I’ve written about being vegetarian before. And I think I’ve made a little booboo. Okay, a huge, monstrous, mother of a booboo. Or two. Oh boy.

As a preface, I have to say that my mother’s diet gets more and more restrictive every year, mostly for religious/personal reasons. I think she’s in a, “What other weird seeds can I put on my cereal today” phase (the answer is flax, which doesn’t sound appealing at all). She recently dropped out onions and garlic (and derivatives), which I still don’t understand, but that’s not the pertinent issue.

The problem is eggs.

I didn’t know my mom didn’t eat eggs for a long time, mostly because she made so many allowances with what we could eating growing up that I just assumed she ate the same stuff. So whenever we baked or bought cookies, which contained eggs, I assumed she ate them from time to time. Then she got hooked on waffles. Eggo waffles. She loves them, and I love them, and they’re one of the few non-Indian foods we share anymore. Which is why I can’t bring myself to tell her they have eggs in them, even if it’s right there on the label. I’m pretty sure it will evoke some horrible sense of guilt in her — even though eggs are technically vegetarian — and she might eat me in my sleep.

Cannibalism is not vegetarian, just FYI.

Maybe I’m taking this too far. Maybe it’s a harmless omission for my mom. But not for my grandma, who has probably never had eggs before. And who ate a waffle yesterday. The guilt starts with my mom, but when I found out that my grandma had eaten one, I was on the verge of reading out the ingredients there and then.

Back from the brink

But two angry Indian women doesn’t seem much better than two contented Indian women. The question is, where do I draw the line? If not at eggs, then what? There are so many questionable “vegetarian” products that even someone who is as conscious and anal about this stuff as I am has a hard time.

Even though I must seem like an asshole for doing this, I am extremely careful when I shop for my mom and grandma. I make sure there’s no onion or garlic, no eggs, low sugar, no fat. I check and double check the ingredients. I understand that, whatever my standards are in this weird and sometimes baffling food culture, their standards are far higher. So I have to pay attention.

We brought home some yogurt today, and even though my mom wants my grandma to try it, I will do my damnedest to make sure I am the only one who eats it. Because unless you buy the nasty organic yogurt — which smells like formaldehyde and tastes worse for reasons I cannot fathom — you have to settle for something with gelatin. And I have come to terms with the fact that there is no vegetarian gelatin. There’s pectin, agar, etc, but no one in the industry is motivated to use that as a substitute. So yes, gelatin is meat. I can avoid it by substituting vegetarian marshmellows and PopTarts with pectin filling (even if they aren’t as good — and honestly? Why the hell do you need gelatin for a gooey fruit filling? JAM is gooey and fruit-filled, and guess what? It’s ALL pectin.). But I can’t avoid it in yogurt — at least, not in any yogurt that is suitable for human consumption, and doesn’t taste like pondscum.

Seriously, it’s awful.

I think my only option is to start buying waffles that don’t contain eggs and tell them both that, “These waffles are better” (they damn well better be). Oh, and I should probably go hide the yogurt. And ride out this guilt storm by making bad watercolors and stealing a TimeTurner so I can enjoy every last minute of ACL this year.