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Vegging Out
Your kids — who barely eat what's on their plate normally — decide they want to be vegetarians. Time to explore "greener" pastures. Written By Ann Hodgman
Recipes
"What's this?" my 5-year-old niece Melanie asked at the dinner table a couple of years ago, holding up a chicken bone for her parents to see.
Like those where-do-babies-come-from questions your kids ask in the supermarket checkout line, this came out of nowhere. Melanie had been eating chicken for — well — most of her life without noticing the bones. And although you can sort of finesse the "babies" question, there's no way to do that with a chicken bone. On hearing the origins of her drumstick, Melanie burst into tears. "I don't want to eat anything that's been killed!" she wailed. From that meal on, she's been a vegetarian.
Back in my olden-days childhood, parents would never have let a kindergartener convert to vegetarianism. Parents in those days tended to believe that only meat counted as real protein, and children weren't supposed to dictate the terms of what was served at meals. (Whether they actually ate the food on their plates is another question, as we all know.) But things are different now, and I'm glad. So if a child, even a young child, decides to boycott "food with a face," many parents will support her choice. My sister-in-law (Melanie's mom), for instance, had been trying for years to get her Midwest-raised, barbecue-basted husband to cut down on meat. Now, she felt, she'd been handed a great way to do it.
Each of my own kids became a temporary vegetarian at about the age of 4. My daughter was an animal lover seemingly from birth and resisted eating meat from the instant she learned its source. Her younger brother, I suspect, kept her example in mind and pulled it out a couple of years later on a night he didn't like whatever main course was on the table. Both times, I made only one rule: They couldn't be tyrants about it. I told my kids they couldn't refuse meat when they were guests at friends' or relatives' houses. No staring down at a plate and saying, "I won't eat this!" at someone else's table. They didn't have to eat meat, but they couldn't talk about not eating it. It's rude enough when adults do this; it's intolerable when a small child tries it. I was happy to encourage my kids in their new philosophy, because I've felt guilty about eating meat since I was 12 years old. I love animals as much as any child does, and I've never heard a convincing argument (besides "they taste good") in favor of eating them. But I'm sorry to say that even with my children's example in front of me, I kept right on eating meat from time to time. It's what my generation is used to, and, unlike our preschoolers, we recognize that there are moral complexities in most issues.
I can remember plenty of "just this once" nights when I gave the kids a frozen cheese pizza so that they could uphold their principles while my husband and I tucked into our porterhouse or shrimp risotto or whatever. But I tried not to let that kind of thing become a regular occurrence. Once in a while it's all right to feed a vegetarian preschooler a Tofu Pup while the rest of the family enjoys a more sophisticated entrée; generally, though, dinner and family dynamics flow more smoothly when everyone is eating the same main course. Naturally my kids made this a serious challenge, because they turned their little heads away from many of the healthiest alternatives to meat: tofu, legumes, and — in most cases — even vegetables. They'd have been perfectly happy to eat some form of cheese night after night. Or French toast, or cereal, or canned vegetable soup made in the horrible way they preferred it — with all the broth drained away in a sieve. In fact, they wanted pretty much the same things they'd wanted for supper before becoming vegetarians.
Fortunately there are plenty of choices out there besides mozzarella sticks and pancakes. The three main-dish recipes that follow are interesting without being too interesting, and each offers a different perspective on vegetarian cooking. While the tofu-based patties could never pass as burgers, they're tasty enough on their own that even the carnivores in your family should like them. Lazy Mom's (or Dad's) Lasagna tastes traditional but takes way less time than the regular version. And although Broccokopita uses an actual! green! vegetable! as the main ingredient, it's a fun finger food, and your kids can help you roll the phyllo dough. A few more meals like these, and none of you may need to go back to meat again.
