You can’t moan about the meal someone prepares for you when you know the menu.
Thanksgiving is now behind us, and most of us will be spending the next couple of days in a food-related coma after way too much turkey. If you took on the stressful role of cooking the dinner for your family this year, you’ve earned a nice long break to recover from the panic of having to make sure everything is perfect.
But one woman has said her Thanksgiving celebrations didn’t quite go to plan this year, as her family told her she had “ruined” the big day by serving an alternative menu – even though they knew about it ahead of time. The woman is a vegetarian and no longer consumes “large-scale meat products”, so decided to ditch the turkey for a vegetable wellington.
‘My wife wanted to hide huge secret from her sister I told her behind her back’
‘My mom purposefully served meat to my vegan wife then called her disrespectful’
In a Reddit post, the woman stated that she made this change very clear “a few weeks ago” when she shared her final menu on the family group chat. Despite being informed in advance that there would be no meat at the gathering, her family members still accused her of “ruining” Thanksgiving.
She shared: “I came up with an alternative menu: roasted veggie wellington, an assortment of sides like sweet potato casserole, green bean almondine, cranberry sauce, stuffing (with veggie broth), and a pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. I put a lot of thought into making it festive and delicious, and when I sent the menu out in our family group chat a few weeks ago, I didn’t get much of a reaction.
“Fast forward to Thanksgiving Day. Everyone arrived, and while most of the family seemed excited to try the food, my uncle and his wife were visibly upset. Uncle John kept making snide comments like, ‘Thanksgiving without turkey is like Christmas without presents’. I stayed polite, explained my reasons for skipping the turkey, and even joked that this meal meant they had extra room for dessert. But the tension didn’t go away.
“Later, I overheard Uncle John ranting to my mom, saying I ‘ruined’ Thanksgiving by pushing my ‘agenda’. Mom doesn’t care about the menu and told him to relax, but now I feel conflicted. Was it selfish to skip the turkey? Should I have compromised?”
If you cannot view the above Reddit post, click here.
Commenters on the post wondered if there could have been a miscommunication when she sent the menu, with some people believing she would still be serving turkey alongside the veggie wellington. Others agreed that she should have compromised and served a turkey anyway, as it’s tradition for Thanksgiving.
One individual commented: “I mean, you do you and all that. It seems an odd day to make this sort of choice, though. Surely you could do that in your daily life and not force it on other people. But since you chose to draw this line on a holiday famous for the preparation of a particular kind of meat, make no mistake, you did push an agenda here, and you were making some sort of statement and forcing others to be a part of it.”
Another chimed in: “If you wanted a vegetarian meal, you shouldn’t have volunteered to host Thanksgiving. I would suggest hosting other family meals, maybe Lent. But not major holidays where people traditionally eat meat.”
