Author Topic: I am not a vegan...  (Read 40508 times)

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #25 on: 26 January, 2014, 06:01:07 pm »
Agree with Helly's OP - why on earth is it so difficult for a restaurant with trained chefs and everything? It's not uncommon (but surprising nowadays) to have people say "oh, you don't eat meat, what do you eat then?", but for someone who spends their working life cooking it shouldn't be a problem. Like, you have vegetables in your kitchen? And you know how to cook them?

One time on the way to an Audax, I'd got vouchers for 1st class with free 3-course meal. When I said I didn't eat meat they were a bit confused so I said just bring me what everyone else is having, but without the meat. Instead they insisted on making some strange (tiny) concoction of other stuff which left me pretty hungry for the start of two days' cycling!
Quote from: tiermat
that's not science, it's semantics.

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #26 on: 26 January, 2014, 06:14:21 pm »
I've been vegan for 19 years so I doubt I'd struggle to cater for one of the really-awkward-lentil-eating-weirdos-that-have-no-right-to-be-compassionate if they turned up on my doorstep.   ;) 

TBH, it's very simple being vegan.  Of course everyone draws the line where they see fit, but 99.9% of the vegans I know would happily eat beans on toast of arriving unannounced and they were offered.  Vegan spread, soya milk, ice cream, chocolate, gravy, stuffing, sausages are all readily available, and cheap in supermarkets nowadays. 

When I first became vegan eating out was very difficult. Now, with the advent of the internet and increasing numbers of ethically aware consumers, most restaurants are happy to help out.  In fact, I have only had one complete refusal in the last five years.  In our small town there are several restaurants including an Indian, Chinese and Pizzeria that are very happy to cater for vegans and do a brilliant job (i.e. don't just serve up salad and chips).  Many of the bigger chains (Pizza Express, Wagamamas for example) are also are particularly helpful.

I'm not fussy though.  I do what I can.  If the restaurant tells me it's good, then I believe them.  If someone makes an effort to cook for me after asking what I eat, I'll not question them on what they have put in it.  If they have tried then they have tried and it always means so much when people do make the effort.  I have a lot of meat eating friends, they are all most respectful of my veganism and I never talk about my ethics unless they directly ask.
Does not play well with others

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #27 on: 26 January, 2014, 06:23:54 pm »


BTW Feline - most common pestos are not vegan, containing a fair amount of cheese.

Most are not even vegetarian. Of the usual jars, only the organic ones are. Fresh pesto usually is veggie, although not vegan.

It's very easily home made. I've made it with my home grown basil, pine nuts, lemon rind, garlic and extra-virgin olive oil. There's no need to put the Parmesan in when you blend it, just serve it in a separate little bowl for those who want it to add :)

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #28 on: 26 January, 2014, 06:38:16 pm »
I'm not a veggie, but (as Auntie C. and others will testify), I'm quite happy catering for veggies. However, I do prefer advance warning - whilst my meals don't revolve around meat ("meat addict", Clarion called it upthread ;D ), I don't let anything go to waste, so a vegetable soup may well include meat stock from a few days ago, or vegetables may be cooked in animal fat.

I guess restaurants may have a problem of cross-contamination, if they are cooking everything in the same oven, or using a non-vegetable stock base like I do. But then, that's not much worse than the problem of contamination in source ingredients - flour contains trace elements of bunnies and field meece.  :-\
Have you seen my blog? It has words. And pictures! http://ablogofallthingskathy.blogspot.com/

red marley

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #29 on: 26 January, 2014, 06:47:22 pm »
It's very easily home made. I've made it with my home grown basil, pine nuts, lemon rind, garlic and extra-virgin olive oil. There's no need to put the Parmesan in when you blend it, just serve it in a separate little bowl for those who want it to add :)

Mmmm! Can I turn up on your doorstep unannounced?

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #30 on: 26 January, 2014, 06:59:41 pm »
It's very easily home made. I've made it with my home grown basil, pine nuts, lemon rind, garlic and extra-virgin olive oil. There's no need to put the Parmesan in when you blend it, just serve it in a separate little bowl for those who want it to add :)

Mmmm! Can I turn up on your doorstep unannounced?
It does sound delicious!
Quote from: Kim
^ This woman knows what she's talking about.

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #31 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:01:53 pm »
It's very easily home made. I've made it with my home grown basil, pine nuts, lemon rind, garlic and extra-virgin olive oil. There's no need to put the Parmesan in when you blend it, just serve it in a separate little bowl for those who want it to add :)

Mmmm! Can I turn up on your doorstep unannounced?

No problem! Our bread is Burgen soya and linseed too which I believe is vegan friendly!

Simon is currently in the kitchen whizzing up some home made humus made with the nice organic chick peas he soaked overnight  :thumbsup:
We are not vegetarian or vegan but everything we eat is carefully chosen for where it comes from, and we only eat free range organic meat, eggs and milk. Riverford deliver our local organic veggie box weekly and Simon's Ocado bill is truly horendous  ;D

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #32 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:02:25 pm »

Vegan spread, soya milk, ice cream, chocolate, gravy, stuffing, sausages are all readily available, and cheap in supermarkets nowadays.

