BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Vegetarian Any Suggestions to Help Family Understand?

I was strictly vegetarian (for health, animal rights, and religious beliefs) for several years. When I met my husband he was very supportive and rarely ate meat. 2 years ago we moved back to Hawaii and in with his mom. DH quickly decided he wanted to resume eating meat having missed his mom's home cooked meals for over 17 years.

Due to my work schedule, lack of vegetarian ingredients, and hating cooking for myself I slowly converted to eating meat. Within 2 years DH has developed high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and gout. So we've decided to go back to being vegetarians which we're managing well since local markets now carry vegetarian products and I don't work so I can cook our meals.

Everything is going well...but my mother-in-law continues to cook salty, fatty, meat dishes and becomes offended when we do not accept her food. We've told her numerous times to not cook for us and that she is welcome to try our food. But it's hard to teach an old dog tricks.

Food is a big part of the Hawaiian and Filipino culture...does anybody have any suggestions to kindly reject her foods???

Speaking as a married woman with her own mother in law there really is no easy polite way to refuse her food. This is probably only partially to do with your vegetarian lifestyle and a great deal more to do with simple mother politics.

I'm going to assume you have explained why you have embraced vegetarianism and she has witnessed her son's health symptoms.

Food is a way to show affection and by refusing her offerings she could take that to mean you are rejecting her love. Can you possibly tweak her traditional favorite dishes to reflect a meat free, lower fat and salt diet? Or offer to cook together and show her hands on how you want to eat so that HER SON remains healthy. I know this might be hard but from what you describe it probably can't get much more uncomfortable around mealtime.

Thanks for the tips! When we first moved here, we gave MIL a healthy Hawaiian cookbook...basically it was traditional recipes with no added salt and sugar. Before we went back to being vegetarians we suggested skinless chicken breasts but she complained of it being dry and less tender. She doesn't like less or no salt. She uses so much salt that I literally become itchy! She refuses to use vegetable broth.

It's really hard to tweak her recipes! Both the Hawaiian and Filipino culture isn't really vegetarian friendly...she enjoys making pork belly adobo, spam, Portuguese Bean Soup with hammocks, Portuguese sausage, vienna sausage. Obviously, these dishes aren't healthy for her either having triple by-pass surgery, 1 stent in her heart, 1 stent in her leg, needing another stent in her corated arteries, and having high cholesterol, diabetes.

But the good thing is last night she ate vegetarian chili with TVP and liked it! That's ground breaking!