Vegetarian is not a synonym for a dull, boring existence

I am pretty confident that my experience when talking with parents is no different from most others'--the conversational topics with father are quite a bit different from those when I talk with mother.  More so when they have lived the traditional lives of the man engaging in economically productive work outside the home and the woman engaging in highly productive--perhaps immeasurably valuable--work at home.

After talking about a whole bunch of family and weather and political matters, father was ready to hand over the phone to mother when he said "the lunch yesterday was fantastic. We all overate."

Even otherwise, I routinely ask mother about the cooking planned for the day.  Once she hurriedly got to that topic even before I asked her, and then she added "I wanted to tell you that before you asked me."  So, of course, there was no way I was not going to talk food with her after father's comments.  There is a tremendous variety of vegetarian dishes that mothers (and, now, perhaps fathers too) make in India. Routinely. Exciting foods.  Colorful foods. Differently tasting foods.

They have been lifelong vegetarians. Pukka!  While father occasionally strays into having eggs, mother has stayed away even from eggs.  When we were kids, mother even tried once to make a eggless version of a cake (I think,) which did not turn out well.

At least now, there is a greater understanding of vegetarian foods and Indian foods in my adopted home country.  When I was new here, the idea of vegetarian dishes was nothing more than a bunch of vegetables and leaves, either raw with some crappy dressing, or boiled and salted.  Like how the Onion has satirized that even now:

"Vegetarian Option Just Iceberg Lettuce On Bread" notes the Onion, with its usual satire

Recently, when another argumentative Indian was in town, I had prepared in advance a variety of vegetarian dishes.  But, apparently he does not have the personal relationship with food that some of us have. I wonder if his mother struggles as much as I did to draw from him compliments on the cooking, unlike my mother who was critiqued if the food was even a bit off--even as we licked our plates clean ;)

Consistent with my marching to own drumbeat, even in preparing the vegetarian dishes, I neither follow the old country's customs, nor of the adopted country's.  But, dammit they are tasty!  Like this one that I made and enjoyed for dinner a couple of evenings ago:

Quickly sauteed broccoli, carrots, tomatoes and onion,  in olive oil and red chili flakes,
with freshly grated gruyere cheese

A vegetarian existence is far from dull and boring.  After all, if it were dull and boring, we would not have the argumentative Indians all fired up all the time to debate every issue on this planet and elsewhere too!

Being a thayir-saadham is boring! ;)