My daughter is a great cook. Her current passion is baking. Specifically vegan baking. We're not quite ready to identify ourselves as vegan yet, as we will still eat dairy if we are out of the house ... but we're working on it.

I bought her Isa Moskowitz's Vegan Cupcakes and Vegan Cookies. She's been going to town with some of those recipes. No wonder I'm not losing any weight. LOL

Her boyfriend, "J", is an omni, living in a very omni household. But he is extremely supportive of our vegetarianism and our desire to eliminate as many animal derived products as we can. He can't do it right now because his parents are vehemently opposed to veg*nism and they are ridiculously controlling, but I feel that if he had the opportunity he would definitely give vegetarianism a shot.

My daughter baked a batch of amazing chocolate chip cookies for him. He took them home and was nice enough to share them with his mom, dad and sister.

His dad was eating one of the cookies and was raving about how good they were and what a "good little woman" dd must be to have baked them. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

J: They're vegan.
Dad: Well, duh, cookies wouldn't have meat in them anyway. That's a stupid thing to say.
J: No, Dad. Vegan means no meat, no dairy and no eggs.
Dad: J, you cannot make cookies without dairy or eggs.
J: Well obviously she did, because you're eating them.
Dad: I thought they tasted a little funny.
Sister: So your girlfriend is vegetarian?
J: Yes.
Sister: No wonder she looks like that.
J: Looks like what?
Sister: You know .. skinny and sickly.
J: You mean as opposed to looking fat like you?

My daughter is very pale. She's a blond of German and Irish descent. She's not sick. She's just pale. And she's thin, but hardly skinny or sickly looking. So it is pretty funny.

But I am very proud of J for standing up to his ignorant family on her behalf.

Sounds like her boyfriend is a good kid. I think you should give him more yummy vegan baked goods as a reward.

dormouse, you're right. He is a good kid. We feed him lots of good vegetarian food and baked goods. He's even learning to like tofu. heehee

His family sound very ignorant. I hope he stands up and says "Y'know what guys? I'm gonna go veggie." ^.^ I recently baked my first vegan cake, and it was delicious. Will now be baking my Christmas cookie gifts for family and friends with vegan ingredients :3

It cracks me up how people will eat something and think its delicious so long as they don't know it's vegan. As soon as they know, it's suddenly weird. I want to make the peanut butter pie recipe I posted for a holiday gathering so I can show people how tofu can be undetectable.

Sounds like he handled it pretty well. Usually I wouldn't condone telling someone they're fat, but I don't think there's any other appropriate response to her saying your daughter is 'skinny and sickly'. The funny thing is, if she wasn't vegetarian they probably wouldn't comment on her appearance at all. With some people, it's like finding out a person is veg*n gives them a license to be rude.