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Last week’s family meals were a little “meh” but this week we have a family meal photo shoot, everyone is forced to act like they enjoy family meal, and someone reaches the end of their rope with mushroom hearts and a crisis ensues.

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Tuesday: sea bean, tofu and mushroom hearts in a tomato sauce. For some reason we had more tomato paste and so it got used. I wish it wasn’t so.

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Wednesday: gluten-free pasta with deep fried mushroom hearts, smoked tofu and vegetables.

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Thursday: mushroom cream sauce with mushroom hearts and rice. Today was the last straw for mushroom hearts. William (our dishwasher) really doesn’t like them and I was starting to feel guilty about forcing them down his throat every day. On top of that, just look at that dish. It’s pretty gross looking It’s the kind of dish that just makes you want to give up. On everything. If despair was a family meal, it would be this one. So I turned to Jesus and said, “Look, we have to start making something besides mushroom hearts. It just…it just has to change.” Jesus said, “But that’s all I have to work with. If we don’t have any other vegetables then how can I make other vegetables?” At which point Danielle jumped in with, “Jesus, this is a vegetable restaurant. Vegetables are all we serve. There are other vegetables here.” Jesus agreed that her observation was correct, and so things are changing.

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Friday: this was a punishment family meal for Danielle. Because she talked back to Jesus the day before about the mushroom hearts, today he made her cook family meal. It’s fried tofu and fried tofu skin on the side, and a miso, white rice, yellow squash and watercress soup. It looks like she felt. Resentful and punished.

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Saturday: I’d been getting phone calls for a while from a woman who’s writing a book about restaurant family meals. She wanted to take a picture of ours, and after pointing out that our family meals are really informal and not exactly super-photogenic, I agreed. So she showed up today to photograph our family meal. Jesus made, after much debate (we all wanted to put our best foot forward with a family meal photo), a tray of all different kinds of roasted vegetables, raspberry banana smoothie (Jesus and I think that smoothies look good on camera), ketchup, french fries and grits (not scrambled eggs). Then I had to make everyone sit on the banquette and eat family meal together – like a family! – so that we looked good for the camera. It was a bit like taking my Duggar-sized mega-family out to Sears to get a photo portrait taken. “Smile, dammit! We’re having fun. You’re having FUN! Stop crying! Laugh! Laugh! You’re enjoying this!”

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“Smile! Act like you’re having fun! I

don’t care if you’re not having fun! Pretend!”

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And, of course, after giving Jesus a lot of

grief that we wouldn’t have enough family meal

for everyone today, we wound up with a ton of leftovers.

Because I have no idea what I’m talking about.

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