Photo: VegSoc

Here are a few handy pages to help you cater for vegetarians and vegans and hopefully enjoy it too. Making satisfying meals makes for happy customers and happy cooks.

These catering pages are tailored specifically for ski hosts, though any caterers or food technology students will find them very handy.

You can also read about about the business advantage of providing vegan dishes.

contents of this catering section

• ingredients - to get planning right away, before the Season starts
• recipes - handy to have at staff training and to practice in quiet weeks
• converting your recipes to vegan ones - easy to follow guide to making vegan versions of almost any dish
• links to reliable recipe and catering pages
• breakfast ideas

special notes for hosts

Firstly, thank you for taking your veggie guests seriously enough to read these pages. They are in luck and are very likely to stay with you again.

You'll know your stuff about cooking, and we are building up some recipes to give you ideas for unfamiliar ingredients and greater variety.

We find that most non-veggie chefs and cooks are amazed when they realise how much variety is possible with easily obtainable vegan ingredients, and they really enjoy the experience.

The ingredients page has ideas on buying ingredients which could be very handy, and also tie in with some of the recipes.

special notes for skiers and boarders requesting veggie catering

First, look for a chalet or hotel company that welcomes special diets and prides itself in personal service. Companies which are not very interested do not deserve your business.

Small British chalet operators can be the best plan if you are from the UK. They believe in personal service and tend to come across more veggies. Dealing with British contacts avoids the long distance phone calls and language barrier if English is the only one you're good at.

Even if not all your group is veggie/vegan, it can help all of you get more interesting food if you ask for most of the catering to be veggie/vegan because then the caterers can concentrate on a smaller number of dishes. Everyone can eat what they like on the slopes.

Refer the company you book with to these pages to help them plan your meals, ideally long before the ski season even begins. They tend to do their staff training in November, and any bulky ingredients they could get in the UK they'd need to bring out at the beginning of the season.

Inform them right from the beginning of any special dietary requirements - it is only fair to give them a chance to prepare. Running a ski company is a very busy job, so last minute special requests can be a total headache.

If you return home singing their praises, please tell us about them so we can list them on our accommodation page.