Feeding my (non-vegan, highly suspicious) parents

Recipe recommendations and ideas for pleasing everyone. Reviewed by my parents.

Coming at you a couple of days late this week because we’ve had my parents here for five days. My parents, who are 100% supportive of our decision to not eat animal products and mildly disgusted at the thought of having to eat vegan stuff themselves. Have you heard the phrase ‘vegan curious’, describing people who are keen to eat a more plant-based diet without going full vegan? Well, my parents are the opposite of that. Vegan suspicious, maybe. Vegan indifferent at best.

I didn’t eat a kidney bean until my twenties because they were always referred to in such dark, ominous terms in our house. (‘They can kill you, you know.’) My parents have even been known to take a frying pan and bacon on holiday. On a plane. In their suitcase.

But to their credit, my folks have never once given me grief for going vegan.* They’ve never tried to ‘trick’ me into eating animal products. They’ve never made me feel the slightest bit awkward when I visit home or we go out to eat together. In fact, Mum spends more time poring over menus for vegan options than I do. (Woe betide the garden centre café that has nothing for her precious vegan child. ‘In this day and age?’ she’d say. ‘Pathetic.’)

*They do, however, still give me shit for not liking ‘green bits’ (aka herbs) when I was a literal child.

How to enjoy eating together when you eat such different things

Firstly, find your way to some simple ground rules. For my part, I don’t mind what guests eat when we’re out and about, but I don’t want to cook meat at home. Nor do I particularly want guests cooking meat. No suitcase bacon, in other words.

For their part, my parents would rather not eat anything too vegan. Beans are a no-no, digestively speaking, for my mum. And they’re both a bit weirded out by tofu, which is fair enough. (I’ve been there.) But veg-focused meals, especially if they involve pastry and potatoes, are all good.

We also eat out quite a lot when they come to stay, giving everyone the chance to order what they want. So we enjoyed a nice, leisurely breakfast together every day. We cooked a few meals at ours. And on the other days, we went out for food. Basically, when in doubt, eat out.

Here’s what we cooked at home (with parent reviews)

Breakfast: sourdough English muffins

Since none of us are gluten free, I leaned hard into freshly baked bready breakfasts. I’ve linked to my favourite sourdough muffin recipe down below as it’s one I use all the time and hasn’t failed me yet, despite my extremely slack approach to sourdough recipe timings.

Parent review: ‘Very nice.’ So nice they requested them again another morning.

Breakfast: cinnamon rolls

I always use the recipe in Freya Cox’s Simply Vegan Baking, which I can’t find online. But you can easily veganise your favourite cinnamon roll recipe by using soy milk and vegan butter.

Parent review: ‘Better than you’d get from a bakery.’ (High praise, since we’re big bakery fans in our family.)

Breakfast: lots of sourdough toast with Naturli vegan butter, Marmite and homemade jam

Listen, it may not sound exciting, but a pile of toasted homemade sourdough, with jars full of lovely stuff to spread on it, is still a novelty for those who don’t have time to make their own bread.

I didn’t ask them to review toast – I’m not that desperate for content – but the Naturli vegan butter got the parental nod of approval.

Sweet treat: vegan coffee and walnut cake

I’ve made this recipe by The Veg Space several times and it’s always good. However, I messed up this time by not having instant coffee in the house. (Note to self: don’t make coffee cake with pour-over coffee again.)

Parent review: ‘Actually very good. But more coffee flavour please.’

Dinner: vegetable tart with Greek lemon potatoes

You can never go wrong with a slab of shop-bought puff pastry, spread with some sort of saucey element (hummus works, or I made a red pepper pesto this time), then topped with seasonal veg. Sliced cherry tomatoes and courgettes are lovely in the summer months, but since we’re at the arse-end of spring, where there’s not a great deal coming from the garden except asparagus and chard, we used asparagus and chard.

It’s not much of a recipe:

• Roll out a slab of defrosted puff pastry to fill an oven tray.

