Thanksgiving Dining

Our household has seven residents with seven different eating habits. Holiday dinners are always a test. My wife offers two choices at every meal: take it or leave it. My daughter-in-law Asia is technically a vegetarian aspiring to be a breatharian, a dying breed allegedly living on air alone. Her husband is a secondhand vegetarian. The cows eat the grass and he eats the cows. The granddaughter in high school presents different food personas to different people. The cute waiter is cross examined about the origin and marination of the beets in her salad. With me she eats pancakes at Lil’ Jon’s and dipped cones at Dairy Queen. Her sister, like many six year olds, has one mission in life: figure out how to procure her next treat. With four adults to manipulate, she is a chocolate finding prodigy. My 13 year old grandson eats all the leftovers, usually at 10 at night to avoid disapproval of any faction. Without leftovers, I am relegated to rescuing wasted food from the garbage. Other residents rely too much on overly conservative “best if used by” suggestions and an annoying strategy of throwing out the food they disapprove of. I cannot expose and reprimand the offenders because then everyone will know I am eating out of the garbage again. Another son and his wife who live in Seattle join us at Thanksgiving dinner where we entertain and horrify them with our dietary dysfunction. We send turkey leftovers priority mail to Virginia to the final foursome in our Clan of 13 because they are Atkins Diet people. They sent us a disgusting bag labelled Oyster Mushroom Planting Kit. I hope no one puts it in the garbage. I can hardly wait for Christmas dinner.

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