When Mom announces she’s preparing a special meal for dinner, some families cheer while others cringe. For Lane Parker and his siblings, the announcement was on the ominous side.
Recently I learned that the first official World Vegetarian Day occurred on October 1, 1978. By 1982 my mother had gotten the memo, because one day I asked “What’s for dinner?” and she answered in carefully worded mom-speak which I translated to mean she’d found a vegetarian recipe and was making a vegetarian dinner.
My sisters and I had our reservations. Unfortunately, those reservations were not at Spago.
For dinner, mom made a Carrot and Potato Loaf. It did look loafish. Even meatloafish. Mostly it resembled a small Duraflame log. Mom, busy in the kitchen, told us to start.
Even now I struggle to find words to sugarcoat what the Carrot and Potato Loaf tasted like — because it tasted like dirt. I know this because I tried dirt once when I was a little kid, and I discovered what grownups already know, namely: Although essential to agriculture, no culinary preparation should include dirt on its ingredients list.