Vegetarian/Vegan recipies

[James the Persian]

Is abstaining from all animal products in food particular to Orthodox fastings or your family's in particular?

It's not actually all animal products. We're peculiarly permitted shellfish, though we do not eat them ourselves. I can understand why they were traditionally allowed in the early years of the Church but nowadays it just seems like a legalistic loophole. We're also allowed honey, which I know some vegans at least won't touch but we can't have olive oil or alcohol which vegans obviously can. Obviously, though, you could easily replace honey with something else if it was in a recipe and use olive oil instead of something else if you preferred when adapting a fasting recipe to straight vegan.

With those exceptions, though, yes Orthodox fasts are generally vegan and tea total and this isn't peculiar to my family. We also have partial fasts of varying degrees but the majority are full and (including the partial fasts) we are actually fasting to some degree or another for about 50% of the year. Basically we have a heirarchy of food (with strictest at the bottom) like this:

Meat
Dairy and eggs
Fish (with backbone, as it's phrased)
Olive oil and wine (which means all alcohol in my tradition)
Vegetables (and shellfish)

Hope that helps explain things a bit more clearly.

James