What to serve when entertaining people at home

[Thales]

Hello,

I am new to this forum. I have been vegetarian for about 40 years and vegan for two or three years.

I would like to hear what other people do when you have people over to your house. I am strictly vegan and also never eat any processed or junk food.

One of the things that I like to do is have people over for pizza. I make the pizza from basic ingredients including the crust. I make a vegan pizza for myself, but most of my guests expect pizza to have cheese on it. What would you do: serve them cheese or not? I do draw the line at meat. I don't allow any meat in the house at all, but I have been making exceptions for cheese products.

The same question applies to sodas and sugary drinks and snack foods like tortilla chips. I never drink or eat them myself, but I feel conflicted about whether I should provide them for visitors.

Thales

[Blueberries]

Heya Thales! I think this type of situation depends alot on the types of people involved. Are your friends vegan, vegetarian, open-minded omni or closed-minded omni? Are they health conscious? Maybe you should ask them what kind of food they like, or do they mind respecting your wishes and eating what you eat in your house. Do you generally allow people to eat non-vegan food in your house?

[alexstability]

It's your house! Before being vegan, I never had a problem eating what people had prepared for me (as long as it was good food!), whether it contained meat or not, let alone dairy products. If you take the time to prepare food for someone, in a way in which it is ok for you to consume, they should have no problem with what ISN'T in it. People who are not vegan aren't clamoring for meat and animal products in every dish, they just don't purposefully exclude them. I never ate much of them, but did on occasion, and would have never minded if a vegan friend made me a dish that was not made with animal products, I'm sure it would be delicious either way, good food is good food. If you have friends who as adults expect or demand animal products in their food, A) they have some strange food habits that are beyond a vegan friends help and B) aren't very respectful of a harmless request made by a friend, and probably aren't very good friends! I never buy or keep soda in my apartment, and the closest thing to snacks are nuts and fruit, and that was before I was vegan! My friends don't complain, if they want a soda I live next door to a gas station and 3 fast food restaurants, they are not hard to find. Having said all that, I hold a small home poker game at my apartment about once a week, and a lot of people I barely know or have just met do attend, and I'm not sure what their eating or drinking habits are, so I usually will pick up a few bottles of soda for the bar, mostly everyone will bring alcoholic drinks of their choice so I don't pay much attention to that side, but I will make 3-4 different appetizers, and encourage my friends to bring stuff they make themselves too, vegan or not, for everyone to try. Most people will attempt vegan food, but even if they don't, I am never offended, I do not have to eat it. No one has ever been so disrespectful as to bring like, say, a steak, or chicken wings, over, but there's been cheese and probably other dairy products used. I guess it really just depends on your friends, and how much of an "inconvenience" they see your veganism to them. Hopefully you have open minded and understanding friends that know your choice NOT to eat meat is in no way imposing on them or their choices, and that it's not really a sacrifice to not eat animal products for one meal in their lifetime to get to hang out with you!

[Thales]

There are about 8 people who often come to these pizza parties that I do occasionally. A couple of them call themselves vegetarian but eat fish. The rest are meat eaters.

Another issue is that the two fish eating vegetarians don't drink alcohol. Normally, I only have beer, water, and oranges for juicing in the house and I really don't like giving my money to Coca-cola and the other sugared drink makers. But that raises the question of what to serve the non drinkers for a liquid more interesting than water.

I also quite often have guests living in my house for periods of a few days to a few weeks at a time. I don't allow them to bring meat products into the house, but I have been more tolerant of dairy, and eggs.

After I posted this, I realized I could solve my immediate problem by just fixing something other than pizza when i have guests. But homemade pizza is very different from the commercial products and it is popular with my guests.

[peanutbutter]

Last night I had a dinner party and I made cauliflower pesto soup and chickpea piccata (chickpeas in a lemon, white wine, garlic and herb sauce) over wild rice with roasted carrots and rocket (arugula) from the vegan cookbook Appetite for Reduction. It went down really well. In the past I have served linguine/spaghetti tossed in truffle oil with breaded fried aubergine and tomato sauce. For dessert I sometimes throw avocados, cocoa powder and agave syrup into the food processor...a really simple vegan chocolate pudding!

I'm sure most people will be respectful and willing to try a cheeseless pizza - my friends are generally quite curious about what it is we eat, and I use dinner parties to show off how varied, healthy and delicious the vegan diet can be.

For non-alcohol drinkers, why don't you get some other fruits/fruit juices and make some non-alcoholic cocktails or even some smoothies for them?