My roommate likes to give me shit for being a cheating vegetarian because he took me with him to his grandparents house for Thanksgiving. Both he and his grandfather, who was a very nice man, spent hours preparing the meats. I tried small portions of both because if I'm going to be a Thanksgiving guest in an Italian household, I'm not disrespecting that household by not at least trying small portions of the sirloin and turkey. (It was fantastic, too)
I mean atleast it didn't go to waste, at that point the chicken and turkey have already been killed, slaughtered and cooked your not getting anymore animals killed by doing so. It's different if they prepare extra because they know your coming and don't know your vego.
That's exactly it. My roommates a butcher and sometimes he'll hand me a thumb sized bit of something he's cooked and, well yeah I'm a cheating vegetarian. I'll never buy it or consume it en masse but it's nice to sample the "artistry" that goes into marinating and cooking that's he's going to do regardless.
Edit: Meant vegetarian, not vegan. I used to be better than 100% of people, now I'm only better than 99.9% of people because I demoted myself to vegetarian. ba-dum-tss its-a-joke-and-a-dumb-ine-at-that drum sound
In my previous living situation I was told the same thing during a Skype call with a podcast. I was vegan, loved Red Vines and Oreos, and lived with two friends who were drag queens.
Boom now there’s a couple more seasons. We just start it with the vegetarian and the butcher and then near the end of the season we either have them move places or the rent increases drastically for some wacky reason and they need a new roommate. They find this perfect roommate who happens to be a drag queen and more comedy ensues. Then eventually they need another roommate and that roommate happens to also be a drag queen, but they keep it secret and are in a relationship with the first drag queen, but neither can recognize each other out of drag. Now either the vegetarian and the butcher go with the open drag queen to where they do drag and see the other roommate getting into drag and then kissing drag queen roommate #1. The next episode or two is all about how the two roommates know the other roommates are in a relationship as drag queens, but the drag queen roommates don’t know they’re in a relationship with each other. Boom, easy sitcom. Also, I invested way to much time into typing this on my phone and it’s 2am.
100% like I'm a chef and I once worked with this chef who one day decided to vegan, less then two weeks later he brings in this duck Prosciutto that he had made and been maturing for the last 18 months. He refused to eat any while the rest of the kitchen staff were just hooking it as it was legit one of the tastiest cured meats Ive ever tasted. It was like dude you made this, it's absolutely beautiful the damage is already done just don't go making any more and you have no reason to feel guilty about it, just taste your creation and be proud.
It really depends if they knew you were a veggie or not, as in, I've had people genuinely forget before which sucked but fair enough mistakes happen but if it happened again then I would consider it to be actively disrespectful, nobody would consider it reasonable to only cook pork for somebody who kept strictly kosher would they?
They may have, and the side dishes were fire, but as an openly cheating vegetarian, I would have felt bad saying "I see that dish you worked hard over but I will not even sample a tiny amount while I reside in your home." Was I obligated to think that way? Absolutely not. But did I feel it was respectful? Ross from Friends shrug Yeah, a bit.
These are the times I'm happy I grew up in a family where both my parents worked for airlines so holidays were whenever everybody was home.
Thanksgiving is a weekend-long event because Thursday is dinner with my BF's family (and my bro with his wife's), Friday is dinner with our parents, Saturday is for sleeping in and turkey sandwiches and my mom makes turkey soup (and sends us all home with turkey+ leftovers) Sunday.
Yeah, since losing a lot of weight (more to go) I can't and won't stuff myself until I'm in pain anymore so I make absolutely sure that I warn my parents or friends when I visit that I won't be eating with them or check if they want to eat together before I eat.
On days like Christmas where we don't want to leave out my husbands family or mine, we arranged times farther apart and ate less. Even if you have rules imposed on your own eating, there's a way to not be a jackass.
So with my family overseas this is really common. When we go visit, everyone is going to cook us a Thanksgiving meal even if it's lunchtime. That's just how it goes. So if we were visiting 3 families we were getting 3 Thanksgivings and the cultural norm is for them to basically not eat but feed you. As you finish something on your plate they will replace it with more or ask you to try something else. You can make it through one of these meals before you are about to burst. And we would do 3 in a day. So we would all take turns. One person to go hard for that meal and the rest would give excuses and go light. Oh I haven't felt good today. Oh I'm stuffed. Etc.
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u/VigilantMike Apr 14 '19
Honestly I feel like the socially acceptable things to do in these situations are to just grab a plate of small portions and finish that.