OT: Buffet Menu HELP!!!!

well here at any family gathering (Christmas/Easter/birthdays) we do the following buffet - it's usually a lunch or brunch one but it will give a good idea. I have to cater for: omnivores, vegetarians and a vegan. and these eating habits also cover all religions.

• several kinds of breads - we have frenchbread/flatbread/ and a nice crusty one

• a selection of cheeses - vegetarian ones and a vegan one as well as the normal gouda and French cheeses that the kids love.

• several dishes/platters with salad vegetables so everyone can make their own salad - with dressings to taste too.

• Fool medames - this is a warm bean dish that goes well with bread but is

*not* a fancy dish. *in the winter a warm vegetable soup. *couscous salad.(my sister makes this one so I'm not too sure of the recipe)

this seems to somehow cater for the varying appetites (from a nibble to "rubbish bin" appetite ;-) ) we load up plates at the dining room table and then sit somewhere else to eat.

Jessamy:

Oh, that sounds lovely! What time are you serv> well here at any family gathering (Christmas/Easter/birthdays) we do the

Christmas day :) around 12 ish possibly later .. just turn up and join in we don't empty the table till late afternoon.

Vegan cheese is soy based - apart from that bit I don't have a clue myself - I just buy it ;-) normal cheese is made with rennet - an animal product (probably a dead animal product) vegetarian cheese is made with a plant based substance that spits the curds and whey

being none of these I am pretty clueless except that I now they exist and I know where to get them - though I must admit that vegetarian cheese is more flavourful than your bog standard factory cheese you buy in the shops.

catering for my family is complicated at the best of times - I just do my best to make sure everything is at least vegetarian and then add stuff that is vegan too. we also have a Christmas cake every year and I have been known to make mine pies from scratch that are vegan. I'm just glad I can cook lol.

I know I'm gonna get blasted for this, but I'm gonna say it anyway; it's prolly my one major rant other than smoking. I do a LOT of cooking; I LOVE cooking and will try just about any cuisine, but Vegan is where I draw the line. I don't cater to vegan. I will make foods that are vegetarian, and if there is a vegan, they can contribute something to the meal if they like, or they can eat bread and lettuce. Come to think of it, they can't eat bread and lettuce either - bread might have been made with milk or eggs, and you know Yeast is a living thing that got killed for the cause, and prolly a chicken was exploited for its poo to fertilize the lettuce, so Never mind. Good grief; they refuse to eat meat and then eat fake food that supposedly TASTES like meat (but fails miserably) like this nasty crap called "Tofurkey" and (OMG) Tofurkey Jerky. (Anybody remember the dizzy girl in "Notting Hill" who was a 'fruitarian'? )

My best friend's husband won't eat any meat but chicken or fish. It's impossible to have a meat dish if they're coming over, and it makes me nuts because I just about hate chicken - it's boring no matter what you do with it.

Yep, I'm a big ol' carnivore, and not about to change. Picky eaters make me nuts.

L

"Jessamy" wrote

my Vegan is my mother and *nobody* argues with her and wins so every year I suffer a turkey less Christmas buffet instead of the turkey dinner I would prefer.

we buy either vegan bread (yes it exists) or we buy the cheap ready packaged breads as they have almost nothing in them and are surprisingly "safe"

when my mother comes it's all eco stuff so not fertilised inappropriately as far as my mother is concerned. I won't go into the discussions she tries to have with me about the fact that I do eat meat - or give milk to my kids

We sometimes eat the soy substitutes, just because we want something different. Morning Star Farms breakfast links with yorkshire pudding on top of them, and onion gravy..yum! But I draw the line at tofurkey! ew ew ew! I absolutely cannot stand those things! Plus they are wildly expensive and feed about 3 people, bad choice for a family.

Feeding vegans isn't so tough, you just have to get past the idea that they need "special food", cause they don't. Back in the day it was all , oh poor vegetarians, eating nothing but boiled vegetables and salad. Nowdays a lot of people have come by this notion that if you are feeding a vegetarian you have to go out and get some ridiculously priced special Vegetarian Chow. One of the problems with that is if a body knows you have gotten something special for them they feel bound to eat it. If it is horrible it can be a true test of friendship! (I don't care for Boca products, the number of times I have had to work to keep smiling while gnawing through a heinous Boca food! *shudder*) There are plenty of perfectly wonderful vegetarian dishes out there that do not require buying anything special, and in fact will probably be enjoyed by most everybody. True, vegans provide a bit more of a challenge because they don't eat dairy or eggs. There is still a huge variety of food that they do eat though. I keep a pound of margerine in the fridge around the holidays just in case I am having a vegan to dinner. That is about the extent of special treatment anybody gets. Oh I might forgo a cheese sauce for the boccoli, but that is no huge sacrifice for one meal.

