-Kosher meal when you're invited over just because you're not Jewish?"

This is a slightly different dilemma in this case because of the religious angle: what say these Jews had friends who only ate Halal food - who would accommodate who? O.k, this is a pretty unlikely scenario but you get my drift...
There is an assumption that "secular" religions are somehow more dogmatic than other less "radical" faiths so in your example here Joe, the "non-Jew" makes the dietary concession and actually, because I'm a (non-practicing), Christian living in a "relaxed" country, you'd be right. It may not be the same in the former Yugoslavia where Christians and Muslims have far more radical views.
This is getting off at a tangent so I'll come back round....

Joe's quote:

"But I do understand your point -- feeling like you're extra efforts are not being appreciated -- so perhaps your veggie friends could make up for their non-reciprocity by, say, keeping lots of good spirits flowing throughout the evening. (That's what my wife and I do, incidentally.)"

Well, my point is that our vegetarian friends expect us to go to the effort of accommodating their dietary needs and beliefs, so it's not going to be appreciated full stop!

Fortunately, they all drink like fish,(sorry,there's no vegan equivalent of fish I could use), so the booze is always running feeely. I do understand the dilemma for them in handling and preparing meat and fish products but there must be another way that they can serve what we actually like to eat? Perhaps they could suggest we prepare our own meat and bring it over to cook?
This way, they might actually get to throw barbeques - I've never known one of our veggie friends to have one yet!

quote:

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Originally posted by jlfrs:
We never say anything...

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And there's your problem. You're OK with telling the whole world through this forum, so what's stopping you from bringing this up directly with your friends?

Regards,
Davie

Davie's quote:

"And there's your problem. You're OK with telling the whole world through this forum, so what's stopping you from bringing this up directly with your friends?"

O.K Davie, you have a point and the first thing I'll say is that I opened this topic to see if A/I was alone and B/if I wasn't, how others dealt with it.

The second thing I'll say is that I fear our friends may think A/I'm judging their beliefs and B/not like their cooking,should I raise this with them.Both sets are good cooks and serve a varied range of delicious dishes on the basis that "vegetarianism doesn't mean boring". It is not an easy thing to raise and once the door's been opened, it can't be closed again.
I've gone through this many times with Rachel and thought about the possible outcomes.
At the very least, I'd expect the dinner invitations to stop, so whilst they still might come to dinner at our place, they wouldn't invite us back in turn.This would effectively mean that no concession had been made and the result is both sides would be resentful.They may even reject the invitations which would be even worse.
The best outcome would be in this situation that we agree to meet for our meals at a restaurant but again, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't be insulted and the friendship jeopardised....

This is why it's not easy to bring this except in the relative security of a forum like this where ethical dilemmas can be shared anonymously!

jlfrs,

quote:

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This is a slightly different dilemma in this case because of the religious angle:

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The hypothetical Kosher Jew was just an analogy, and like all analogies it falls short one way or another. But I had hoped the point was clear -- if a vegetarian doesn't eat meat because he thinks it's wrong to do so, it's inconsistent for him to serve meat to guests even if the guests don't have an issue eating meat. (Personally, we don't serve meat to our guests, but we also don't lecture them because they eat meat. If people ask why we're vegetarian we'll answer honestly, but neither my wife nor I proselytize. That gets tiresome very fast.) And we are aware that friends may be offended that we don't reciprocate (by serving meat to the meat eaters), so we to try to make up for the asymmetry other ways.

quote:

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I do understand the dilemma for them in handling and preparing meat and fish products but there must be another way that they can serve what we actually like to eat? Perhaps they could suggest we prepare our own meat and bring it over to cook?

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In my experience, it's not the handling and preparing of meat that's the problem for some vegetarians. It's that some critter had to suffer and die to make a meal.

I hope I'm not coming across flippant, since I do understand your, ummm, beef, with non-reciprocating vegetarians. But please try to understand that for those who object to killing animals for food it makes no difference to them whether they kill (indirectly, obviously) for themselves or for their guests. The animal served up in the stew is just as dead either way -- and that's the issue for the vegetarian.

Joe

This is a joke right? You seriously have a problem becuase although your friends invite you to dinner and cook you a nice meal and you have a pleasant evening it's some terrible injustice becuase they didn't give you some chicken?

If you happended to go for dinner at some non-vegitarians and they made you, say, a goats cheese salad and a lovely vegetable risotto would you be similarly outraged?

Or does your non-vegetarian status mean you have some absolute requirement to have meat with every meal? If so how do you cope with, say, trifle? Do you add a pork garnish?

Matthew

Thanks Joe for putting across such an eloquent and insightful viewpoint.

With reading your last paragraph, it all clicked into place and I am glad that this is not something I have raised with my friends as the discussion would have been started,(and finished I daresay), on the wrong foot.

Our friends' vegetarianism isn't something that's been discussed,(in the same way we don't discuss politics, religion and salaries between us), so I've been living in relative ignorance.

I now consider myself enlightened and thanks for your open-minded approach.

I'll quite carping on,(pardon the fish reference Joe),

Jon

Matthew - yes, it's a joke.....

