Crotchety old man eats vegetables and survives

Christmas celebrations are in full swing. Halifax is well on track for another green Christmas. Its actually supposed to rain that day. And we’ve been having really strong winds. Clearly the deity in charge of weather doesn’t get that Christmas should be calm and white, not wet and blowy. No one dreams of tying down their lawn furniture for Christmas, you know?


My parents are in town now, and last night to get them out of my poor SiL’s hair, I took them out for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant that I’ve been wanting to try since I found out it even existed. It’s apparently been in the city for decades. Not surprisingly, I never noticed. The important thing is that I know it exists now. It’s in a new location which happens to be in my old neighbourhood in Halifax, so that’s kind of nice.
I knew my mom would like it - she’s cool when it comes to trying new things. My father, on the other hand, is rapidly becoming the crotchety old man cliché and doesn’t like anything the deviates from his normal routine. But he came anyway, which was a nice attempt on his part to pretend he supports this new change in my life. He has this view (which I suspect is common) that being a vegetarian means eating salads and tofu and being hungry all the time. At one point he made a reference to the fact that you won’t find any vegetarian construction workers. I tried to tell him about the veggie/vegan body builders and elite athletes I’ve read about, but he’s hard to convince.

The restaurant is really nice, very quiet and laid-back. I kept comparing it to Café Mosaics in Edmonton, which is the only other fully veggie restaurant I know. It has more seating than Mosiacs, but a different vibe, and sadly it wasn’t playing The Smiths. The food was fantastic, though. I had a samosa to start, then a root vegetable curry. My mom had a rootburger and my dad had the lasagne. He didn’t like it that much, I think because it had spinach in it. It looked really good, though. I give him credit for not complaining. And, on the drive home when I offered to stop at Sobeys so he could by a steak, he declined, so good for him. He lost points, however, for boasting that he was “practically” vegetarian that day, having eaten only bacon at breakfast and fish at lunch. I told him he should know better than to try to get credit from me for eating fish at lunch.