By Serena Bernthal-Jones
My cloth lunch bag stands out amidst a sea of brown paper bags. “But it’s reusable,” my mom had happily proclaimed that morning in the car ride to school. She, however, was not the one who had to enter the battlegrounds of the middle school cafeteria.
My classmates’ paper bags crinkle as they are ripped open, contents spilling onto the sticky table: chips, chewy bars, fruit snacks, apple slices, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, some cut in half, a few cut diagonally – God forbid they deviate any further from the norm. I gaze longingly at their soggy white bread, bright purple jelly seeping onto their Ziploc bags.
I hesitate as I undo the Velcro on my penguin-covered lunch bag, prolonging the inevitable. Sure enough, there are two pieces of homemade sprouted whole grain bread, thick and hearty, looking like bricks in comparison to the other students’ light and fluffy sandwich bread. Between the slabs lie two large slices of marinated tofu, only somewhat disguised by lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, and pepper jack cheese.
The tofu catches their watchful eyes and they recoil in horror. “EEWWWWW – what is that?” Oh, just bean curd derived from soya, the smart ass in me wants to shoot back. Instead, I sit in silence. As if being the new kid in school wasn’t hard enough.
This is not a story of the struggles of an aspiring young vegetarian. Nor is it a moral crusade against meat lovers. Rather, this is a story that spans over 85 years and multiple generations – of mother, daughter, and grandmother wishing their lunches were more like everyone else’s, and eventually going on to make the same lunches for their own daughters. This is the story of four generations of vegetarians.
It all began in the early 1930s with my great-grandmother Delia. In her mid thirties, she started having health problems. After a year of daily backaches and headaches, she decided she needed a change. Following the advice of her chiropractor, Delia began reading up on how to eat a healthier diet. It was then that she stumbled across a book by the Canadian physician Robert G. Jackson, entitled “How to Be Always Well.” This book became Delia’s bible.
Published in 1927, Jackson’s book was ahead of its time. Focusing on a lifestyle of austerity and commitment, his book inspired her to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. It also introduced her to Dr. Jackson’s Meal, a whole grain breakfast cereal, still available today as Roman Meal. Although not a vegetarian himself, Jackson condemned the way meat is used in modern diets.
For years, Jackson’s book sat on the top shelf in Delia’s kitchen, next to the Dr. Jackson’s Meal, the two principal guiding forces in her dietary exploration. Edna, my grandmother’s sister, once told Delia: “If there were a fire, first you would run to save the Jackson’s Meal. Then you would run to get Dr. Jackson’s book, and then you would run to Dr. Jackson.”
Whatever Dr. Jackson prescribed seemed to be working: Delia’s headaches went away and her back no longer bothered her. She began grinding her own flour and baking her own bread. She even started juicing carrots and making tempeh.
My great-grandfather, an electrical contractor and lifelong meat eater, owned a small appliance shop where Delia worked as the bookkeeper. Business was often slow though, so Delia began selling some of the health products she made, including soy bread, whole wheat bread, and sugar-free candy. With a sign in the front window advertising her carrot juice, the store became the one-stop shop for all needs pertaining to electricity and health in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
In the early days, Delia was heavily influenced by the literature she read, falling in and out of vegetarianism depending on what book she was reading at the time. It was not until she joined the Liberal Catholic Church in the 1950s that Delia became a confirmed vegetarian, and remained one the rest of her life. The trend has stuck with the women of the family ever since.
Fast-forward twenty-five years. My grandmother, who once was embarrassed by the whole-wheat sandwiches Delia made for her, is now packing them for my mother. My mother too cringes as she opens her lunch bag in the cafeteria, surrounded by other kids eating ham or turkey sandwiches on Wonder Bread. The cafeteria does not offer non-meat items except for one Friday a month, when grilled cheese – Velveeta on white bread – is served with tomato soup. It is a treat my mother looks forward to.
In Minnesota in the late ’50s and early ’60s, not eating meat was not only unusual but virtually unheard of. “Meat and potatoes were what constituted a meal in dairy country,” my mom recalls. “In the culture of the times, not eating beef, chicken, or pork was unimaginable. What would go in the empty spot where the meat went? What would you possibly eat? Steak ruled and was what a good American aspired to have for dinner as often as possible. To not eat meat was, well, un-American.”
