If a vegan friend visited you today, what could you make for them?

"I would love to serve him Gluten-free Vegan Lasagna.This vegan twist on lasagna replaces pasta and meat, with zucchini and eggplant ribbons, lentils, and pesto. I got this one from iahas.com and it was delicious.
"

Build your own Buddha bowl. I've been eating these for over a week because my salad greens are so amazing right now.

So, for the base of the bowl, a salad made from any or all of the ingredients in the picture:
Pea greens
Viola leaves and flowers
Lamb's lettuce
Chives
Salad burnet
Kale
Various mustard greens (frilly purple leafed variety pictured)
Not pictured, but also available:
Turnip greens
Beet greens
Radish greens
Purple leaf lettuce
Various herbs

Cooked chickpeas

Choice of:
Brown rice
Millet

Cooked vegetables:
Beets
Squash
Parsnip

Raw vegetables:
All the cooked options
Carrots
Radish pods
Mushrooms

Dressing:
Tahini miso ginger
Peanut curry

Toppings:
Various allium greens
Toasted sunflower or sesame seeds
Raw pepitas
Raisins
Dried apricots

Today it would be leek and potato soup (potatoes in the cupboard, leeks in the ground), home made bread (in the freezer) to be followed by flapjacks (oats, oil and golden syrup - is the latter available anywhere outside Britain?). There's always something suitable in the cupboard, e.g. rice, dried pulses etc so having a vegan friend visit wouldn't be too much of a problem and perhaps they could help cook?

Ara Murray wrote: flapjacks (oats, oil and golden syrup - is the latter available anywhere outside Britain?).

You can get it in Canada - it's even made here. But the grocery store I shop at sells Lyle's for any expats feeling nostalgic 😁  

We always used golden syrup on our pancakes growing up and friends sleeping over always thought it was so weird😆

We had an off the cuff 'peasant stew' which I made up today. A big leek, lots of mushrooms, dried carlin peas (pre soaked overnight and cooked separately first) chopped carrots and a tin of tomatoes, with water, mixed herbs, a little (vegan) worcestershire sauce and yeast extract with a bit of salt (because the yeast extract was one with no salt). Topped with dumplings made with flour, oil and spare soya yoghurt (water would have done) and a bit of cooked kale on the side. It was really yummy and got the husband thumbs up too!

Tonight will probably be 'chikun' pot pie using one of the purchasable veggie chix substitutes.  The veggies are the same carrots, celery, onion, potato and peas as in a typical pot-pie, but the flavor comes from a bit of the "Not Chicken" boulion seasoning.s along with nutritional yeast, black salt, and onion powder.  A stew of this is made in a skillet which is finally thickened with a bit of all purpose flour.  Crust is made with vegan margarine but crust is not pre-baked.  After pouring filling mix into pie crust, it is topped with a crust and baked.

Speaking as such a friend, these all sound yummy! Thank you!

We are a very milk and egg heavy household... BUT!

I've got enough veg to whip up a salad and plenty of suitable dressings and seeds to top it.

I can make up some lentil soup with kale and top it with garden fresh pea sprouts and a drizzle of sesame oil.

That's a fair spread right?

That sounds great to me Sinnah.

I just catered for 25 people the past 3 days. Gluten free and vegan. Quite a challenge, but everyone was happy and well fed.

Enrique Garcia wrote:I'm often perplexed by the notion that it is hard to cook for a vegan as eat everything carnivores eat with the exception of about 10-15 items

I get what you're saying but I mean ...

pretty much every soup I make starts with stock

I usually top salads hard boiled eggs and cheese and/or with store bought dressings that include egg

pretty much every casserole type thing I make has cheese in it as a structural ingredient.

even our store-bought GF pasta has eggs in it

I would have to look up vegan deserts because I literally don't know how to make any that don't contain milk or egg

I usually saute veg in margarine so I'd have to remember to get out the sunflower oil for that

I'm not saying it's hard to make vegan food. I'm saying that it does take thought for folks who aren't used to it.

I was pondering this question and thought to myself, I do not currently, and have not ever known anyone who is vegan.

Then I read a 2023 poll that said 1% of the US population is vegan and that makes more sense given my experience.

Then I looked into where vegan folks concentrate.

Below is a map from Newsweek. You can see that in my home state of Mississippi, my odds of befriending a vegan are very small.

This time of year, I would give them some scissors and show them the garden and berry patch. I would need advanced notice of a visit that included a meal, if it was not the growing season.

Getting food where it is growing is really the best way of all to get food. And for making a meal to have ready, I would use some pasta, whole grain would be a good idea, or brown rice, or potato, that would be cut up, to have cooked, with some leafy greens, several other cut up vegetables, some of different colors of the rainbow, added to it, and some hummus and medium salsa added to it finally. There would be seasonings available then. I doubt there would be anyone not liking it. If one wants meatlike texture in it so much, some seitan or some jackfruit can be included in it. I don't think many would think that essential, still. Of course, having lots of things growing for food will be very desirable.

Enrique Garcia wrote:I'm often perplexed by the notion that it is hard to cook for a vegan as eat everything carnivores eat with the exception of about 10-15 items .. so we eat what you eat !! Easy peasy lemon squeezy !! Also, I never expect anyone I visit to provide a meal as I know it is hard for them to imagine .. so we always being our own or eat before we show up ... as we are 3% of the population so no worries mate !

That's kinda funny, albeit wildly inaccurate.

First of all, my friends who are vegan, won't ever come over expecting me to feed them, because I'm heavily carnivore and I can almost always offer them a steak... I tend to have on hand plenty of meats, sausages, cheeses, and eggs. I will also usually have frozen broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, sometimes brussel sprouts and fresh spinach, but I eat lots of vegetables too, so stock on hand is variable... There's probably rice and various dried pasta in the pantry, and extra virgin olive oil, when butter and bacon fat are undesired. I don't keep much in the way of beans on hand, so vegan protein options are scarce...

I could even offer the finest Japanese A5 Wagyu ribeye steak at times, but if someone is committed to being vegan, it's an expensive waste...

I don't eat potatoes, my wife doesn't eat bell peppers or anything with wheat gluten, and I really try to stay low carb most of the time. My vegan sister-in-law is a doctor, but when my blood work came back better than hers, she got off my case about my diet...

She eats soy stuff (none in our house), fruits and vegetables. We can agree on non-starchy vegetables until I smother them in butter.

Burra drew my attention to this thread and we had a quick thinky (as I do most of the cooking when we're both here) - I could easy enough knock up a nice quick pasta dish with basil from the garden, onions, mushroom, peppers and so on which we ordinarily have al the time.  The tomato sauce in bottles from Lidl turns out to be vegan when I check although I don't think it's labelled as such but there aren't any animal products on the list.  Or I mostly have fresh tomato in the fridge anyway.  Or I could do a veggie curry if I cooked the rice specifically: we often have cooked rice read but that isn't vegan as Burra puts "skinny bits" in it for collagen to help are increasingly aging joints.  But there's plenty of uncooked rice and it doesn't take that long to cook.  We also mostly have frozen cooked beans or chickpeas in the freezer.

Tomatoes and lettuce ...