Surviving the Holiday Season with Carnivores

In my last post, I mentioned that the winter holidays are upon us. And a very traditional thing to make in my area is tamales. I live in Arizona where there is a large Hispanic influence, in both the food and the way we celebrate our holidays.

I grew up eating tacos, tamales, enchiladas, beans, and rice for almost every holiday. It wasn’t until I grew up and went to have Thanksgiving at a friend’s house and asked them what the deal was with the turkey and stuffing that I realized the difference between the traditional American way and the traditional Southwestern way of celebrating holidays.

But, as I grew away from eating meat and anything else that came from animals, I had a different issue. My family does not consider a taco an actual taco unless it has seasoned ground beef and cow's milk cheese. To them, tamales and enchiladas only come in two ways – with pork or ground beef. And you can’t have a quesadilla without cow’s milk dairy cheese.

You can see my dilemma. Luckily, I was a very good culinary student in my plant-based program and could navigate the divide between carnivore and plant-based eater. Holidays are a time to spend with family, not just the family that eats the same way.

I was able to make up my tamales with sauteed peppers and mushrooms and put together the tamales enough so my mother could add her seasoned pork (and we tied different color strings around each of our tamales, so we were eating the correct ones). No, we did not cook them in different pots. That may offend some of the level 5 vegans, but those pots are huge! I only had room for 1 on the stove at a time and did not want to spend hours steaming my tamales, emptying the pot, putting hers in to steam, and then cleaning the pot of the evil “meat aura.”

While my mother is a carnivore, she liked the ground beef fake-out I made with sauteed mushrooms processed with pecans. After sautéing it again with some Mexican seasonings, she said it tasted like regular ground beef. She did ask for her non-vegan shredded cheese on her tacos.

And there is no way to tell the difference between a sweet treat made from egg and cow’s milk or a sweet treat made with banana or flax meal as the binder and almond or oat milk. And, while my meringue is not the best, no one can tell between an egg white meringue and my chickpea foam meringue by taste or smell. And I defy anyone to say there is a difference in the vegan feta, parmesan, and ricotta cheese that I make.

Being vegan or plant-based during the holidays when your family is full of meat and egg-loving carnivores can be tricky. But it is about finding a middle ground, not drawing a line in the sand. While they do not understand how I can turn my back on animal protein, they go along with it.

And, yes, my mother actually went out and purchased a few pots and pans so she could cook her eggs, ground beef, and breakfast links without sullying my pots and pans. And they all cheerfully try my experiments in culinary arts with no reservations.

But if someone could get me a good, melty, vegan version of cheddar cheese, my life would be complete.