Once upon a time I forestalled (or would like to think I did) my children from becoming vegetarian by telling them that my criteria for vegetarianism was that they would have to eat, y’know, *vegetables*. The beach urchins were very young then and I had noticed a trend among some of their friends. And vegetarianism is just fine with me. The problem is that my kids were basically eating *air* at that time. Punctuated with fluorescent orange mac ‘n’ cheese from a box, pizza rolls, spaghettios (shy-shos, as Mz Liz initially called them), cheerios, and I fergit what else. None of it was greeeeeen and some of the more successful items came from aminals. Sigh.

Like most people, I thought that when I had my own kids, I would reinvent parenting. I would feed my kids nothing but fresh foods including plenty of vegetables, etc., and they would be excited to eat whatever I put in front of them. Y’all can guess how that turned out can’t you? I battled with them or I didn’t depending upon whatever my mood was. Or their moods. Or what the particular food was. Or how ugly the day had been. Whatever. You pick your battles. When I was a child/teenager, I always said to myself that things like hair and music would not be battles between me and my children. And they weren’t. Food? I hadn’t really thought about that. Not sure why since I was pretty dern picky myself.

Although the beach urchins eat a lot less aminal flesh than I do, I don’t think they have ever become rigid vegetarians or vegans or whatever. I think we have *all* tried to incorporate some of the best of those cuisines and others into whatever we decide we want to eat. I was doing that well before I married and had children. When it comes to Thanksgiving, we have a turkey and everybody eats it. We have a bunch of other stuff too. Once upon a time we had a vegetarian guest for Thanksgiving and she graciously told me that she always ate well at such feasts because of all the side dishes (which I had made sure did not include anything aminal that year).

We were cracking up this morning when one of the beach urchins and I were trying to figure out which ziploc bag in the freezer contained the turkey carcass. Don’t ask why it was hard to figure that out but we did eventually identify the carcass. Why? Because she wants to take it home and stick it in her freezer (in a refrigerator that’s bigger than mine) until she has time to make stock with it. But jeebus, “which one of these is the carcass?”

Gloomy gloomy gloomy day today. Punctuated by a walk downtown for lunch at the Blue Tractor with Liz, then a sinking spell, then had to RALLY to walk down for a regular Friday dinner at the Oscar Tango. ’tis the season. Always walk toward the light!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2016 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.