weird diets

My son is eating falafel on pita for breakfast. Sure, he's drinking milk, but you've still got to love it. I'm the only one in my house who fasts, which certainly has its drawbacks. That's part of the reason that I try to attend services associated with the different feasts and fasts. It's the only chance I have to make this a communal experience. It's still a pain, though, to spend more time thinking about food rather than less, since I have to prepare my own meals. It's a pain that we can't quite share meals as a family during fasting periods. (We try at least to sit together for supper.) Ian doesn't fast, but at least he gets into the food I eat. It's kind of hard to be a vegetable-hating vegan, so I've had to come up with a menu that works for me. Falafel is one of my staples, which he likes and usually wants when I'm eating it. He doesn't do the tahini sauce or lettuce (the only vegetable I can tolerate in with it), but he has to have it in a pita. He also sometimes gets interested in beans that I might be eating. I guess this morning he saw the leftover falafel in the refrigerator and just had to have some. My favorite is the time when we were all eating together, and my wife was having egg rolls. Ian had a pita with an egg roll and falafel, covered in sour cream.

Maybe he'll be the one to bridge our differences. We can't agree on Asian cuisine any more than we can agree on religion. She likes Chinese, which I can hardly stand; I like Indian and Mediterranean, which she avoids. If falafel and eggrolls can co-exist in one pita, maybe there's hope . . .