Tag: vegetarianism

The First Step on the Road to Vegetarianism

The waitress had just set down my food, the vegetarian combination, and my husband’s Doro Wat when she looked at my daughter and told her, “I’ll be right back with your lamb.”  My child’s eyes grew large and filled with tears.
“I told you I don’t eat anything cute!”

It’s true.  My daughter does not consume the flesh of any creature that might appear as a plush friend in an Easter basket.

My husband had been so happy to find something on the menu mild enough for our daughter, so that we could come as a family to this neighborhood Ethiopian restaurant where she does not like the way the vegetables are prepared.

The first time my daughter tasted the meat off her father’s plate, he didn’t tell her what  it was. I wasn’t paying attention, I assumed it was beef.  The Husband told me later that it was lamb and he hadn’t told her because he wanted to be able to go back to that restaurant as a family.  I suppose I should have told him, that this would be perceived as betrayal.  But, I thought he knew.  How many episodes of The Simpson’s have my husband and daughter watched together.

How often does Lisa’s vegetarianism come up?  Why didn’t my husband see this coming?  

My own road to becoming a vegetarian began in elementary school the first time I refused to eat anything I had seen dead.  
It was not long after we had moved to Montana and my father shot Bambi and hung the corpse in the garage to cure before he and my mother butchered the meat like some kind of pioneers, or Sweeney Todd, or Hannibal Lecter.

Some kid argued with me, “You eat cows don’t you?”

“Not anymore!” was my answer as a 7th grader and I still haven’t.

When the waitress returned with the lamb stew, she took one look at my daughter, turned right around, and returned the Ye Beg Alicha back to the kitchen.  When we got our check it had been crossed off the bill.

I don’t know how this incident will to shake out for us as far as the timing of my daughter becoming a vegetarian.  But, I’m pretty sure we won’t be going back to that particular restaurant any time soon.

This is an original NYC Moms Blog post.

A review last night’s production of “Dinner”

The audience reaction to last night’s production of “Dinner” was tepid at best.

The promising evening opened with red wine, but immediately began a downhill descent with the old gag; “Can’t get the broken cork out of the bottle”.

The television in the adjoining performance space was a distraction and at one point the entire audience got up and went to watch it.

There was no overture of salad on this evening and this production certainly could have used one.

The main act consisted of a trio of healthy and inexpensive performers that in combination left the audience wanting more.  One disgruntled patron was heard to remark, “Each of these goes with something else.”   There was no star on the plate this night.

Acorn squash baked with garlic has received critical acclaim in the past, but on this evening did not deliver.  It was perhaps because the squash in question was from a grocery store and not a green market.  It was a little stringy, but that is no excuse.  Even soy sauce did not bring out the expected flavor.  The couscous with “weird stuff in it”, Trader Joe brand Harvest Grains blend, was another disappointment.  The last minute addition of  the popular performer, frozen peas, failed to bring back the audience.  The strongest member of the ensemble, teriyaki marinated tofu, put in another good performance and was fairly well received by an audience in the habit of calling for an encore, but not on this evening.

In the future the producers would do well to keep their vegetarianism and frugality to themselves as it does not please this audience.