My mother always tells us that it was my father who taught her how to cook. The daughter of a rare breadwinning mother in 1960s Indiana, she grew up on convenience foods and didn’t start seriously cooking until she moved to Los Angeles, reinvented herself a time or two, and fell in love with my dad. The story is that he wooed her with birthday gumbo and non-frozen vegetables sourced from abundant California farmers markets. Her own personal chef.
By the time I came around, my mom was the main culinary manager in our household, as many moms are. She paused her thriving career as a film editor to give us her total focus, helping us with our homework, sewing homemade Halloween costumes, and cooking, cooking, cooking. And as a (formerly) Midwestern girl, most of the recipes in her regular dinner rotation involved meat. Things like her baked creamy pasta with chicken and mushrooms, or meatloaf spackled with a thick, tomatoey glaze. Grilled salmon with corn pudding. Baked chicken with breadcrumbs and crunchy dijon mustard, macaroni and cheese on the side.
So as you can imagine, it came as a shock to all of us when my mother decided to become vegetarian. I was a teenager then, and we were both discovering newly independent versions of ourselves. I cut my hair short and joined an all-girl punk band called Amazon Squad. She started wearing all white and going to Kundalini yoga, ramping up her longtime doula career to become a full-time midwife. Life seemed to buzz with the electric possibility of change. One change my mother made was becoming vegetarian. We were welcome to continue eating meat, she said. She would eat meat when offered at other people’s houses — it was what the Dali Lama did, after all. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for her. But on her own turf, she would abstain.
It was strange to have my mother walking away from meat. In a way, I got it. From a climate-justice perspective alone, eliminating the consumption of animal byproducts is clearly the right thing to do. And the ethical argument is, in my opinion, a clear one. But without those familiar dishes, what would our domestic life look like? Everything and everyone around me was changing. If we didn’t have the familiar rituals of the dinner table to unite us, what would be left?
All of this came to a head at Thanksgiving. My father took over the turkey prep, and my mom bought a vegetarian soy-based turkey in a neon orange box that sat in the freezer emanating the unfamiliar energy of an ultra-processed food product in our everything-from-scratch household. Then the phone rang. Someone was having a baby. My mother would have to go help them. No mom at the Thanksgiving table.
Reader, I freaked out a little bit.
There may or may not have been some tears, as my little siblings and I slung unfair accusations of selfishness, blaming the laboring mother for a callous disregard for the unity of our family, but eventually we sorted ourselves out. My little brother sliced the Brussels sprouts. I prepared a pecan pie with a shoe leather-tough crust — nowhere near as good as my moms, although I tried to follow her recipe. We resigned ourselves to yet another new chapter in our changing lives.
Then, about halfway through dinner, a miracle occurred. My mother appeared at the head of the table. The baby had been born, my father had put the tofurky in the oven, and our family was together. My mom even had a big slice of my pecan pie. And you know something? She ate every bite.
These days, our family has grown. There are new babies, toddlers, cousins, partners, neighbors, friends of friends. Everyone has dietary traditions and preferences to share. My aunt has been known to bring along an entire alternate menu of Allison Roman recipes, my mother-in-law to bring along a little extra dosa dough for a mid-morning snack. Someone inevitably seems to put nuc cham on the brussels sprouts.
My own contribution changes every year, but whenever I contribute, I always make sure to offer up a delicious vegetarian alternative for my mom. This year, I’ve been workshopping a stuffing-breaded crispy sage tofu. At our eclectic family table, it fits right in.
Emily Beyda’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Built, Refinery29, Smartmouth, Fodors, the Thrillist, the Austin Chronicle, and more. Her novel, “The Body Double,” was published in 2021.
