Meat, Lentils and Balloons (Ruby)

We are winding down from one of the crazier holiday weekends in our household – “July third-fourth-fifth”. Montserrat’s birthday is the 3rd, the fourth is the 4th and Antigone’s birthday is the 5th. We make a big deal of birthdays around here by completely theme-ing out the dining room as part of the party surprise. When the kids were younger we had every theme you’ve seen in every Party store in America: Sponge Bob, Spiderman, Snow White, Mickey Mouse, Pirates, Zoo Animals, Winnie the Pooh, Tinkerbell, Cars, Scooby Doo…now that my youngest – Atticus – is 11 – the themes are more generic, more about color than a specific character, while still matchy-matchy with hats, cups, blowers, tablecloths, napkins, plates and wrapping paper all coordinated to look like a FUN TIME! Montserrat said he was in the mood for “red” this year and, admittedly, I threw in Elmo hats and blowers for hahas; Antigone said “just not purple”, so she gets lime green.

But besides the colors/themes and presents, there is the birthday dinner with all of us and another dinner that happens in the same week – “Night out with Daddy” – given to each of them as a present from Scot, written in different ways, tiny notes, scrawled across a large page and folded up, slipped into an eensie-weensie box or in Montserrat’s case this year, stuffed into the impressive Cylindrical Container that Scot’s Tomatin Scotch came in.

You’ll recall that Scot and I are strict Vegetarians and that we started raising our kids as Vegetarians as well (I describe it as eating “nothing that has a Mother” to avoid the Chicken & Fish question). My Mom would visit and apologetically nibble on her meaty dinners and I would hand her a special “meat-sponge” to avoid the cross contamination that repulsed me, in theory. Scot and I had enjoyed superb vegetarian fare in New York City where we’d met and we tamed our dinners-out behavior only a little when we moved to Madison. But nothing will cramp a couple’s style of dining daring like having kids and pretty soon our vegetarian lifestyle was more about Mac & Cheese and cereal than about anything close to the Ethnic adventures that had inspired us earlier on (Ethiopian, Indian, Ukranian…). Scot would eat a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats at midnight and call it dinner. I lived on Vanilla Yogurt. Most of our dinners were entirely white. None of our five kids seemed to like anything we’d want to eat, nor did they like anything prepared the way their siblings liked it and Scot got extremely good at doing 6 or 7 variations on a theme as we tried hard to help them branch out; Burritos could be adapted and personalized to suit all the food preferences and aversions that made up our family. And there were the staples: everyone liked homemade Pancakes, Progresso Lentil Soup seemed to get family-wide thumbs-up, Pretzels were O.K., Saltines suited everyone, most of us ate bananas, as long as there were no spots or brown marks and about one inch at both ends could be discarded (by Atticus, to this day)…and a few of us have historically tolerated specific flavors of Yoplait Yogurt, but there was no leveling-up in the world of dinner adventures at our house….for years.

That is, until the kids started to have more school lunches and had their first tastes of meat, the worst possible, lowest-common-denominator meat introduction. And we now know what we all fear - that School Lunches CAN AND DO lead to more serious meat-eating. Pretty soon, we found ourselves doing family runs to McDonald’s and expecting a couple of the kids to order VERY meaty dishes whenever we ate at restaurants. Scot and I had LOVED growing up on meat and never wanted to stifle our kids from wanting it, we just weren’t in the mood to buy it and cook it at home if we could avoid it. Until the year we did a Tofurkey AND a Turkey (Gobble-Gobble style) for Thanksgiving, which stuck as a tradition from that point on and which christened our very own kitchen and our very own pots, pans and spatulas as functionally “Flexitarian” (flexible eating style that accommodates vegetarian as well as meat-eating humans). At this point there has been some major ebb and flow to the interest and disinterest in meat but at any given time there is likely to be Tofu sitting next to Steak in the fridge. Cutting boards and sponges have become less discriminating and we’ve even set the table on occasion with knives, which were never necessary before.

All of which gets me back to the third-fourth-fifth celebration weekend this year. Montserrat has grown to love RIBS, wants them all the time, salivates when we drive by Famous Dave’s and the new Brickhouse BBQ place in town, so I decided to go for broke and cook ‘em myself for his birthday dinner. I asked my Mom how to do them, looked online, asked friends…ended up with the simplest way my Grandmother had done them – slow-cooking for a long time, then slathering them with a good BBQ sauce and broiling for short stints on both sides. We called them “Chewy-Chops” growing up. And I have come full circle now, embracing the meatiest and messiest of meats, watching the boys who ate them licking their fingers, getting messy, sucking on those bones, growling and beating their chests, while the other half of us ate Scot’s fabulous Lentil-Loaf – a Meat-Loaf Wannabe that is actually out-of-this-world yummy and reminiscent of the real-deal comfort food I grew up on. For the Fourth, today, we had a cookout which was all-encompassing as well; a medley of Steak and Beef Burgers, Oscar Mayer Weiners and Tofu Pups as well as Scot’s leftover Lentil Loaf, sliced and grilled with onion and cheese….all to perfection. Everyone had something to hum about. And the rain held off until we were done with our S’mores and Sparklers.


So, one more birthday tomorrow, the dining room is decked out in green, very flowery and feminine, and all the food will be meatless because Antigone has reverted to her vegetarian ways after a few years of experimentation with Sushi and McDonald’s…her birthday dinner has been the same for a few years now: Spinach Balls (to die for) and Clafoutis (fabulous fruit and egg tart-ish). The whole meal goes down like “buttah” – no excessive chewing or cutting necessary – my comfort zone, for sure…

For their respective “Night’s out with Daddy”, Montserrat will do the equivalent of a Meat-Orgy at Samba Grill in town, where they slice hunks of various meats for you at your table according to a red-light/green-light cue from a wooden hourglass that you turn over to tell them either “keep it coming” (green end up) or “I have enough meat on my plate at this moment” (red end up). Antigone and Scot will go to our favorite Indian restaurant in town and nibble at meatless delicacies. Makes me hungry just thinking about it.

Well, that sums up our July so far.

Oh, and by the way, I also liked Christopher Plummer…and as far as what Bob Barker offered the world? a dimpled smile and – like I said - canned laughter, which was plenty for me as an eight year old!

Ruby