There's hardly enough room to do anything when one or more people are cooking in there.

My mom wanted to make some sort of roll stuffed with meat and asked me if I had a vegan version for her to make. I poured over my recipe books and after awhile realized that I'm better off making something separate and she can have one less thing to worry about: she wants to feel she can make anything I can eat, but no matter how I reassure her, she still feels unneeded and unloveed.

I put together this tofu and nut loaf, replacing ingredients that I didn't have on hand, so I had to be inventive. I made the loaf, I made the cream sauce, I even made the rice with tumeric and some herbs. Dinner was close to being done when I was aware that my dad and my younger brother still were out. I harassed my brother a couple of times over the phone to get over here, and my dad mozied on over, finally, bringing his irritable self in. Must be a thing with cab drivers.

Highlight: We always end up talking about Wal-Mart, but leading up to that point, everyone at the dinner table was talking about cars and driving, and dragging me into the discussion of teaching me to finally get behind the wheel and learn. Wal-Mart aspires to have everything, is ambitious to serve the community's needs, including having a supermarket, and we yammered on about that. For some reason, cars came into the Wal-Mart discussion, and my brother says, "What, Wal-Mart makes cars now?" and I jumped in with, "Yeah, they're all magnetized to head directly to the store, with the confused passengers saying, 'Where is my car taking me? Why did I end up at Wal-Mart? How come I can't ever leave?" This brought major laughs from my brother, and he pointedly says, "That's a good one!"