I almost never invite the peta type extremists to eat. You just never know what on the table might have been cause for some variety of "animal cruelty". That is how I found out that white cane sugar is bleached in a process that uses bone ash, and white beet sugar is not. It could be worse though, they could be a political eater. People who decide what to eat based on political reasons are almost impossible to sit down to a diatribe free meal with. If you feel you have to have this sort of person over for a bite, my best suggestion is to make just a bite. Muchies and drinks and leave it at that, because there is just no pleasing them. With just raw vegetables and an amusing vinegrette you may run into monologues.

That said, I find people who without medical or religious reason fancy they can dictate what goes on the table at a dinner with several guests to be quite out of line. I don't expect anyone I invite into my house to critcize what I serve for dinner, based on their own notions of what people should eat. There is no rule that says folks have to eat some of everything, and I would be shocked if they did. Particularly unexpected guests certainly should have no cause to complain. If I have invited people I will do my best to serve them food I think they will like. I have even been known to get a deli platter from a wonderful little local place if I am having several carnivores to dine. Usually though, if the food is good, people tend not to notice the absence of meat.

Amusingly enough, I more often get meat eaters complaining that I didn't cook them a meat dish more often than I get vegans having fits because there is milk and butter on the table, though certainly that has happened as well. I haven't cooked meat since around 1979 (except for once slopping sauce at a BBQ). You so don't want me to cook meat for you!

NightMist has been known to toss guests who couldn't seem to be civil at the dinner table right out on their ear.

I've comes across a chicken dish that's not all that boring, probably because of the spices, called Fruity Chicken Pilaf. I've put the recipe in the database the Alice is working on, but in the meantime if anyone wants it I could email or post it here.

In my vegetarian days, I found that the biggest thing the average carnivore didn't "get" in cooking for vegetarians is that vegetarian means "no meat products", not just "no big slab of meat."

In other words, the stuff some people offered was of the nature of "this is a vegetarian soup---there's no meat in it." "Oh, what base did you start with?" "Beef broth."

Or "I didn't know what to make for a vegetarian, so we're having a nice big salad. Slathered in real bacon bits."

(That of course doesn't count the people who approached serving a vegetarian with a serious "up yours" attitude: "Yes, I know you're a vegetarian. I've known that since long before I began planning this meal. We're having spaghetti cooked in the sauce, and the sauce is about 2/3 meat. There will be no side dishes. Eat or don't, I don't give a damn.")

It's not all that difficult, especially if you're doing a buffet: so many things can be done as "here's the parts, add the ones you want." Not only salads, but pastas....we used to (carnivore phase) routinely offer spaghetti, for example, with a marinara sauce on the side, and some cooked ground meat also on the side---want to add it to your sauce, fine. Don't want to, fine.

And I make a kickass vegetarian chili. The core concept is substituting hominy for meat---the corn together with the beans provides a complete protein, and it has a similar chewiness to meat in chili, balancing the other ingredients. Once you take the meat out, chili is just as vegan as vegetarian.

--pig

-- Megan Zurawicz South Holland, Illinois

Tis the Season for food---please post it here Thanks

Butterfly

I'm probably way off base here, but you actually allow ONE person to dictate what you'll serve and eat???? Mother or not, too D*** bad. Why should you give up something your family likes to please just one person? Let her bring her own food. Gen

Been there, had to deal with that. Or better yet: But this is vegetarian food, it's chicken! Where some meat eaters come by the notion that poultry is not meat is beyond me. With some kids I can sort of see it, a lot of them don't seem to understand that things like hot dogs and hamburgers are meat. In fact I have run across one or two that thought that just because it does noes not have recognizable 'limbs' it did not come from an animal. Kind of scary when you think about it, some of these kids are teenagers.

