Tag Archives: food

Magnificently Simmering: the blog I would wish I were writing if I were a foodie and which you should be reading regardless

I write a lot about bodies — mine, others’, the experience of existing as an embodied being (because we all are). I still haven’t quite managed to articulate what it is about framing my experience as body-centered that is so compelling, so necessary to me, but it is true nonetheless. When I finally manage the blog overhaul I’ve been dreaming of for the past few months, and simplify the categories to three main topics, “Body” will still be one of them. To tell the story of my body, to really be in it, and to care for it are some of my highest goals.

Thus when a dear friend, whose life has near-frightening levels of parallel with mine (but with more getting published and less knitting), started the blog Magnificently Simmering, with the tagline An American Anglophile’s musings on mindfulness, sensuality, and the cookery of Nigella Lawson, I knew I was going to fall, and fall hard and fast, despite being far too lazy to be a foodie of even wannabe-Nigella caliber. And fall I am, for all the blog is only a few days old and a few posts long.

Here’s a sampling of why:

At first, when I started a year ago, I could only [practice mindfulness] while cooking. Even when the monkey brain was in full-on Speed Racer mode, something about setting out a cutting board and some vegetables, or turning on the tap to rinse out a stockpot, would immediately signal to it, Shut the funk up, we’re pretending to be Nigella, now! And I would chop, and do my washing-up, and concentrate on those tasks with such excruciating care, that eventually I could kinda, sorta, by my standards, think of blessed nothing other than ginger, and carrots, and dish soap.

– Why Nigella? And we get the sensuality bit (oh, and how!), but what’s with the mindfulness business? Aren’t you just an ersatz Julie Powell, with more Zen and fewer f-bombs?

After a freak 85-degree day in which I endured three-plus hours of un-air-conditioned public transit, ran across a highway in a slim skirt, and bit my nails to shreds at the pharmacy waiting to find out whether my new wonderdrug prescription was going to cost $200, let’s just say, Gentle Reader, that the only mindfulness I could summon was an awareness of what flavor of ice cream I wanted my minions to spoon-feed me with one hand, while fanning me with palm fronds with the other.

– Spaghetti alla Carbonara

If this happens to you, do not, as I did, immediately grab a spoon and commence forcibly scraping. Simply view this as an opportune moment to practice radical acceptance and distress tolerance skills, and pour your mixture over your croissant bits, before stepping away. Nigella, after all, says we must let this concoction “steep” for 10 minutes.

Once you have deep-breathed and mourned the caramel for the requisite amount of time, return to your steeping slop o’goodness, and place it tenderly (for, it, too, must be mourning the loss of its caramelized potential, and wondering whether it’s worthy enough for Nigella to crawl into bed with it) in the oven.

– Caramel Croissant Pudding

For foodies, for those of us struggling to be present in our lives and to live in and love our bodies, and for those with an unbecoming penchant for watching dreamy sensual women lick caramel off long-handled spoons, (and surely most everyone, certainly among my readership, is covered by at least one of those categories), this will be a blog to watch.

Just be sure to keep a drool rag handy.

2 Comments | Posted on 28 September 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: bipolar, food, Links, Mental Health, woo woo

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International Hambeast Day

WHEREAS the author of the web-log site known as Raising My Boychick and located on the World Wide Web at http://www.raisingmyboychick.com (henceforth known as “The Author”) WAS KNOWN TO RECEIVE for the anniversary of the commencement of her extrauterine dwelling ONE (1) infestation (consisting of TWO [2] or more of said beings) of the sub-human being known on the World Wide Web as “trolls” (henceforth known as “Infestation” in the collective and “Douchebag” in the singular) and

WHEREAS said infestation included ONE (1) Douchebag calling The Author and the reader or readers of the web-log site Raising My Boychick “hambeasts” and

WHEREAS users of the micro-web-log site Twitter (henceforth known as “Followers” or “Tweeps”) declared to The Author — despite The Author’s assertions that the definition of “hambeast” that said Douchebag was using equaled “too fat to fuck” — that “hambeasts” sounds exceptionally delicious and

WHEREAS The Author was presented with ONE (1) gluten-free Hambeast Cake for The Author’s Hambirthday by ONE (1) of The Author’s Tweeps (see Appendix A) and

WHEREAS it is never prudent to indulge in pity when one can engage in levity and

WHEREAS it seemed like a damn good idea at the time

LET IT BE RESOLVED that henceforth the TWENTIETH (20th) day of the NINTH (9th) month of the ~~Julian~~ Gregorian calendar, also known as September 20th or 20 September, shall be known as

~INTERNATIONAL HAMBEAST DAY~

Cake for everyone!
Gluten free!
Kosher!
Vegan!
Tastes of ham!
But yummier!

Yummy!

