The Only "Vegan" or "Vegetarian" Meals We Ever Ate In My Family

Just thinking over some conversations today, and the vast amount of how many "vegan dishes" have become normalized in our modern society, things that I never knew of or grew up with eating, even things like "Tofu" and what not, and how people will consider a "salad" a full meal, we never did this sort of thing growing up.

I tried to think hard about all the vegan or vegetable-based dishes we ever had that did not include meat once in a while, and these are the only real dishes that we ever ate on rare occasions like that:

Ears of Corn with Butter

Vegetable Soups like a Bean or Minestrone Soup, etc. (But usually only ate meat-based soups)

Spinach Pie (Only had Butter, Cheese and some Egg)

Macaroni & Cheese

Spaghetti & Tomato Sauce with Cheese (usually with meatballs)

Outside of this, I really cannot think of what could possibly ever constitute a complete meal, because outside of those exceptions, our family recipes were always based on meat. And the salads that might have come with a meal, were small.

The thing though is that all of those above dishes almost always had at least one animal product in them, if even down to the broth in the soups except for maybe a couple of soup types that were completely vegetable-based, but most use at least some kind of actual animal-based broth or stock.

So we never even really ate any true vegan meals, the only exception would have been if the animal ingredient we were just out of it, such as eating only Corn with no butter. Rarely did I ever do that and I would still be hungry after if I did.

It's crazy to think how much the younger generations that some of them eat a whole bowl full of seeds and slop, concoctions they throw into their blender, or that they could think even adding in "frozen fruits" to their smoothies would somehow be beneficial.

We also always ate deserts after the meals, which usually were heavy with cream or ice-cream, and milk with at least one meal per day. I mean very heavy rich deserts, with tons of fat and sugar.

We ate all these things with no problems of obesity or diabetes and other disease.

Yet we have people today who put cuts of sweet potatoes, peppers, onions or other random vegetables in their oven, then prepare it with some strange seeds and sauces, and consider it a "meal".

Growing up, I had never seen a single person in my life make those kind of meals, not until the emergence of the 21st century.