Being a vegetarian myself that cooks often for my friends because it is a hobby of mine, I have to agree with everything Joe has said. Except that I do very, very occasionally cook meat for friends and do something else for myself. However, in enlightened Brighton, I'm not the only veggie in my circle of friends, and I find it more difficult to cook around someone who hates mushrooms, another that hates nuts and another that won't eat peppers etc. Meat eaters are just so fussy.
The other reason for me is that I can't taste what I'm serving, so I can't tell if it needs seasoning or adjusting.
It isn't different if it's a religious thing, as it is all personal moral code - which is the reason I won't eat meat.
I do appreciate the point though, except I find meat eaters panic when they are confronted with a vegetarian and so I rarely get cooked for. So for me, I'm the one that suffers.

Keep a couple of tins of corned beef in the glove compartment. Works for me.

throb

quote:

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Originally posted by jlfrs:
TomK - I see you're in Linlithgow - do you know this place:

http://www.champany.com

Definitely not one for our vegetarian colleagues and friends!

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It's about a mile from us but we've never eaten there as it's extremely expensive.

These were two very dear friends and we unfortunately lost touch with them once they moved back to Manchester and we went to California. We had been drifting apart though as I got a bit fed up with the one-sidedness of things. I didn't expect them to eat steak at our place or feed us beef at theirs but it started to bug me all the same. They had no ethical objection to eating animals - it was purely economic. Why pay money to fatten up animals to eat when we could just eat the grains etc ourselves. It didn't sit well with their willingness to smoke however and in spite of that they became very self righteous and sanctimonious. The female was also patently not thriving on her diet as she was emaciated and very prone to every infection doing the rounds. They had a couple of young kids on a vegan diet and had to stop it on doctor's orders as the kids were also unhealthy.

I know well that they weren't typical vegetarians but it left me with a slightly jaundiced opinion of the whole thing.

My wife eats meat (organic ONLY!!) and so do my children. I want my children to be vegetarian, so I'm happy that they eat meat now as I'm sure if I started them out veggie, they would be hankering after meat. This way I can tell them that one day when they are old enough they can make a choice to be like Daddy.
I'm not daft!

jlfrs

Kosher food is technically halal (allowable) for muslims to eat as far as I am aware. Many muslims seek out kosher suppliers where halal meat is not obtainable. I don't think the opposite is the case because the preparation of Kosher food is much more rigourous than halal meat, and extends to more than just meat.

BTW, despite what you see in the media, normal jews and muslims get on MUCH better than others might otherwise think - the two faiths have a lot in common.

Chaps

Just eat what is put in front of you and shut up.

Regards

Mick

Oh no,

The Swindon Bovver Boy is back

Quick, run!!

jon

quote:

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Originally posted by Rasher:
Being a vegetarian myself

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Er... were any pigs harmed in the making of your name?

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne (at) Dial.Pipex.com. Put "Naim" in the title.

Tolerance and respect

Vegetarians (and vegans) have their reasons for being what they are, and Joe Petrik acquits himself rather well, especially if he pours plenty of Jack Daniels into your glass to enable you to forget any notion of one-sidedness in this issue.

They certainly don't seem to be judging you for the fact that you eat meat when not in their presence, so I think friendship should be placed above some flimsy notion of fair play that doesn't actually prove to be terribly fair.

Eating well-prepared vegetarian food isn't exactly a hardship for an omnivore*, now is it?

I'm not a vegetarian but I enjoy good food that may or may not have any meat in it.

Being forced to prepare meat dishes when you can't abide them yourself is obviously something very unpleasant.

*As a meat eater you can only be classed as a carnivore if you eat only meat and no vegetables whatsoever. I very much doubt that there are very many (healthy) human carnivores...

BTW, would you be happy if your veggie hosts prepared a meal for you that comprised entirely of meat or meat products with no vegeatables or carbohydrates whatsoever?

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steve Toy on Sun 31 October 2004 at 6:25.]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mick Parry:
Just eat what is put in front of you and shut up.

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Good to have you back Mick. We've missed your dead-pan humour.

quote:

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Originally posted by Grant:
I have to explain that I only eat enough to keep up the supply of material for shoes and handbags,with a smile of course

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Do you have any photos of yourself on a night out Grant? We'd love to see them

quote:

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Originally posted by throbnorth:
Keep a couple of tins of corned beef in the glove compartment. Works for me.

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Sorry Throb, but gay humour goes right over my head.

Never thought I'd find myself saying this, but I actually agree with Stephen Toy's post in many ways. There is good food and bad food, and either may or may not contain meat.

Nevertheless, one of the positive aspects of this situation is that it tends to make one more aware of what one is eating, which can only be a good thing. Certainly the availability of really good organic meat is a huge incentive to eat less meat, but of hugely better quality.

However, like all good things, nice food is better shared, and there will be things that a vegetarian will miss out on. There are many food/wine partnerships which AFAIK have no vegetarian equivalent -- certainly no-one is likely to understand what retsina is all about unless they have drunk it with Greek roast lamb, and a similar thing happens with Cerano ham and traditional Rioja.

Certainly for non-meat meals, I'd probably be more likely to visit the off-license for a "reasonable" wine than to rummage under the stairs for a favourite Bordeaux, for example, since many wines can IMO require meat fat to make them "work".

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Double-Barrel:

Never thought I'd find myself saying this, but I actually agree with Stephen Toy's post

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Who the fuck is "Stephen Toy?"

Regards,

Steve.

quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Toy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Double-Barrel:

Never thought I'd find myself saying this, but I actually agree with _Stephen Toy's _ post

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Who the fuck is "Stephen Toy?"

Regards,

Steve.

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A lot of people have asked that very question
Steve
oldie.