SC - vegetarians

[Stephen Bloch]

Anne-Marie writes:
 
> As I have said before, I always try to make sure there's one or two 
> dishes in every course for lacto-ovo vegetairans to eat, just cuz I know 
> there's bunches of them in my barony. I'm not making separate dishes for 
> them, just planning the menu so they can participate in the banquet if 
> they so chose. Make sense?

This issue came up when my wife and I ran a feast a few months ago.
I've never been strictly vegetarian, but at various times in the past
I've been 95% ovo-lacto for many months on end.  I had a (somewhat
political) motive to consider vegetarianism not as a "special" diet,
but rather a simple matter of choosing what dishes to eat, just as
would a person who's allergic to peanuts, doesn't like tomatoes, or
cannot eat shellfish for religious reasons.  So my preference was to
design the meal in such a way that, without making any fuss,
vegetarians (at least the ovo-lacto kind) could choose enough food in
each course to leave the table happy and full.  The (printed or
herald-cried) announcement of the dishes of each course would specify
which dishes contained no meat, no animal products, etc.

My wife's preference, based on a number of years' experience cooking
feasts in her old group (Greyhope, northwestern Indiana), was to
prepare small quantities of "vegetarian alternatives" for some of the
dishes (at least one in each course), and have vegetarians come and get
them.  (Ostgardr feasts typically use the "one person from each table"
serving style -- yecch -- so the vegetarians would just get in the same
line, saying "vegetarian version" when they reached the kitchen door.)
I think she felt either (a) this made the vegetarians feel special and
cared-for, or (b) there was no sense spending money on another dish for
the whole company to meet the dietary needs of a few.

As the wife, of course, she won.  I'm not convinced of her arguments,
except perhaps the one about Lysistrata :-), but I'd be curious to know
how other people take care of relatively large dietary minorities like
ovo-lacto-vegetarians.  (Kosher is an even larger minority around here,
but I'm not about to use separate dishes and call in a supervising
rabbi and all that, and the folks who keep kosher just don't expect to
be able to eat the feast.)
 
> --Anne-Marie, who someday would like to serve a fast day meal...fish fish 
> fish! :D

It occurred to me a number of years ago while planning for an Estrella
War that it ALWAYS falls during Lent, and we really should be eating
accordingly.  The idea didn't go over terribly well....

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
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