Bringing Home The Bacon
I’m a dad who loves his daughter to pieces but I’m struggling to see eye to eye with my teenager and wife on this one. We’ve always been a meat-eating family. We live in the rural Midwest and bacon for breakfast is pretty much a given. This year, my 14-year-old daughter decided to go vegan, and I jumped on to her support team with enthusiasm.
We learned how to substitute ingredients, cook new things, try new things, I adjusted our budget to include more expensive vegan substitutes for her, etc. None of this has been a problem for me. Until recently, something changed. She saw me cook bacon in a pan, and then I rinsed it out to load it in the dishwasher. She exploded in anger (teen years, I’m not too fussed about the anger explosion, I know she doesn’t mean it) and said that that was HER pan for vegan food.
I was completely floored and said, kiddo this here is a family pan, older than you, it’s not YOUR pan. She asked me to purchase her a pan that she can solely use for vegan food. I didn’t want her to feel weird about food, so I said sure, and ordered her a few colored ones that are only for her. The reason they’re colored is so it helps me remember that I’m not to touch them unless I’m cooking vegan. But then it got weird.
That wasn’t good enough. Now apparently the dishwasher is “contaminated” with animal product and the fridge has “bacon grease fingers” on it (because I eat bacon and then touch the fridge) and she’s asked me and her mom to completely stop eating meat at home. I don’t mean I literally touch the fridge with greasy bacon hands, because I wash my hands, but it’s clearly enough that it upsets my daughter.
Frankly, I’m on team heck no, but her mom is much more amenable and strongly wants me to consider taking our daughter up on the request. My wife’s reasoning is that both our parents live close so we can eat meat products there, and that she doesn’t want our daughter to feel uncomfortable in the kitchen. My daughter says she is fine with cheese and butter in the fridge, but it’s specifically meat products that make her feel sick.
Now I’m sorry for her, but I feel like she just needs to adapt and live side by side, because I’m not going to stop eating bacon in my own house.