Vegan. Keto. Paleo. The diets at my dinner table make meal planning a nightmare

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Whatever happened to family dinners? Those who gather around my own table have forced me into the position of trying to plan around what I call the New Non-Eating.

My default position about big meals has forever been a hearty casserole of scalloped potatoes. How could that be wrong? Slice ‘em in thin wedges, add the salt, a grind or six of black pepper, a good chunk of butter. (Yes. Butter.) Pour on the milk, top it off with a bit of grated cheddar and toss it in the oven at 350 F for however long it takes. Smells good. Tastes even better. And then there’s meatloaf to go with the potatoes: minced beef, egg and a bit of oatmeal to bind it, a few diced tomatoes, a bit of barbecue sauce to liven it up, chopped onions, diced green peppers. Those two dishes made an easy base for a hearty meal. Add a side of corn niblets, a bit of salad and Bob’s your Uncle, as they say.

So, what was wrong with that? I ask. Quite a bit, I’m told. And it pains me that even as I complain about the new diets around my table, I know there are too many people in my own city who would cherish the opportunity to sit down to a wholesome home-cooked meal. It’s a heartbreaking thought.

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Planning for family dinners at my house now looks like this:

1. Two offspring are vegans, which means no milk, plus no cheese, and that means no scalloped potatoes. Eating no meat nixes the meatloaf, too. They love veggies and salad and a wonderful cashew pie that I am not clever enough to put together but they know a baker who is so they bring one along. Bless ‘em. (Full disclosure: The cashew pie is delicious.)
2. The other four adults are on the keto diet. So that means yes to meat but no to the pasta, which would make a great alternative to the scalloped potatoes for the vegans. However, the scalloped potatoes are out for the keto people, too, as carbs have become a part of the new evil empire, a dietary no-go zone.
3. Our little lambs, as I call our grandchildren, like to mix things up a bit. The six-year-old lives on air and eats nothing. That I can cook. Her smaller sister is still on pureed food. Her parents bring that with them.
4. When our other two little people arrive, the five-year-old eats pretty much everything, the works, which is happy-making for grandmothers everywhere. His seven-year-old sister lives on the same air that her aforementioned cousin loves, unless I am serving ham on a bun, which she finds to be just the ticket, as my mom would have said.
5. And then there is me, the host, who fills this dinner table. I eat every single item that is put in front of me, just as I was taught, which is bad in its own particular way.

Everyone I talk to says the same thing these days when thinking out the menu for a coming family invasion. There are lists of things that cannot be consumed. And if you’re lucky, your family brings the entire combination of keto, vegan, paleo and all the diet etceteras in one family! It’s not my guests’ choices that I’m querying in all this. It’s myself.

There are reasons for the new eating choices, many foods having been politicized in the past 20 years, some for good reason. Eschewing beef, our vegans tell me, means less cattle and less methane, ergo less pollutants. In fact, I admire that much political resolve but I’m the type who remembers Sunday dinners of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding around my grandmother’s table and I worry for the cattle farmers and wonder how they will be able to rejig their livelihoods.

I’m told that the blueberries for the salad, depending on their genesis on the world map, may have been treated with pesticides. I understand that, too. And the people who love the Hundred Mile Diet are willing to forgo the fruit. Even though healthy diets are supposed to consist of fruit and then more fruit every day; it’s difficult to grow watermelon in Ontario in February.

I’m stumped. It’s like I no longer know how to prepare a meal. Old habits… and all that. After all these decades of meal preparation, I really can’t think up a dinner to please the masses? The truth is just that. No. I can’t.

I’m like those overbearing mothers in movies such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding who pack up plastic containers of meatloaf and never give up trying to pawn it off on the kids on their way out the front door.

“Here. Take it. It’s good for you.”

“Nice try, Mom, but you know I don’t eat meat.”

There are many aspects of the new Non-Eating that I don’t quite understand. Or perhaps the kids are just smarter than me. (They’d agree automatically with that concept by the way.) And that might be the answer. They’ve read more about what goes into food these days, what kind of fake stuff and chemical things get thrown into the mix.

But scalloped potatoes? Really?

Thank goodness for dessert. Even the keto people give in to the apple crisp.

I love seeing that bit of weakness in them.

It makes me feel better about myself.

Judy Pollard Smith lives in Hamilton.