Our Blended Family, Dietetically Speaking

For many people, planning dinners and going to the grocery store is anything from tedious to joyous, depending on one's point of view. It's filled with the usual challenges of balancing nutrition with food preferences of each family member, what the cook likes to make, how much things cost, and sometimes special circumstances like allergies or intolerances are factors for the planner. Luckily for me, in my house allergies and intolerances aren't an issue. However, we do have an interesting set of parameters that I follow when doing meal planning in our house.

As many of you know, Nate is vegan. Strict vegan, in the purest sense of the term- no animal products of any kind, including honey, and nothing like sodium caseinate that is derived from milk sources. I have to scrutinize labels of all products that are pre-made, like bread and pastas. Because of this, we have shifted more towards a whole food diet and staying away from most processed foods. This is a good thing, one that I am completely excited about and in support of.

However, the other level of challenges that I face in meal planning is the fact that Nate is the only one in our house that is vegan. About 98% of the time, I am vegetarian. The occasional piece of bacon or some chicken enters my diet when we eat out, but at home I eat vegetarian. The kids are omnivores, and not happy about avoiding certain foods during dinner. They miss butter, and milk, and cheese, on top of missing things like my meatloaf and meat lasagna and grilled chicken. I cook vegan meals for the family, with every dish being free from all animal products. Although I am a fairly good cook (if I do say so myself, and I do), it still feels like a difficult challenge to make tasty meals that satisfy all members of the family.

Every so often the kids and I get to live it up and make a non-vegan meal. This happened the other evening when Nate went in to work late and stayed late. I made homemade macaroni and cheese (five kinds of cheese, no lie), carrots glazed with honey and butter, parker house rolls, and for dessert- peach pie with double vanilla ice cream. It was a lovely meal, and the kids were in ecstasy with each bite, exclaiming how much they loved butter and cheese and honey and how un-vegan it all was. There was enough left over that we got to eat it for dinner a second night in a row while Nate scrounged his own dinner. And then tonight it was back to vegan food, with quinoa, spelt, vegan crumbles, lots of veggies, and seasonings like rice vinegar and Bragg's, with roasted asparagus on the side. Good, but not macaroni and cheese.