BBQing for Vegans? Sadly, Murder is Not an Option

You may love to entertain your best friends in the backyard, but if they are vegans and require sustenance, here’s how to avoid criminal prosecution.

They are wonderful people: charming, funny and our collective pack of children play like well-loved cousins. ‘The Vegans,’ parents and children alike, have come for a friendly backyard romp. Sadly, after a few hours of drinking and playing, stomachs start to grumble. If you wait too long and delay the inevitable meal, everyone gets testy and short tempered.

With your grill looming in the background, your shoulders slump as you rise from your beach chair and walk in a slow death-march fashion to cook… steak, burgers and some lonely/paltry vegan patties you picked up on the bottom row in the grocery-freezer section labeled –  lame-shit food.

God help you. It’s time like these when the BBQ master needs a therapist.

There’s something evil about putting the words, BBQ and vegan, together. Common sense dictates they should not be associated, kind of like reality-TV and the Presidency. What’s next, a rock band that includes someone that plays the harp?

The act of BBQing goes back to caveman times! This is an ancestral style of cooking the way our great grandparents (times 1,000 generations) used to grill! Hunters… gathers… and the cook! Ah, the days, when my ancestors skewered wooly mammoths on an open flame on the plains of Eurasia. Now THAT’S a BBQ! I can feel my chest hair bristle just thinking about it.

Back to the vegans in your backyard who are now pissed off and hungry. Have no fear; here are three things to shove down their gullet that will actually make you appear like a thoughtful and caring friend.

The rules are as follows: Keep to simple recipes that are easy to prep and accompany this with a large salad. Nothing gets a vegan foaming at the mouth like a big bowl of greens. Given you are the BBQ master, delegate the salad prep to your wife, or better yet, ask your kale-chomping vegan friends to lend a hand and bring this side dish to the gathering. Trust me, if anyone knows how to make a salad, it’s a vegan!

Grilled Mushrooms

It’s a fantastic substitute for meat and hard to mess up. I recommend the following recipe, which I’ve made several times. This recipe is from The Food Network

Marinated Eggplant

Another killer dish that requires six ingredients you already have and is actually kind of fun to cook. If you really like these people, make this and the mushrooms noted above. From HealthyRecipeBlogs.com.

Bubba Burger Veggie Burgers

I’ve never been let down by the Bubba brand. They are moist, easy to cook and you grill them frozen. Just toss the frozen patties on the grill and offer some sliced veggies and condiments. Grilling frozen food sounds counterintuitive, but they are prepared to do so.

The last thing to ensure is your vegan guests are downwind when you place steaks, burgers and other dead meat on the grill. Let those vegans suffer! Watch as their tender souls cry for mercy as they big farewell to some unsuspecting farm animal, and when they do…

… respond with an evil grin and whack the topsides of your meat like the butcher of suburbia. An evil laugh doesn’t hurt either.