www.camp-cook.com

BigCAT · Joined: 17 May 2008 Posts: 374 Location: Sacramento, CA

Out of 30 peeps, I imagine only a handful would be vegan/vegetarian. Do you think your friend would be inclined to shoulder the major portion of buying a few new pots? A couple 12's (main and dessert) and a couple 10's (sides) would probably do it. Be a good way for you to expand your iron and have vegan-ready pots for the next opportunity. Baddd

Gaelen · Joined: 08 Sep 2008 Posts: 112 Location: Central NY

Grizzly - seriously, I meant that about never having had a vegetarian OR vegan refuse to eat one of the dishes I'd prepared based on the cookware it was prepped in.

While I haven't done any DO catering (except in the porcelain-enameled fancy French ovens), I do routinely cook in cast iron skillets which are seasoned the same way as a cast iron dutch oven. Are you thinking a vegan would object to the seasoning process (I use Crisco...) or to the fact that the 'juices' and fats from previously cooked meals are somehow made part of the seasoning of the oven?

I must run with a different group of militant vegans.

Believe me - we're talking food co-op holdovers from the 70s, but they all still eat the stuff that they *know* I've cooked in cast iron skillets.
Granted, I don't fry bacon, wipe it out, and then make a vegan tofu scramble in the same pan two minutes later while everyone is watching, but my post-cooking cleaning process is sufficient to remove any traces of meat cookery (or any other cookery) between recipes.

For ease of cleanup during your event, you might want to dedicate a couple of the ovens you already own to cooking the vegetarian/vegan meals. But I'm betting that people who are adventurous enough to go out to a ranch to do conservation work are also flexible enough to realize that if the food doesn't contain any ingredients they wouldn't eat, that's good enough.

Unless of course you wanted to use this experience as an excuse to buy new iron - in which case I'm sure someone will be along directly to support your options. Wink

_________________
Gaelen
1979 SunSpot
my jam blog: http://kitchenjam.net
Also Syracuse Food & Dog Training. @Gaelen2 on Twitter.

Grizzly · Joined: 05 Apr 2010 Posts: 19 Location: Antioch, Ca

Jerry Daschofsky · Posted: Wednesday 6-2-2010 10:09 pm Post subject:

Gaelen, see you must deal with a totally different crowd. To date, I'm VERY jaded when it comes to vegetarians, and even more so with Vegans. I will preface by saying I said all mine "tongue in cheek" with responses. I had to modify cooking for my Dad while he had cancer since he couldn't eat meat anymore (well, he could sparingly have chicken, that was it). What was sad, he was VERY strict with his diet, even when he knew his time was near. I think he was hoping for a miracle. But I had to doctor alot of the foods I cooked. All I did was take out the meats in the dishes for him, or twice boil the potatoes for him. So did my time with the vegetarian menu. Just wasn't a "TRUE" vegetarian menu.

Onto the different crowd. I'm jaded because I've literally been lectured and TALK DOWN TO for my eating "dead animals". Vegans seem to be the worse. Funny how I never said a word to them about thier lifestyle, but they sure wanted to lecture me about mine. Especially when I did a custom order at an organic market on my old UPS route, a couple really lamblasted me. To date, I've yet to meet ONE Vegan that didn't read me the riot act, ESPECIALLY when they find out I actually hunt and fish. And, I've met close to 100 or so of them. So far I'm nil on the "nice to talk to" scale. So yeah, I'm a tad jaded.

Carolyn™ · Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 190 Location: Sydney Australia

Why not get the names of some of the people attending who have special food needs and get them to give you suggestions.

The main problem I see is that if the special food is too tasty and too eye appealing the non vegans who arent fussy might dig in first Laughing