My Vegetarian Mum Accidentally Drinks Chicken Soup
April 19th 2009 21:00
Photo by Yasson, Used in accordance with the terms of Wikimedia Commons’ GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
Anyone who has parents who cannot read or speak English can really relate to this.
One weekend my sister and I were visiting our parents, who live about three hours away. It was our mum’s birthday and she asked us to shout her a bowl of soup which had steamed vegetables and noodles in it from a local Japanese eatery, which was located at a shopping centre.
When we got to the food court, my mum couldn’t remember where she ate. All she remembered was this delicious bowl of soup with vegetables and noodles.
Given that the shopping centre was located at a small town, the food court was tiny and we narrowed down the possibilities to two places: the Chinese take out (which clearly sold no vegetarian meals) and the Japanese one.
We figured it must have been the latter so we went back there. At the front of the counter were photos showing what you could order. Underneath each photo was a description of each meal’s ingredients. I asked my mum which meal it was. She didn’t know. My sister and I then read all the descriptions and narrowed it down to two vegetarian dishes, one which had tofu.
Instead, we ended up shouting our mum some French fries from MacDonald’s. Having lived in Sydney for most of my adult life and accustomed to the many restaurants and eateries that offer vegetarian meals, I was shocked that there were no vegetarian meals at the shopping centre. My mum kept going on and on about how tasty that bowl of soup was – even if it was chicken – and all I could think was what’s the point of being vegetarian if you’re not going to check if something is really vegetarian? On the other hand, the eatery was misleading by only mentioning the chicken soup in one of their menus (and in fine print, of course).
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