• Spread the pastry with hummus or red pepper pesto. (I did one jar of roasted red peppers, drained; 2 cloves garlic; handful of walnuts; bunch of parsley; salt and pepper; couple big glugs of olive oil; optional couple spoonfuls of nutritional yeast or parmesan – all blitzed up into a pesto-ish concoction.)

• Arrange veg on top. (In this case, chard that I blanched for a couple of minutes, then squeezed to get rid of the water, and roughly chopped; asparagus sliced into jaunty batons; and some sundried tomatoes roughly chopped. Sliced cherry tomatoes and courgettes are also great. Vegan feta would be nice.)

• Scatter with chopped rosemary, and a good grinding of salt and pepper, then bake at 200°C for around 25–30 minutes.

We served the tart with Greek potatoes, cooked with loads of oil, salt, lemon and stock. This recipe is similar to what we do, although we make ours without garlic, and with veg stock in place of chicken stock.

Parent review: ‘Good flavour. They’re NOT potato wedges.’ (My parents felt it important you know the Greek potatoes aren’t the same as potato wedges, because my stepdad hates potato wedges and assumes other people are similarly weird.)

Dinner: lentil Bolognese

One day I’ll write up my vegan Bolognese method with proper quantities. In the meantime, as a general guide, it’s much the same as a regular Bolognese, but with lentils in place of the mince, and some added beefy, savouriness from Marmite and nutritional yeast.

It goes something like this (with apologies to Actual Italians):

• Cook finely chopped onion, carrot and celery, with a sprinkling of salt, in some oil until slightly softened. Add finely chopped garlic for the last minute or two.

• Stir in lentils. You can use tinned lentils, but I like to use a mixture of dried red lentils and dried beluga lentils – a small glassful of each. (Don’t ask me why I always measure lentils out into a small tumbler. I just do.) The red lentils will disappear into generic ragu-ness, while the black lentils retain their shape.

• Add the usual wine, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and stock (veg stock for us, but you could do a no-beef beef stock). How much stock depends on whether you’re using dried lentils or not. I start with about 750ml of stock – again, for dried lentils – then, as the lentils absorb the stock, I splash in more water as needed.

• For extra bulk, you can grate in a block of extra-firm tofu. (Sorry, Mum. But at least I didn’t feed you mushrooms.)

• For a beefy, savoury flavour boost, add a heaped teaspoon of Marmite and two tablespoons of nutritional yeast.

• Simmer until the lentils are cooked through and most of the liquid has been absorbed – or basically, until the sauce is the consistency you like. Taste and add more Marmite, nutritional yeast, salt and pepper as needed.

Parent review: ‘Very tasty, beefy flavour.’

Dinner: meatballs ‘n’ mash

On the last night, after a long day in Sofia, Rob knocked up some veggie meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy.

To make easy vegan meatballs, just mash up some plant burgers or sausages, add some finely chopped sage and onion, salt and pepper, a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs, and (optional, but recommended) a spoonful of chutney for a little sweetness. Then form into balls and fry.

Parent review: ‘Very good. Much better than IKEA plant balls.’

(For context, I cooked IKEA plant balls for them once and Mum still hasn’t forgiven me. Which goes to show they don’t give everything a positive review just to be nice. When they don’t like something, it becomes family legend and will forever be repeated. See also: me not liking green bits when I was young. They’re wrong, though; IKEA plant balls are great.)

So, to sum up, I basically spent this week hovering over my parents with a pen and paper, demanding they review everything we fed them. 10/10 recommend this approach for making people feel at ease in your house. Two thumbs up.

What to eat this week: Sourdough English muffins

Here’s the sourdough English muffin recipe that I swear by, from Little Spoon Farm. You’ll need to get started the day before: feed your starter in the morning, make the dough up in the evening, and let it rise overnight. Then cut out the muffins first thing, leave them to rise for a bit, and cook. They’re SO good. Tangy, soft, completely moreish. Parent-approved.

Thank you for being here. Please hit the like button if you enjoyed this piece, as it really helps others find it.