We Vegetarians / Around it

Cooking for a mixed household

Two dinners every night is not sustainable.

Households where some people eat meat and some do not frequently end up with the vegetarian cooking a separate meal, which doubles the work and quietly makes it their problem to solve.

The arrangement that works is a shared base with a divergent addition: the same vegetables, grain and sauce, with meat cooked separately for those who want it. That is one meal with a variation rather than two meals.

It also avoids the pattern where the vegetarian option is what remains after the meat is removed, which is how vegetarians in mixed households end up eating side dishes for years.

Where somebody in a household is transitioning, cooking well matters disproportionately, because early impressions of what this food is like are formed from the first several meals and are difficult to shift later.

The other consideration in a mixed household is who does the cooking. Where the vegetarian is also the cook, the arrangement is manageable; where they are not, the person cooking is being asked to learn a set of techniques for somebody else's benefit, and that goes much better if it is acknowledged rather than assumed.