Much Ado
About Dinner
By Norma Ritter
Big Flats NY USA
From: NEW BEGINNINGS, Vol. 17 No. 5 September-October 2000, pp. 164-65
Once upon a time I cooked
meat and two vegetables, and that was dinner.
Then we decide it would be
healthier to eat a couple of meatless meals each week, usually pizza
or fish. The children don't like fish, so I serve them planned leftovers.
Then the ten-year-old "baby"
decides to become a vegetarian. "She'll starve to death!"
says Grandma. She doesn't starve, but it does mean making an extra meal,
so we go to having meat only three times a week.
Then the 15-year-old decides
to be a vegetarian too. No problem? Wrong! She doesn't like the same
things as her sister. Now I am making three different meals, four times
a week.
Then my husband decides that
he only wants to eat meat twice a week. OK, I'll go along with that.
He buys a million vegetarian cookbooks, but doesn't fancy most of the
recipes.
Then I become a vegetarian.
I am more adventurous, and everyone looks very suspiciously at my concoctions.
Then Grandma decides that
she wants to eat "light." What does this mean? It means that
five minutes before dinner she wants something else, but only leftovers
already in the fridge, "So that I don't make work for you!"
Now comes the clincher. Youngest
child says, "But Mom, I just doesn't fancy ______. I'll make my
own." So I respond, "Tell me what you do like so I'll make
it tomorrow," and the answer comes back, "Why do I have to
tell you what to make? Other mothers just put food on the table!"
And to think - once upon
a time, I dreamed of running a Bed and Breakfast Inn!
Reprinted from the November
1996 issue of Virginia Visions, Area Leaders Letter for LLL of
Virginia.
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:30:32 UTC 2007.