As an aside, I do sometimes wonder why veggies eat so many substitute foods like this. Personally, if I were ever to go veggie, I'd rather eat real vegetables than fake meat.

A veggie friend recently alerted me to the existence of fish-free scampi. I had a look at the ingredients list. Sounds disgusting.

If you care what you eat, why would you eat that? Not being judgmental, I just don't get it.

Having said that, as mentioned elsewhere recently, vegetarian haggis can be excellent, but I think that's because it's a thing in its own right and doesn't just try to mimic the non-veggie version.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #33 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:21:33 pm »
I've done a few weeks vegan just to see what health benefits it would have (can't really say I noticed any), also we go vegan for certain Chinese Buddhist religious festivals, although this is more to do with tradition than any personal religious belief.

We have cans of vegan food to be opened in the event we can't be bothered to cook on certain days, so as long the guest likes rice/noodles and variations of tinned fried gluten, they'll be fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_gluten_(food).

Personally I could live on chips and ketchup, tortillas and guacamole, falafel in pita etc. I love junk food.

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #34 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:31:32 pm »


If you care what you eat, why would you eat that? Not being judgmental, I just don't get it.



Cos it tastes nice (to me)
Does not play well with others

CrinklyLion

  • The one with devious, cake-pushing ways....
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #35 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:33:12 pm »
Both my boys eat meat, but the Eldest in particular would far rather have veggie hot dogs than the real thing.  I suspect that the real thing may contain almost as little meat, of course.  They are both junk foods.  I eat veggie sausages because then I can cook one meal for us all, and that meal can be bangers and mash.  And I quite like some of them.  I presume they don't taste particularly of meat - it's so long since I've eaten meat I can't remember.  They certainly don't smell the same.  Similarly, quorn mince means some recipes that are fairly meat-eater friendly are very easy to make - spag bol and that king of thing.  Can't stand the dehydrated soya mince tho, and TVP chunks bring back some grim memories of school cookery lessons and the veggie alternative...

The idea of "veggie" fish fingers or scampi strikes me as truly gruesome, mind.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #36 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:41:48 pm »
As Kim said, could almost certainly feed a vegan and indeed anyone else if they were willing to eat tinned/frozen food.  If it was a specific allergy it'd be a case of read the labels and work it out.  I do have one friend I'm reluctant to cook for cos she's intolerant to a WIDE range of food and unless she was cooking with me I know I'd get it wrong.

Pointless pickiness a la Clare's uni friend will result in "Shop is that way, good luck" cos I don't have energy or tolerance for pointless complicatedness.  Kim's ex occasionally did pointless pickiness about only eating food in certain combinations so beans with baked spud and tinned spag with chips (no other combo would do) to which they also got told "shop, that way then...".

I think it's more acceptable these days to encourage people to bring their own food or go to shop if you can't cater for them.  Also people get less freaked. I remember my very trad boiled Scottish food mum hating my dad's veggie and vegan family in the early 80s so they bought their own food. These days my mum will cook up almost anything veggie at no notice and could probably do vegan too along the same lines.

It should be more socially acceptable for people to bring their own food if they feel that's a safer/easier way of getting food they can and will eat.

Kim

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Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #37 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:47:37 pm »
If you care what you eat, why would you eat that? Not being judgmental, I just don't get it.

People don't eat things for all sorts of reasons.  You might quite like a food, but not want to be responsible for what's involved in creating it.  Or be unable to eat a certain ingredient for health reasons.  Or be (or be fed by) a really unimaginative cook.  So substitutes exist.  Some work well, some are best regarded as a completely different foodstuff, and others are patently unfit for purpose (vegan 'cheese' that doesn't melt, for example).

Kim

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Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #38 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:49:06 pm »
It should be more socially acceptable for people to bring their own food if they feel that's a safer/easier way of getting food they can and will eat.

A thousand times this.  Providing your own food is easy.  Being allowed to do so in social situations is *hard*.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #39 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:49:18 pm »
...also we go vegan for certain Chinese Buddhist religious festivals, although this is more to do with tradition than any personal religious belief.
Catholicism as practised in Poland involves a fair number of fast days, but "fasting" usually simply means not eating meat for a day.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

CrinklyLion

  • The one with devious, cake-pushing ways....
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #40 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:54:42 pm »
If you care what you eat, why would you eat that? Not being judgmental, I just don't get it.

People don't eat things for all sorts of reasons.  You might quite like a food, but not want to be responsible for what's involved in creating it.  Or be unable to eat a certain ingredient for health reasons.  Or be (or be fed by) a really unimaginative cook.  So substitutes exist.  Some work well, some are best regarded as a completely different foodstuff, and others are patently unfit for purpose (vegan 'cheese' that doesn't melt, for example).

Also, while there is some degree of overlap between "people who are veggie" and "people who are health food nutters eat healthily" the two don't necessarily go hand in hand.  Just as it is entirely feasible to eat a healthy diet that either includes or excludes meat, it is also completely possible to eat a very unhealthy diet on either basis.  Chips are vegan, for a start.

