Anyone vegan with omnivorous family?

[TiredX2]

If so, what do you do about "basics"--- milks, fats, etc... Do you have "yours" and "theirs"? Do you cook everything with "yours"? What?

I'm newly vegetarian (just over 5 months) and would like to *slowly* transition to veganism. But the family is definately not heading that way. Meat is easy to avoid for me, but the other stuff is throwing me for more of a loop.

Suggestions? Ideas? Comments?

[catnip]

That was essentially what I did until my husband and daughter became vegan. I kept milk, yogurt and cheese on hand for them, but anything I cooked was vegan, and they could add cheese or a fried egg to it if they wanted.

[abbylotus]

I'm in the same boat with my family. I think my situation is a bit different. My DH leaves for work very early so the kids and I eat a vegan breakfast and I pack vegan lunches for the kids, but when we hit dinner it's a bit chaotic. Two days/wk I go to a night class and the kids eat at my inlaw's and my DH is on his own, two nights a week I order meals to be delivered for my DH and kids (meat based) and I eat whatever vegan meal I come up with on the fly. The rest of the days I cook vegan dinners or my DH cooks and I end up eating a pb&j. Our meal times are a little screwy and I wish I had more time and energy to cook but with going to school full time and working part time the balancing act of all of that with family stuff is precarious at best.

[wytchywoman]

My sons are omni (my youngest won't eat meat) and I'm vegan. I pretty much do what you talked about OP. I have a mine and theirs. The one exception I make to that every single time is when I bake stuff. The boys have no idea when baked goods are vegan, they like them just as well, and I see no reason to make a batch of cookies that uses eggs and then another batch that uses banana, kwim? The boys also like my nut mylks, so I will use those in cooking sometimes as well. Again, they can't really tell the difference anyway so I don't bother doing a dairy version if I don't have to.

[smallmama]

My husband is omni and my son is mostly lacto-ovo vegetarian (with an exception for dinosaur chicken nuggets at the grandparents' house *eyeroll*). We mostly just have "my" things for the stuff you're talking about. We don't buy cow's milk at all - just use the soy/almond/coconut milk for all 3 of us. Well, my DH hates milk and never drank/used it anyway and still doesn't on it's own, but I cook/bake with it. For butter, we only have Earth Balance in the house and all 3 of us use it. They do also have their cheese and eggs and yogurt that they eat on their own (or DH cooks, in the case of eggs), but I don't cook or bake with them at all.