We HATE HATE HATE planning the meals for next week- it always takes us absolutely ages, and ruffles a lot of feathers because no-one gets exactly what they want! Ideally, in choosing a meal we would select a dish that all five of us like, but at last count there were actually only FOURTEEN of those- I say 'only' fourteen but I'm really not sure whether that is a big number or a small number- what is the 'usual' number? What is YOUR number? Fourteen is the number of meals enjoyed by 'Pony', our child with the most limited range of 'likes'; so that's where the crunch always comes: if we want everyone to be eating the same food then we really need to eat one of 'The Fourteen', but, unfortunately, even though we all officially like these meals, everyone except Pony is heartily sick of them, by now. This means that every week is a mixture of items from The Fourteen; a couple of completely new dishes, always with another meal for the children in case they don't like the new meal; and some meals that some of us like but not others, so we always have to cook another meal alongside it for the 'non-believers'.We have a recipe folder with all our recipes in, classified using a star system- five stars means that it's one of The Fourteen- all five of us eat it , two stars means we never bother to cook it as it's too depressing having three people refusing to eat it! It's not entirely logical, as it's obviously no more trouble to cook for two and also prepare a backup meal for three than cooking for three and doing a 'backup' meal for two, but we just never do cook meals that are down to only two stars- so that's a no for lovely Jambalaya, fragrant Indian Spiced Rice, Isa's amazing Tofu Benny and surprisingly lovely Asian Baked Tofu..sigh.
So, there is quite a lot of stress associated with making those choices- meals are vetoed, and other meals then vetoed in counter-moves which can only be seen as retaliatory e.g. if you won't let me have African Sweet Potato Stew then I'll make sure that you, in turn, don't get to have Broccoli Pasta Arabiata..! Alliances are formed, pushing for Mediterranean Pasta Salad, fiercely opposed by the champions of Tomato and Pinenut Linguine; the Linguine dish is denounced as being too expensive for the budget this week because of the exorbitant cost of pinenuts, but the Linguine-ites point out that we are going out immediately after lunch on the day on which we plan to have the meal in question, so shouldn't really plan a meal which, if not eaten carefully, will stain the children's clothes..Sometimes, we think we are safe with something and then it suddenly turns out that something else has dropped off the list of Pony's likes; rhubarb crumble one week, all flavours and makes of soya dessert another week- sometimes it's a total ambush as it's something which she has happily eaten a few days previously, so it can be really frustrating at times.
This year, we decided that we'd do Vegan MoFo- the month-long vegan blogging event and we're going to be giving the low down about what this family of passionate abolitionist vegans really eats! We've never documented our own eating habits before like this so we will be as keen as the rest of you to learn just how many times we were actually able to all enjoy the same food- and how many times we resorted to beans on toast or potato waffles!
This is not meant to be a downbeat or negative MoFo blog.. Obviously if you are vegan, you can't just resort to an omelette or scrambled egg (or, apparently, scrambled tofu, as of this week...(sigh)), but this 100% isn't about us wishing to do that.. we eat great food, we love cooking delicious vegan meals and finding, adapting and creating new recipes and we're just going to be doing our best to search for more of those elusive * * * * * meals!!
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