Friendly Veg Fridays: Vol 3

Non-vegan family dinners | Cantonese ginger onion sauce | Coupon for free tofu

Hi! Happy Feburary 2024. Welcome to Volume 3 (I took a break last week for Lunar New Year). Every week I’ll share:

• an 🙏 affirmation to improve your confidence,

• a 💡tip to help you navigate social situations,

• a 🍲 recipe to inspire you,

• some 💸 discount codes to help you save money,

• and 👀 bonus content for paying subscribers to thank you for your support.

I’ll send this every Friday. Hence Friendly Veg Fridays.

If you enjoy this, please share with someone who would enjoy this as well. It means a lot.

Lunar New Year at my grandparents’ house.

Affirmation 🙏

You’re not alone in your veganism. I’m here, and you can DM or email me anything (I reply faster to emails!).

There’s also the Friendly Vegans and Friends Discord community — join for free and make new friends!

Tip💡

Situation: You’re at a non-vegan family dinner.

You go for dinner with non-vegan family. You feel anxious: so much attention on you — the vegan — and there might not be anything for you to eat.

This is timely for me because I was at a non-vegan family dinner last week for the Lunar New Year. Here are the options that went through my head:

Option 1: Preparation — Eat in advance. Know that there won’t be many (or worse: any!) vegan options. If you don’t eat beforehand, you will be hungry.

I did not eat in advance (was too busy visting grandparents and doing last minute new year shopping), which brought me to option 2:

Option 2: Asking for what you need — Order something vegan at the restaurant (if a vegan option exists). It sounds simple, but for someone with social anxiety, it can often be easier to not even mention you’re vegan, and to just pick at whatever you can get. So order what you need! Your family might make comments, but that’s a reflection of them, not a reflection of you.

I ordered a vegetable dish, white rice, and tofu. But given that it was a ~12 course meal (as are many celebratory Chinese dinners), 3 dishes was not going to be enough! This brought me to option 3.

Option 3: Bargaining — Ask the wait staff if they can customize a dish to make it vegan. Again, this can be anxiety inducing. I hate doing this, because it makes me feel like I’m being difficult. But it doesn’t hurt to ask. The worst they can say is no.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was not willing to cater to vegan requests. Usually Chinese restaurants can make a noodle dish and remove the meat and seafood, but since it was the New Year, the kitchen was quite busy. I understood. This brought me to option 4:

Option 4: Focus on the family time — It sounds sad, but if the food doesn’t excite you, then focus on your family. Remind yourself that yes, you are there to eat, but you are there to eat WITH your family.

I don’t care that there wasn’t much food for me to eat. I filled up on stir fried veggies and rice before tofu dish even arrived! What was most important to me was that I got to eat with my grandparents. It wasn’t about me and the food I was eating. It was about being there with them.

I hope you can take this perspective into your next dinner with non-vegan family. But hopefully you’ll be able to enjoy your food AND your family time :)

Recipe 🍲

Cantonese Ginger Onion Sauce

This is an adaptation of the classic Cantonese “geong chung” sauce - ginger (green) onion sauce. I like eating it on top of noodles, rice, soft tofu, or fried tofu, or anything, really. It’s my current favourite sauce.

Ingredients

• 3 garlic cloves

• 2 sprigs of green onion

• 1 inch of ginger

• 2 tbsp neutral cooking oil (like vegetable oil)

• 1 tbsp soya sauce

• 1/2 tsp oyster sauce

Method

1. Slice/dice ginger (peel it first), green onion, and garlic. Put in a bowl.

2. Heat up oil in a frying pan until it’s hot (be careful).

3. Pour oil over ginger & onion & garlic.

4. Add in soya sauce and vegetarian oyster sauce.

5. Mix and pour over whatever you’re eating it with.

This got over 50k views in Instagram last week! I’m not sure if it’s because of the recipe, or because it’s the first time I talked about my day job (machine learning) in a video.

💸 Discounts & Products

Save 30% off your order of vegan protein powder at goodprotein.ca with the code SERENA30.

This brand is Montreal-based and is one of the only vegan protein powders I actually enjoy.

Goes great blended with some nut milk and a banana.

Their Gingerbread Cookie shake actually tastes like cookies!

Disclaimer: I get a small commission when you use my discount code. Thank you for your support <3

👀 For Paying Subscribers Only

As mentioned at the top, I took a break from this newsletter last week because I went back to Vancouver to visit my grandparents (pictured) for Lunar New Year (I cropped my cousin out of this, lol).