“So what do you eat then?” Despite the many years and dramatically different social climates separating our childhoods, we all encountered this simple question more often than we would have liked. I often sigh to myself as I begin to answer the slew of questions that follow. “No, I do not feel deprived. No, I do not crave it – I have never tasted it.” I sometimes try to compare it to my desire to eat aluminum foil, at which point I am often met with uncomprehending stares.
Yet answering their initial question is somewhat more challenging than one would think. “Pesto pasta…quesadillas…salads….” suddenly my mind will hit a blank. My mom, like my grandmother and her mother, often cooked without recipes, putting together vegetables, eggs, beans, and grains – dishes that didn’t really have names. Not only did our family not eat meat, but the food we did eat was considered “weird.”
My mom remembers growing up with homemade yogurt made from a culture from Finland, alfalfa spouts that her mother had sprouted, and what she and her brother called “stink drink,” a concoction of apple-cider vinegar and honey drink. Certainly not the typical diet found in Hopkins, Minnesota.
It is no wonder, then, that my mother was a closet vegetarian for years. “Although no one ever told me what I should or should not say, I learned at a very young age that it would be best to keep my eating habits to myself,” she tells me. It wasn’t until she was 16 years old that my mom began disclosing her eating habits, but only if it came up. “By then, it was 1970. The first editions of the Whole Earth Catalogue had come out, Woodstock and the Summer of Love were behind us, and the counter-culture of questioning everything mainstream, including food, was spreading across the nation.”
Indeed, times were changing in the food world. In 1971, “Diet for a Small Planet,” by Frances Moore Lappe, was published. For the first time, vegetarian recipes were made readily available and better known. Suddenly, friends were interested in what she ate. By 1977, when Molly Kazen’s “Moosewood Cookbook” came out, being vegetarian was permeating the counter-culture and vegetarian restaurants were popping up around the country. What had once been a source of embarrassment now became the norm, at least within the communities my mom was part of.
When my mom was married in 1972, her wedding cake was a whole grain carrot cake, made by the People’s Company Bakery in South Minneapolis. Atop the cake stood two carrot figurines of the bride and groom, meticulously carved by my uncle. Mike, whom my mom married, had become a vegetarian after being exposed to my mother’s family. Two vegetarians made out of vegetables.
The shelves of their first apartment in St. Paul were stacked high with canisters of grains, beans, and dried fruits. Like her mother and grandmother, my mom cooked whole foods and made just about everything from scratch. She remarks that she didn’t even know canned beans existed at the time.
I recently came across my mother’s old recipe box that she started during this time. Folded up in the very back under a stack of recipe cards was a newspaper clipping from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, dated 1974. The title reads: “With Company for Supper, Couple Goes Whole Grain.” Accompanying the article is the meal plan for “The McSwiggens’ Company Supper,” featuring Mike’s Vegetarian Enchiladas, tossed green salad, Chablis wine, and Carol’s Fruit Bowl. At the bottom of the article the editor touts the benefits of a meatless meal in offering menu variety and a budget break, noting, “many families have started serving a meatless dinner once a week.”
Beaming back at her husband, my mother stands with salad tongs in hand, ready to serve her apparently famous fruit salad. The caption comments: “Carol and Mike McSwiggen are into vegetarian cooking.” ‘Into’ was an understatement – my mom had never eaten meat.
However, even after it became part of the mainstream, my mother didn’t publicly talk about her food choices much, as seems to be the trend today. “I never had an interest in being known as a ‘Vegetarian,’ anymore than we would put ‘Carnivore’ in the bio of a person who ate meat.” Now, in Seattle in 2016, “Not eating meat is nothing I need to explain or talk about.” I can imagine that is somewhat of a relief.
While I was home in Seattle from college over the holidays, I went out to eat with a few of my old friends from middle school. They had heard of a new restaurant that was trending on Instagram and the local food blogs, and we were all eager to try it out. Sitting around chatting about old times over our Buddha Bowls, featuring, you guessed it, tofu, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself. That same piece of soy that was once the bane of my existence was no longer the odd one out. Tofu had made it. Tofu had become cool.
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