All blame and/or thanks for the above picture and the idea for IHD go to Lisa Hoang. Many additional thanks go to all of The Author’s Tweeps who made getting called a hambeast the best part of this year’s anniversary of extrauterine habitation. Y’all made my day.

25 Comments | Posted on 20 September 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: birthday, Fat is a feminist issue, feminists don't laugh, food, International Hambeast Day, trolls

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Accept No Substitutions

By the time I publish this post, I will have been gluten-free for three weeks exactly. Since day three (and really since seriously contemplating the idea), I’ve been trying to write a Deep and Meaningful Post about fat acceptance, intuitive eating, diet culture, and food restrictions.

That is not this post.¹

This post is because next week is my (and The Man’s) birthday. And I want cake.

I have been assured by many, from those far more experienced in this gluten-free gig than I to those who have merely dabbled because of a non-gluten-consuming acquaintance, that gluten free cake 1) exists, 2) isn’t that hard to make, and 3) is anywhere from very tasty to better than cake with wheat.

“But!” protests my inner nine year old, desperate for her father’s signature and traditional angel food, “it won’t be the same!”

Let me tell you about my birthdays:

I was born at about 41 weeks, just five days before my brother’s was to turn seven years old. I was trying to hang on and wait to be a Very Special Birthday Present for him, so the family story goes, but my reckless mother just had to skip her daily nap and stay out all night² dancing, and I, fed up, came early³, dancing out of her at 7:30am the next day, contributing directly to my lifelong displeasure with mornings.

And every birthday ever after that⁴, my father labored in the kitchen, carefully separating eggs, measuring sugar and cream of tartar⁵, and sifting — sighs with longing — white (wheat) flour.

You have to understand: my dad does not bake. He “cooks” for a certain value of “cook” equaling “heat unflavored hunk of meat to carbon-crusted dryness and, if feeling ambitious, add sides of microwaved plain peas and baked Russet potatoes.” I don’t think I’ve seen him so much as spoon pre-fab cookie dough onto a baking sheet in my life.

But every year, at least once, often once per birthday per member of the household, he baked angelic angel food. Fluffy, moist, never too sweet, airy but never excessively bubbly, so light and sticky even the special angel food cake fork-cutter⁶ threatened to squish it — angelic.

If you have never had real homemade angel food, and think only of that store-bought white cake masquerading as it, I weep for you. Heaven weeps for you.

I used to help him, when I was deemed old enough and coordinated enough. It was from him I learned the secret of separating eggs, of cracking the shell without breaking the yolk, and by him was taught the cardinal rule: Never Separate Over the Mixing Bowl. Always drain each white into its own small dish, and only when perfectly collected, with nary a hint of yolk, then add to the rest for eventual whipping.

(We never did figure out what to do with all those yolks. Ever year we had ambitions, looked up recipes, but still, sometime in November, looking for room for the Thanksgiving leftovers, we’d find a bowl with cracked yellow crust, remains of the set-aside baby-chick-food-sacks, and we’d cluck our tongues over the waste, and vow to not forget them next year. But we always would.)

Eventually, with several flops along the way⁷, I assumed the mantle. I made angel food that surpassed the master’s. We’d argue over who would make whose birthday cake, and sometimes I’d win (and I’d make it), and sometimes he’d win (and I’d make it) — but always, always it was angel food. We wouldn’t even bother asking whether, only who and when.

It’s been a few years since I had a birthday at my natal home, and almost as many since I’ve had angel food cake. The past three birthdays, in deference to the pretense that we feed the Boychick exclusively whole foods, I’ve made darn good carrot cake. And it is, indeed, darn good. But it’s not angelic.

I’m pretty sure I could make a just-as-yummy carrot cake using gluten-free substitutions. I’ve been sent gluten free recipes for vanilla cupcakes that make me drool, and for lemon meringue that tempts me to follow the lead of The Man’s best friend, who had pies instead of cake at their wedding. But perhaps precisely because there is no substitute for real wheaty gluteny angel food, it is exactly and only what I’ve been thinking about, lusting for, drooling in memory of in the weeks leading up to my birthday.

And don’t even try to tell me you can make an “angel food cake” gluten free. I will laugh in your face, and then fend you off with Medusa’s comb. It’s like people who tell me to just use carob instead of chocolate⁸; why remind oneself of the bliss one cannot have with a pathetically inadequate substitute? With each morsel crumbling cruelly in my mouth, taunting me with its mimicry of perfection, reaching toward but falling so very short of the heaven I once knew — how could I not but cry? Better to do without. If you can’t eat the one you love, love the one you eat. Or something like that.

So that is what I am thinking of as I start the fourth week of life without gluten, in these last days of my 29th year⁹: birthday parties in the home I grew up in; baking with my dad; angel food cake. Things I cannot have anymore, and love without reservation anyway.

