Food Fights : One likes meat, the other other won't touch it, and the kids just want to eat. Compromise--and flexible menus--bring peace to the table

By ANN SHIELDS

Jan. 22, 1996 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

When Neal Keller decided to become a vegetarian, his wife, Sherry, had fair warning. They had traveled that path when he was a seminary student, then drifted back to traditional eating until he turned hard-core three years ago--the lone vegetarian in a family of carnivores. Tom Eubanks, a dedicated meat eater, harbored a sinking suspicion that his wife, Judy, might turn into a vegetarian. She had always been a finicky eater. Then, two years ago, she quit cold turkey--and every other kind of meat.

For both couples, it’s mixed marriage of the inter-dietary kind. Not always an easy alliance to negotiate.

Not to share that T-bone, lobster or chicken Florentine? No more fast-food forays for a Big Mac? It’s as if your partner has started speaking in tongues (forget about eating them).

“Quite frankly, I just ignored it for a while, hoping it would go away,” says Sherry Keller, a Ventura attorney. “When I noticed he wasn’t eating what the rest of us were, I started cooking larger portions of side dishes.” So far, their sons--Nick, 14, and Stuart, 10--show no inclination to follow in Neal’s foodsteps.

People become vegetarians for various reasons, including health, ethics, spirituality and concern over the environment. Says Neal Keller: “I just like animals and I feel bad if I have to kill them.”

Cooking them is another matter. If he gets home from his ministerial duties as pastor of a Methodist church in Ventura before Sherry, he cooks dinner. Fortunately, he has no qualms about formerly living creatures sizzling in his frying pan.

“Humans are animals, too, so it’s having compassion for them as well. I’m not a hard-liner.” While he says he’ll eat anything that isn’t meat, he’s a vegetarian who doesn’t like most vegetables and isn’t fond of casseroles or spices. Sherry faces the challenge of coming up with meals that satisfy everyone.

“I’m resigned to it. Fortunately, he’s a pretty independent guy so he’ll fend for himself. He doesn’t come home and expect me to have dinner on the table,” she says. On busy days, she finds herself cooking what is most convenient and supplements Neal’s protein needs with what’s available.

Pasta with marinara sauce is a reliable standard, as are his veggie burgers. Sherry’s accumulating a growing collection of meatless Italian recipes, while friends contribute lentil and bean recipes (which cause rebellion in her sons).

“If it weren’t for Sherry and the kids I’d be a vegan, for my own sake,” he says, meaning he would eliminate eggs and dairy products from his diet too. He compensates by eating only eggs from uncaged chickens.

Keller’s vegetarianism is not widely publicized, partly because he thinks vegetarians sometimes adopt a self-righteous attitude. Consequently, when invited out to dinner, a fairly frequent occurrence for a pastor, he’s become adept at faking it.

“I’ll just cut up the meat and spread it around so it looks like you tried it and just weren’t hungry,” he says. “You can always pass it off to your wife or the kids real quick if they’re nearby.” Or the family pet salivating under the table.

From a nutritional standpoint, Keller believes his needs are being met. Although he lost weight after making the switch, he feels fine. Although he says he’s not particularly health conscious, he does avoid meat substitutes high in oil content. He considers himself basically healthy and gives every appearance of it, especially when he’s surfing the waves off Ventura, a sport he enjoys as often as duties and the surf allow.

All in all, the Kellers are working out their dietary differences with a minimum of fuss. But for the Eubanks family, it is sometimes an uneasy truce, fortunately enforced with good-natured teasing.

“It was a conflict on Tom’s part, not mine,” Judy says. “Every time he’d make something special and want me to taste it, I’d refuse if it had meat and he’d get upset. So, for the first year he hounded me because it was my choice and he didn’t approve.” She concedes that he’ll buy her special foods now.

In the beginning, Tom admits, he felt meals would have to center around the vegetarian in the family and unfairly force him and daughters Cassie, 16, and Alexandra, 10, to give up what he calls normal eating.

“I do rub in the fact that because she’s a vegetarian it causes her a problem. We go somewhere or sit down to dinner and there’s this little thing of vegetables for her and nothing else,” Tom says.

Judy ignores the gibes as part of the price of being different. While her work schedule with the County of Ventura takes her away from home 9 1/2 hours a day, she still does most of the cooking. Tom wishes it weren’t so, but he’s busy writing novels when he isn’t snooping around for his private investigation firm based in Camarillo.

“I’d prefer to do it because I like to make different things. If I’m going to barbecue, I might make extra vegetables or get her veggie burgers. But if I’m going to make something that doesn’t fit her, I’ll tell her to make her own.”

Judy’s menu often includes spaghetti, setting aside sauce for herself before she adds sausage or ground beef for the others. Tacos with beans for her, plus meat for them. Cooking meat is not easy for her, especially the smell. Taking the skin off of chicken blows her mind but she does it anyway. Eating out is another problem.

“The first time we ate at a friend’s home in Ojai, they had buffalo meat, so I ate salad and bread. After that I brought my own veggie burgers. When Tom’s father makes meat enchiladas for everyone, he always makes cheese enchiladas for me, so I guess it is a hassle for other people,” Judy says.

Judy’s decision to forego meat germinated in the aftermath of a sixth-grade science project. Coming home from school after dissecting a heart in class, she found her mother cooking liver.

“It smelled exactly like the heart I’d been dissecting, and every time I smelled certain things after that, it made me sick,” she says. Since she never liked meat anyway, it was easy to quit eating it.

Tom finds her reaction ridiculous. “All you have to do is look at the way the human body is made up, look at our teeth, and see that we were meant to eat meat,” he says.

As for suggestions that vegetarians might be healthier, he points out that Judy is sick more often and catches more of whatever germs hit the house than anyone else in the family. That leads to comments about her habit of smoking little cigars. He doesn’t consider it particularly healthy, unless you allow that tobacco is a vegetable. He says this with tongue in cheek. Judy just lights up and smiles.

Fortunately, for both couples, humor and tolerance coexist along with tofu and tri-tips. Good thing, too, since no one seems inclined to switch sides.

For Neal Keller, the issue is simple: He likes animals and won’t participate in eating them. Judy Eubanks would rather gag, which she’s apt to do if forced to eat a dead cow.

As for those carnivorous mates, even the possibility of a longer life doesn’t prompt conversion. Mention that the 60-plus Seventh-day Adventists living in Newbury Park’s Ventura Estates have an average age of 86 and you can imagine Tom saying life just seems longer when you can’t sink your molars into filet mignon once in a while.

Psychologist John Robertson puts another spin on the issue.

“What I’ve heard about inter-dietary families has been in the therapist’s office and the ‘problem’ family member is often a teenager who has announced he or she is not going to eat ‘road kill’ or ‘dead animals’ anymore,” he says. Robertson, who is director of training for University Counseling Services at Kansas State University and has a part-time practice, says the issue often represents a much larger family issue about power and control.

Regardless of rationale or underlying issues, veggies and carnivores still have to arrive at the peace table prepared to negotiate and come away satisfied. So power to the cook and bring on the pasta. Meatballs on the side, please.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Vitals on Vegetarians

Why people become vegetarians, according to “Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook” (MacMillan, 1995):

* Health--46%

* Animal welfare--15%

* Influence of family or friends--12%

* Ethical--5%

* Environmental--4%

* Not sure / other--18%

Types of vegetarians, in order of strictness:

* Semi-vegetarian: will eat dairy foods, eggs, chicken and fish, but no mammal flesh.

* Pesco-vegetarian: dairy foods, eggs, fish, but no animal flesh.