Tree hugging Hippie Freak

It is unfathomable to me that the very people who seek to discredit and dismiss anything related to the environment are, by and large, the same folks who are of an age to remember the days before fast food, plastic bags, and industrial farming. My father, whose mother baked her own bread, grew and canned their vegetables, and whose father raised chickens, hunted and fished, sniffs with disdain at what he views as my "tree hugging socialist crap". His sister in law, who uses disposable everything, and eats out almost every night, says, "What do I care, I won't be around." Jeez.

At some point in the late 70's, my father supplied fish that he caught for dinner. It was about the time that we learned that toxic waste from New Jersey (where else would it come from?) was being illegally dumped and making its way into the Susquehanna River. As we were eating, we asked where he caught them....... well, I asked him "What does cancer taste like?" Meal over, thanks to the tree hugger.

He inspects my vegetarian meals with a mixture of disgust and curiosity. He knows I loathe his eating processed foods, ham (GAG) hamburger (GAG), and canned vegetables. He feigns wheezing at the first cut into a clove of garlic, says the recycled toilet paper hurts his ass (then tells me that when he was small, they used a Sears catalog) and whines like a toddler about the low sodium soups I buy for him.

He has made some concessions. He is taking plant sterols for his cholesterol (fear of surgery on carotid artery) given up oval spiced ham (OMG it is the FATTIEST deli meat known to man). He is using the George Foreman grill, which was purchased the evening I witnessed him frying hamburger patties in a nonstick pan containing about a half a cup of oil, which he had added "so the burger won't be dry." He us using a homeopathic remedy for leg cramps, but wants to know why he has to put it under his tongue (because the bottle says so). He lets me grow arugula in his raised bed, and uses natural fertilizers, but drew the line at growing edamame ("What the hell is that?") He rationalizes the organic foods and other products as being because my daughter has health issues, which is better, I guess than having a tree hugging communist weirdo for a daughter!