What will you accept no substitutions for, culinary or otherwise?

——————————

Everything in this post is true. Some of it even happened. ↩
I.e. 9pm. ↩
For a certain definition of early which may not appear similar to a 41 weeks pregnant woman’s definition. ↩
Or 7 or so of the next 20. ↩
I’ve always wondered: what IS a tartar, and why is its cream a powder? ↩
Imagine a comb for Medusa. ↩
We Do Not Speak of the half-uncooked, half-unmixed disaster. It was still tasty, though, damnit. ↩
Chocolate gives me migraines, yes it sucks, no you couldn’t survive because I am far stronger willed than you, and yes I might have had this conversation a time or two (thousand) before, but no of course I’m not bored of it, pass the bean dip please. ↩
I will be 28 for one more week, so this is my 29th year. Don’t blame me, I didn’t design mathematics. ↩

33 Comments | Posted on 13 September 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: birthday, feminists don't laugh, fluff, food

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On fatphobia, thin privilege, and “eat a sandwich!”

Scroll down on the comments on a fat acceptance/size acceptance post that mentions thin privilege, and odds are excellent you’ll find something to the effect of “But I’m thin, and I get crap too! I don’t have ‘size privilege’!”¹ Those of us who have been around the fat-o-sphere any length of time have heard this often enough our eye-roll muscles are starting to look like the Old Spice guy’s abs.

But let me take a moment out of exercising my extraocular muscles to actually address this, because these protestations aren’t coming out of nowhere.

When size acceptance activists say that thinness is privileged, we are not saying that every thin person has a hunky dory lightness and sunshine life and everything comes easily for each and every one of you. We are saying that everything else in this world favors if not you specifically, then at least your thinness, and those who are thin like you in general.

Society is systemically and systematically biased against fatness and privileges thinness. That is the well-supported theorem of size acceptance and the activism of fatties like myself.

Nowhere in that succinct definition does it say that thin women never receive body policing, that thin people all hate fat people (or vice versa), that cries of “eat a sandwich!” are any less painful or more acceptable than “put down that donut!”, that thin people don’t have body image issues, that thin women never have problems getting appropriate medical attention.

Because none of those things are true. Women of all sizes are regularly subjected to body policing, people of all sizes come in an array of bigotry levels, the pain of food-based shame is not lesser at a lower body weight, all women are at risk of having body image issues (conversely, women at all sizes might have fabulous self-images), and thin women as well as fat and inbetween can have a hell of a time getting doctors to listen to and believe them.

But? None of those things disprove thin privilege. And furthermore, they all are a consequence of fatphobia².

Body and food policing and hateful, hurtful insults are a direct outflow of the belief that there is one acceptable type of body, and all others should be shamed (through words and pseudoscience and ill-fitting, unflattering clothes) for daring to deviate from it. And at this point in time, in USian culture (and many others), that ideal body is very thin³ — though not too thin.

Here is just a small example of ways that thinness is systemically privileged: seats are made for thin (or at most inbetween) people; most clothes (and basically ALL high fashion clothes) are made for thin people; thin women do not have to worry that they will be kept out of exclusive night clubs because of their thinness; thin people are more likely to be hired, less likely to be fired, and get paid more; thin people are not told they need to buy a second seat to fly because of their thinness, else risk being kicked off the plane; everyone in power — including medical professionals who should know better — are convinced that thin people are automatically healthier, merely by virtue of being thin; and almost all major media not only disproportionately represent thin people but artificially exaggerate thinness.

That not every thin person equally receives the benefit of thin privilege — that some, as with thin people with disabilities or health conditions dismissed out of hand because a douchebag doctor declares “you’re thin, you must be healthy!”, are actively disadvantaged — only means that the system doesn’t care one whit about any individuals, regardless of their size. Thinness is privileged; this does not mean that fatphobia is universally good for thin persons.

So, my skinny friend: your pain is real. Your hatred of the system that shames you is righteous. Your rejection of culpability in the self-esteem of fat women might be just. But your declaration that you therefore are not, cannot be privileged? Is based on a faulty understanding of privilege, its functions, and what it is like to be the embodiment of fatness in a fatphobic society. The words flung at you hurt; you may not always be able to find clothes that fit or flatter you; you may have spent a lifetime wishing for (or told you were supposed to wish for) more flesh, more curves, more bust. Those things are not any less true or real given what I am about to say:

You and those who share your thinness are not held up as responsible for everything from shorter lifespans to global warming; you and those who share your thinness can expect to walk into most clothing stores and at least find something that will meet when you attempt to button it; you can see your thinness reflected in every form of major media, held up in airbrushed form (if not in your own perfectly flawed, human way) as what all others — especially us fatties — should aspire to. You are privileged in many ways that society tries hard to make invisible to you. That you might not be able to see them does not mean they are not very, very real.

