“Mom, I Want to be a Vegetarian”

A couple of months ago, Clio spoke the words that strike terror into every meat-eating parent’s heart:

“I want to be a vegetarian.”

OK, maybe not terror. But that feeling you get when you realize that you’re going to have to expend more of your mental energy. Which, if you’re a working parent, you know is an extremely precious commodity. Like platinum or free time.

I like cooking, I really do, and I’m the one who does most of the cooking in our house. But I find the task of figuring out what to make for dinner in the days ahead strangely exhausting. We eat a decent number of meat-free meals, in an attempt to be environmentally responsible and frugal and whatnot, and only very rarely beef or pork at home, mostly just chicken or turkey.  But I wasn’t looking forward to the challenge of  trying to figure out even more meat-free meals that everyone would like and/or figuring out what Clio would eat on the nights we had meals with meat.

It’s not like I didn’t see this coming. Clio’s not what I’d call an animal lover in the usual sense: she’s not that interested in holding or petting or otherwise communing with them, and she generally thinks they smell bad. But she *is* very empathetic toward them. She doesn’t like seeing animals kept in captivity, and doesn’t like the idea of them being raised purely to be eaten. Farms and  zoos make her sad. She doesn’t like when Opie and Pepper are wrestling with a little too much vehemence.

For the past couple of years, she’s gotten increasingly grossed out by the more hey-this-was-actually-an-animal aspects of meat—bones and juices and such. (Although she’ll still tell you, with a sigh, that fried chicken is one of her favorite foods.) She’s mentioned a number of times over the past few years that she might go vegetarian someday. And then, in December, she said she was ready. She wanted to do it.

We said yes, of course. BUT 1.) She needed to be willing to expand her palate and try new things in order to get enough protein. 2.) She needed to be willing to learn to do some cooking, so she could fix some things for herself on nights when meat figures prominently in dinner.

To which she said, with impressive maturity, “OK. I will.”

And by George, she has done a bangup job.

(I don’t actually say things like that in real life, in case you were curious.)

We’ve been having fun buying and trying various brands and types of meat substitutes—as in, things made of soy and mycoprotein and whatever the hell else—which, to my extreme relief, she actually seems to like.  Chik’n nuggets (Quorn, Morningstar, Boca AND Gardein varieties) and smart dogs (LightLife and Tofurkey brands) have been enthusiastically embraced, as well as various meat crumbles (Beyond Meat, LightLife), when well obscured in sauces and such.

She’s also been bolder about trying different types of legumes. She also likes peanut butter, eggs, cheese and yogurt, which helps. (The girl will never be a vegan. She has already declared this. Thank God.)  Yesterday we went to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year Celebration (hence the random, barely related lion dancer photo above) where Clio tried some pretty weird veggie and egg dumplings AND ate an impressive quantity of green pea tendrils AND even deigned to eat the sweet bean paste part of a sesame ball.

The kid is on fire.

I am extremely proud of her.

Meanwhile, we like to occasionally mess with her by saying things like: “In a not-so-distant dystopian—or utopian?— future, scientists may be able to grow animal cells in laboratories, so you could theoretically eat meat without it actually having ever been a live animal”—I usually interject something about the prescience of Margaret Atwood here—”Would you eat that?”

And she looks at us like, “shut up and let me eat my tofu dog, weirdos.”

We should all be vegetarians. I know. For the sake of the planet. Do I get partial credit, at least, for having raised a kid who’s turning out to be a vegetarian?  And for reducing our meat-meal-per-week count? (And we have solar panels! And compost!) Pleeeease? Becase I really like steak frites. And burgers. And bacon. And pork dumplings. And chicken marsala. And chicken tikka masala. And lamb kebabs. And pepperoni. And italian sausage. And bratwurst. And hell yes fried chicken—like mother like daughter.

PS — If you have recommendations for particularly awesome kid-friendly, quick and easy vegetarian cookbooks (I already have Moosewood Cooks at Home, and the America’s Test Kitchen vegetarian cookbook) or website/blogs bring ’em!