Just in from left field: My worst dining experience ever probably has to be the time when after a fair, I had to go out to dinner with everybody. I literally had to, I was riding with the promoter and she was going. I didn't know we were going til she told me on the way, so I didn't have any input on choice of dining establishements. We ended up at The Roadhouse. For those who have no idea, it is a franchise, one of those places where there is brown paper on the tables and they give you a box of crayons with your menu. There are inshell peanuts on all the tables, you are supposed to throw the shells on the floor. Hamburgers cost $7 and vegetarians are most certainly not very welcome. The place burns cows, period. I ended up ordering a salad, no bacon please, the waitress actually refused to bring me a rum and coke, and then told me I was going to be paying a $5 table charge because I wasn't eating enough, at my single check table with 13 other people. I got to sit sipping my plain coke while watching frozen daquiris go past the table for 45 minutes before the salad got there. Then it was 2 group bowls for the table with the bacon in bowls on the side and the waitress making snarky remarks about the bacon being on the side because ONE person at the table didn't want any. The country music blasting at uncomfortable decibles would have kept me out given the choice, the lousy service, disrespect, and gallons of grease everywhere certainly did nothing to encourage me ever setting foot in the place again. Plus there had to have been 5 or 6 birthdays adding to the cacaphony.......every bad stereotypical cartoon about birthdays in western style restaraunts you have ever seen? Yeah I think this place started it, or at least perfected it.

NightMist no quilts anywhere in sight (thankfully, they woiuld have been dripping grease), but a life size poster of Garth Brooks on the inside of the lady's room door.

On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 09:23:06 -0600, Listpig wrote:

I like most regular MF products, kiri is keen on their black bean burgers. Worthington Farms with their "spun soy fiber" technology makes some decidedly edible things when you can find them. Their canned 'vegetable scallops' are great in any number of dishes, they don't taste anything like scallops (I think, it's been a while) but where gluten balls are called for they are a really convienient source.

Here is a nifty veggie recipe and etc. site:

They have recipes for several things we thought we invented, and there are frequent mentions in the forums of what commonly available foods and seasonings are veggie safe. For example I had no idea that Goya ham broth concentrate was veggie safe, but if you read the lable there it is. I reckon they must let a pig look at it every now and then, and that is what makes it 'ham'. It is revolutionizing the way we cook black eyed peas.

NightMist

We ended up at The Roadhouse. and vegetarians are most certainly not very welcome. the waitress actually refused to bring me a rum and coke, and then told me I was going to be paying a $5 table charge because I wasn't eating enough,

Oh, I do believe I would slap that girl into next week. And pour my soda on the front of her clothes, and wait out in the car for the rest of them. She shoulda been fired on the spot. Cyndi

Well, you CAN prepare them the same way, but they require a lot of sauce or gravy to be palatable. ;)

L

Amen. We have a Roadhouse here, and it sucks.

Serves 4 and is ready to eat in approx. 30 minutes!

45g butter (I've been using marg. with no problems) 1 large onion finely chopped (dried onion flakes work) 3 chicken thighs diced * 1 cup long grain rice - Basmati is perfect for this. 1/4 cup (50g) chopped dried apricots 1/4 cup (50g) chopped raisins (or whole sultanas) 1 3/4 cup (435ml) hot chicken stock 1 cinnamon stick ** 1 teaspoon ground coriander 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger pinch of ground tumeric 1/4 cup slivered almonds 2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander leaves Can use dried, just half the amount.

Melt butter in heavy base pan and cook onion at meduim heat untiol softened. Add chicken and cook until lightly browned. Add rice and stir until all grains are coated in butter, then stir in apricots and raisins. Add chicken stock with cinnamon stick, coriander, tumeric and ginger. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer without stirring until tunnels form. Cover and cook over low heat for 15-20 min (until liquid is absorbed). Allow to stand for 2 min then stir in almonds and coriander leaves. Season to taste with salt and fresh ground black pepper. Remove cinnamon stick before serving. (The salt and pepper are not necessary, very tasty without!)

Can be served with green salad if you like.

• I've been buying diced chicken breast, roughly 200-300g for the 3 of us with reduced amounts of the other stuff, reduced the amount of rice, stock and butter to approx. 2-3 serves.

** 1/8-1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon is equivalent to 1 stick, I've been going with

1/2 tsp.

I got this from a Family Circle recipe book called Fast Workday Dinners, everything is supposed to able to be cooked and on the table in about 30 min.

I agree - if it's a buffet and you have many guest - you don't cater to the one. Now if it is a small cozy dinner with just that person and one other then by all means cater to that one's food wishes. Entertaining is supposed to be enjoyable for all - not having to stress about who likes what or doesn't.

Back in the caveman days - when I was a waitress - the rule was "The customer is always right." I think this girl needed a refresher course in "Waitress 101"

Sounds like redneck house to me! LOL!! or my DSs ex-in-laws.