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My best friend's husband claims to be a lacto-ovo-vegetarian - he's also a total pill. He brought his own quinoa salad to a party I threw last spring and then sneered in front of the other guests when I brought out the flank steak. Is there a polite way to invite just her to my dinner parties?
I would normally recommend a string of nose-to-tail dinners in a case like this: Nothing cows the PETA set like a platter of steaming tongue and kidney stew. But it sounds like your friend's husband would only see a menu like that as a provocation. You should have a partially honest conversation with her: Tell her that her husband's veggie militancy is making your dinner parties uncomfortable, but maybe leave out the part where you say that he's a pill. If that doesn't work, you'd be justified to strike them both from your invite list for a while. You could write them a letter in milk-fed piglet's blood.
Chris Nuttall-Smith is the food critic at Toronto Life magazine.