Tip 41: If You Can’t Say Anything Vegan: “Ooh, a Potluck! I’ll Bring Fruit!”

Posted as part of VeganMoFo (The Vegan Month of Food) 2014 When vegans are around, things get a little tricky – for all of us. Sometimes non-vegans get defensive or hostile because they think vegans are telling them their food choices are unethical. Sometimes vegans are! And that comes across as self-righteous and snobby.

So, I’m using the Vegan Month of Food – a month during which vegan blogs are celebrated and aggregated in one place – to provide some easy tips for non-vegans and vegans to use, so we can all get along a little better. As the old saying goes, “If you can’t say anything vegan, don’t say anything at all.”

“OOH, A POTLUCK! I’LL BRING FRUIT!”
Vegans and non-vegans who attend vegan potlucks, please stop saying (and doing) this.

Why?
Fruit? Really? Fruit is the laziest, most terrible dish you can bring to a potluck. You should be ashamed of yourself. Well, not yourself, but your dish for sure. Some people will be nice and tell you that a potluck isn’t really about the food – that it’s about meeting people and getting to know each other and blah, blah, blah. They’re lying. It’s about the food, and if you don’t put in any effort, you shouldn’t get to eat other people’s amazing vegan mac and cheese casseroles and chocolate layered cakes. Now get out!

What are some alternatives?

“I’ll bring homemade chili!”
“I’ll bring lasagna!”
“I’ll stay home!”

Note: I asked you to choose my punishment for missing a day of posting for VeganMoFo, and you responded. But there was a tie, so I decided to do a few of the things: including posting a dumb picture of a (smart) vegan on each VeganMoFo post. Here’s today’s!

Vegan Jamie, Alice the cat, and Xander the … turtle. Right?

2 thoughts on “Tip 41: If You Can’t Say Anything Vegan: “Ooh, a Potluck! I’ll Bring Fruit!””

oooh yes the fruit. It’s like going to a non-vegan restaurant where they assure you they will make a dessert for you, then you see it’s plain fruit. Like getting a really boring veggie stack when you’re starving. If one muuuuust take fruit (like, if there’s been an emergency or something) then something on the side would be good like a caramely dip or sweet cashew cream!