Of course, this idea of the unhealthy vegetarian can be confusing for some people.  At a party once when I was a teenager I totally confused my mate Paul's big brother Mark by lighting a fag.  "You smoke?!?  But... but... but you're a vegetarian!".  Totally blew his mind.  And in France once someone looked at me and said "How can you be a vegetarian?  You're FAT!".

Kim

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Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #41 on: 26 January, 2014, 07:57:09 pm »
Also, while there is some degree of overlap between "people who are veggie" and "people who are health food nutters eat healthily" the two don't necessarily go hand in hand.  Just as it is entirely feasible to eat a healthy diet that either includes or excludes meat, it is also completely possible to eat a very unhealthy diet on either basis.  Chips are vegan, for a start.

Hence my distinction between the two main vegan stereotypes upthread.


Quote
Of course, this idea of the unhealthy vegetarian can be confusing for some people.

Like being a meat-eater at an LGBT event...   :D

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #42 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:03:50 pm »
I think Crinkly and Kim you're missing Citoyen's point (although maybe I am!) The way I understand it, it's nothing to do with eating healthily, it's that these items are "fake meat" standing in for or imitating their dead-animal originals. I'm not sure they really do much of a job at imitating real meat, but obviously liking and missing the originals is one reason. Mostly, though, I think it's that people are cooking vegily but thinking meatily, cos they've either just become vegetarian/vegan or are catering for someone else, and so are used to a meal of meat item + stuff.  Other reasons are bound to exist.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #43 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:09:20 pm »
If you care what you eat, why would you eat that? Not being judgmental, I just don't get it.

People don't eat things for all sorts of reasons.  You might quite like a food, but not want to be responsible for what's involved in creating it.  Or be unable to eat a certain ingredient for health reasons.  Or be (or be fed by) a really unimaginative cook.  So substitutes exist.  Some work well, some are best regarded as a completely different foodstuff, and others are patently unfit for purpose (vegan 'cheese' that doesn't melt, for example).

This ^^

A veggie sausage is only a sausage in that it is cylindrical and can be fried or grilled, they have little other resemblance to a meat sausage. You can make "burgers" out of all sorts of stuff, chick peas, sweetcorn, leftovers, whatever, just because it's in a sesame bun with ketchup on it doesn't make it a poor relation of a beef patty. I don't eat meat cos I don't like it and don't take kindly to people inferring various morals on me for that simple thing. So about the only non-meat thing I won't eat is quorn because it is too much of a realistic substitute, and I guess it's aimed at people with one of the other reasons Kim mentions.

One thing I don't get is soya milk in tea. Soya milk falls into the "completely different foodstuff" category, it's only called "milk" because it's a white liquid, it's no more like milk than peanut butter is a substitute for butter. Each to their own, of course, but if you want to drink tea, why not just the tea?
Quote from: tiermat
that's not science, it's semantics.

rr

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #44 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:10:01 pm »
When I joined my current employer we did a lot of residential training courses. The inability of several large hotels to cater for the veggies and vegan was breath taking -pasta with a tin of tomatoes was one of the better efforts. Protein free diets were routine.
As for the Scottish university where we spent 10 weeks, they served fish concealed in veggie food toto  someone allergic to fish, put Thai fish sauce in the vegan's food and gave Moslems ham sandwiches to break their Ramadan fast.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #45 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:14:22 pm »
I have not tried soya milk in tea but I have had tea both with and without milk.
They taste very different because the fat in milk takes up some of the tannic bitterness.
If soya milk did this to tea, I might wish to use it were I vegan.
I don't like black tea.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #46 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:15:42 pm »
Our work's summer BBQ is horrendous at catering for vegetarians despite giving feedback about good veggie caterers locally, there being large numbers of them and it being different caterers each time.  They also don't make sure the veggies get served first so often there's no veggie food left at all.

There is no excuse in 2014 for not being able to cater for common dietary needs, ESPECIALLY when you make those with said needs book in advance that they have them. 

I would make a serious complaint against an org who misled about contents of food like rr's examples, that's shutdown their licence to caterworthy as they clearly don't care and could kill someone. The Muslims would have an Equality Act level complaint too.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #47 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:17:19 pm »
A friend of mine describes soya milk as "if you consider it a replacement for milk, it mings, but if you treat it as something different it's fine".

Annoyingly after becoming lactose intolerant I then became even more intolerant to sodding soya milk which is often the non-dairy substitute available for tea.  I don't like drinking tea black.

Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #48 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:23:43 pm »
Barakta how do you become lactose intolerant and is this common? I thought lactose tolerance was a genetic mutation you either had or you didn't. I am obviously wrong.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Kim

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Re: I am not a vegan...
« Reply #49 on: 26 January, 2014, 08:27:45 pm »
It's commonly an acquired condition (in those with the mutation that allows for lactase production into adulthood) after an infection destroys the lining of the gut that produces lactase.  Usually it re-grows after a few months, but evidently not enough to allow for barakta's previous levels of milk consumption.