When we last left this blindsided Mom, I related that not only my teenage daughter but my tween son had plotted against me, vowing pescatarianism, anticipating that I would capitulate and become one too.  At that time, my eldest daughter, my beloved firstborn, was still at home, getting ready to become a college freshman, but thankfully still eating meat along with her Mom and our cockapoo.  By the way, I don’t include my husband in the meat-eating equation.  He does but watches his cholesterol and so hardly partakes of my red-meat dishes, even though I drain the fat, trim the fat, feed all gristle to the dog, etc.  Dad, however, has no willpower, and whenever there was something on the table that he could eat, like roast chicken, he would proceed to eat until it was a perfect chicken skeleton ready for display in the natural history museum then blame me for leaving the chicken out in the first place.  To correct this behavior, my husband now eats his main meal in his super-healthy office cafeteria and does what my children call “filter-feed’ when he comes home which means drinking a health shake or having a bowl of cereal for dinner.  With Dad out of the equation, the score was 2 – 2, meat-eaters vs. pescatarians, and if you count the dog we stood at 3 – 2 until my firstborn went off to college, leaving me to create menus for the reamaining pescatarians and realizing I was outnumbered because our dog gets his meat out of a can to be honest.  Why, I lamented was my meat-eater leaving?  My tween daughter looks older than her sister.  Maybe I could send her pescatarianess off to college in her stead and blissfully continue barbequing ribs, burgers, steaks and chicken.  And maybe, just maybe, my tween baby boy would remember how much he loved my cooking, capitulate, and return to omnivorism.  Alas, it was not to be.  I am the sole meat-eater of my household, along with my cockapoo:{

I am definitely in a wave of novel experiences that Moms of past eras did not have to deal with. Can you imagine a cavewomen telling her offspring, “Okay, so you are off of meat from now on? Our hunter Dad will have to find more fish and as a gatherer I will find more beans?” Last winter, my teenage daughter told me that she would no longer be eating meat with the rest of the family. Fish, she said, would be okay, even shellfish, which I found amusing since her Dad is Jewish. I was confused since it was during Lent and I thought this was a phase brought on by my Catholic faith which she would emerge from, eating meat dinners like the rest of us. But noooooo, Lent came and went and she persisted in wanting meatless but not necessarily fish-less dinners. I admit I would forget and right before serving a roasted chicken dinner would slip some frozen falafel balls in the toaster oven, hoping they would be done in half the time so that she wouldn’t be waiting fifteen minutes into the meal for her main course. I got the hang of it in a few months, Boca burgers at the ready, chunks of mozzarella available during sausage-laden Italian meals, when my baby, my 11 year old number one and only son decided that he was going to become a pescatarian also. In the words of the Pet Shop Boys, I cried, What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this!