Size acceptance is for you, too, unreservedly. Every woman is a real woman, curves or no; every man, genderqueer, nonbinary person is a real person. But we can’t move forward if we can’t acknowledge the power differential; we cannot get to a place where every size is accepted if we are so convinced that all sizes are now equally affected that we are unable to shift the balance. We are all balancing on a scale, with your thinness being lifted up by the weight of and at the cost of us fatties. Only by acknowledging that imbalance can we get somewhere we can all stand side by squishy-skinny-inbetweeny side.

Your pain is real. So is your privilege. Acknowledge them both, and I promise I will do the same.

———————–

Unless there are fewer than ten comments, or the blog moderator is especially strict, or especially lucky, you’ll also find “But don’t you know fat is unhealthy??” and “You’re just looking for an excuse to stay fat, you lazy cow!” ↩
Combined with sexism, ableism, classism, and all the other isms. ↩
That body is also white, moderately curvy (or “womanly”, as though women don’t come in the most fabulous array of shapes) if female — and moderately muscular if male –, cis, not obviously disabled, near-perfectly symmetrical, free of overt blemishes or scars, young (but not too young), not hairy, and so on. ↩

52 Comments | Posted on 23 August 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: body image, Fat is a feminist issue, fatphobia, food, Privilege, thin privilege

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Dear Health Care Provider

Dear Health Care Provider,

No, I am not “willing to reconsider” intuitive eating and Health At Every Size. And by your asking me that, I’m going to guess you don’t have much idea of what they are, so let’s start with a review.

Health At Every Size says that there is so much we can do to maximize health, and none of these have to do with a number on a scale. There’s no evidence that the majority of fat people can permanently become not-fat people, and lots of evidence that say that trying to make them be so is bad for their health. (I don’t care if you’re one of the 5% who could and did lose significant weight and keep it off for more than five years; I am one of the 95%, and I’m perfectly happy to be so, thanks.) So let’s work on the parts of health we can affect; let’s move with joy, and nourish with love, and address things like blood pressure and blood sugars and respiration as needed, rather than letting weight — so poorly correlated with health — dictate everything.

Intuitive eating, a related idea, says that when we listen to our bodies, they’re actually quite good at guiding our food choices. Intuitive eating helps us eat when we are hungry, and stop when we are full. It says to “Eat food. Stuff you like. As much as you want.” It acknowledges the first rule of nutrition (“Eat or die.”). It recognizes that there are more important things than optimal nutrition (no, really, there are), and tells us it’s ok to honor those as well.

These are not only healthy ways of thinking and living (so why would you want me to stop them?), I think they are the only ways for me to be healthy, body and soul, when it comes to food and weight. They are non-negotiable for me, and you need to accept that if we are to have a therapeutic relationship.

You say you might not be the provider for me if I’m not willing to let you do your job.

But here’s what you can do:

You can help my intuition be clearer. You can support my own trust in my body and its signals. You can ask about how well I feel I’ve been in tune with my intuition recently. You can query about whether I’ve had access to fresh, yummy foods recently, and you can offer assistance in increasing that access.

You can help me figure out whether there are any foods in particular that are adversely affecting my health; if there are, you can help me keep in touch with my intuition while replacing that food in my diet. You can help me see the abundance of what I am able to eat and enjoy and nourish myself with rather than feel deprived.

You can help me figure out ways to incorporate the movement I long for into my life. You can trust that I will do that as I am able. You can recognize that laziness is not what is keeping me away from the gym or the track — and you can ask about what is, if you are open to hearing the honest answers. You can offer to brainstorm solutions with me, or alternatives, or simply commiserate my factual, hopefully temporary, inability.

You can help monitor my vital stats: keep track of my blood pressure, and my heart rate, and my respiration, and all the gazillions of lab results you are sent when I visit the vampires. You can talk about what those say about my health, and offer suggestions to improve them, within the context of my life (see above).

You can make sure that there aren’t any obstacles in my way (other than, y’know, my life) to eating intuitively and living healthfully: you can optimize my thyroid replacement dose; you can help monitor my mood and stability; you can investigate other illnesses I might have; you can help me manage my anemia. You can help me get to a place where I have the energy and the body-trust to do my own work.

Saying that I will not “diet” and I will not seek to lose weight is not saying that I do not care about my health, and it is not saying I see you only as a med-dispensing unit. It is not saying anything except that I will not diet, and I will not seek to lose weight. You can still do so many things to earn your title as health care provider. The only thing you cannot do is harass me about my size.

I don’t see why my assertion of this boundary would possibly mean you cannot do your job — unless you see yourself exclusively as a diet pusher and weight loss promoter. No? We should be fine then.

Sincerely,

Arwyn