"cybercat" wrote
> "cshenk" wrote

>>> Amanda, there is no sin in enjoying a good glass of wine. :-)
>>> Not everybody that drinks it "abuses" it.

>>> I'm sorry you are so afraid of a little alcohol that you can't enjoy one
>>> of the greater pleasures in life. That's very sad.

>> Not sad, may be religion based. Nothing wrong with that.

> Jesus. What a strange thing for Om to say. Alcohol is one of the "greater
> pleasures in life?" Now that is very sad.

Grin, possibly a symptom of traditional USA 'mono-culturalism' in action.
Om doesnt seem to mean bad, but may not be aware other than peripherally of
other cultural values on this. I don't know what culture Amanda comes from
(and she may have an Americanized name here like Miri had) but I can see
it's not your typical USA southern gal there ;-)

Miri was interesting and fun to be around. She'd eat certain seafood meats
when out with others but kept a fairly straight vegetarian faire at home.
Her 2 exceptions at home were *small* amounts of niboshi (no real english
name for these, think small whole dried fish about guppy sized, head and
tail still on), and small amounts of ebi (dried shrimp, sometimes spiced
heavily before drying which is the sort she liked). She'd use the ebi and
niboshi as garnishes.

We'd watch her kids sometimes with prior arrangement since we needed to know
in advance so we could cook 'vegetarian'. I had no problem with this at all
and just had a handy list of a few common things to avoid that she'd found
most others wouldnt realize (jello for example). It was easier to just
scratch cook up stuff so neither of us had to wonder if some odd item from a
box crept in ;-)

A typical meal was rice, kangkoon (a type of spinach sort of), baked
eggplant with olive oil and crushed tomatoes from a can, winter squash (lots
of variations), fresh fruits, bread from my breadmaker, and dried beans of
some sort made without any meat broth but lots of onions and spices.
Caffiene free chilled tea with honey. The kids were particularily fond of
butterbeans with curry ;-). Ok enough nutritionally for the 'every 2 months
or so dinner'.

If there's anything 'weird' there, it's that I was quite willing to adjust
our meal. It was not wierd that they had other habits in eating. It was
very cool that she felt good about letting her kids eat with us now and
again so she and her husband could go out to a movie. (They didnt drink
either).

Sounds muslim but they were not. Just no meat (except small garnishes as
above), meat byproducts (milk products allowed but 2 of her 3 were lactose
intolerant), eggs, alcohol, or caffene (one of the 3 couldnt have
chocolate). Not vegan, but it was mostly religion based.