In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Food

Fat Chance

Will we ever see an article about fat women and widening beauty standards that doesn’t feel the paternalistic need to mention all the health issues associated with obesity (because the fat girls might not know)?

I’d rather just focus on Mo’nique:

“I hope that when women walk away from the show … they sleep better at night and wake up feeling better about themselves,” Mo’Nique told the Post. “If the media never ever says, ‘We think fat people are beautiful,’ so what? We don’t need their approval. Now you be a fat man, a gay man, a black woman, a white woman — whomever you are — when you say goodnight, it’s like, ‘Oh! You know what, I’m OK.'”

…

She told the Post that she wished celebrities like recently booted “View” co-host Star Jones, who is rumored to have had weight-loss surgery, would return to the “F.A.T girl” fold. (FYI: Oprah, Queen Latifah, Camryn Manheim and Rosie O’Donnell are also deemed “F.A.T.” by Mo’Nique.) “What I say to those beautiful women is, come on back! Be healthy, but come on home! Don’t be afraid of that big juicy steak with that baked potato and sour cream, baby, on top of it! That is heaven!”

Sounds good to me. And now I want a steak…

Tomorrow: Femme Fatales Take Over Brooklyn

And if you’re around, you should check it out. From the press release, which was kindly sent on to me by Deanna:

FEMME FATALES WILL TAKE OVER BROOKLYN GALLERY WITH MUSIC, ART, FASHION AND FOOD

They don’t cook. They don’t clean. They just make ART. And on July 8, 2006 at 8:00pm over a dozen female creators of all kinds will overrun the 49 Bogart Street Gallery, nestled in the underground-yet-up-and-coming neighborhood of Bushwick. United as FEMME FATALES and “celebrating the female in its most seductive and destructive mode,” the event will showcase musicians, fashion designers, performers and artists – every one of them female, powerful, and politically minded.

Read More…Read More…

L.A. Cancels Bikini Contest for the Kitties

What a stupid idea.

Since taking office last summer, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has urged his employees to be creative and think outside the box.

Taking that advice to heart, the chief of the Los Angeles Animal Services Department paired with a Hooters restaurant in Hollywood for a bikini contest to raise money for city neutering and spaying programs.

But the howls of protests that greeted animal services chief Ed Boks’ fundraising plan forced him to reconsider. On Tuesday afternoon, he canceled the city’s role in the contest.

LA does have a problem with animals — they euthanize about 19,500 animals a year. That number would be much, much lower if people spayed and neutered their pets. But using half-naked chicks as bait to promote an otherwise worth-while cause? No thanks.

As a disgusting side note (stop reading now if you’d prefer to remain in the dark about the meat you eat — really), a few days ago I was watching a show on Greek TV about the American meat and fast food industry, and they showed all the stuff that U.S. television typically won’t — slaughterhouses, pigs twitching as they bled to death, the horrendous conditions that these animals live in, etc. It was sort of like a PETA brochure in motion, except even more disgusting. I had to turn the channel after a few minutes, but I did catch a piece where they interviewed a former cattle rancher about beef industry practices. He was talking about how they feed cattle all kinds of antibiotics to increase their growth, and how they also feed them all kinds of animal by-products, because meat fattens up the cows faster than grass. In addition to other cows, he casually mentioned that they also feed the cattle ground-up dogs, cats, roadkill, etc — and that euthanized animals from Los Angeles contribute quite a bit to the cows’ diet, because they’re plentiful and cheap.

I almost puked, too, and I’m seriously considering a return to vegetarianism — and barring that, I am now only buying beef from free-range cattle who only ate grass. Bon apetit.

Mango Season

Fun piece in the Times about mango season in Mumbai. I do love mangoes.

Right now, mango frenzy is in full swing, not least in Mumbai, a city where people know better than anyone how to reincarnate a mango: street vendors across the city start squeezing mango juice for around 20 rupees (about 45 cents, at about 44 rupees to $1); fashionable bars mix mango martinis for around 20 times as much; and restaurants at five-star hotels launch mango minifestivals featuring expensive avant-garde mango curiosities.

Indians have become very fond indeed of a fruit that is absent for so much of the year. (Outside the season many must console themselves with their mothers’ homemade mango pickles.) The first mangoes of the year make newspaper headlines and herald the coming of summer. India has its own heavily processed answer to Coca-Cola in Frooty, a ubiquitous sugary mango-flavored drink (the Coca-Cola Company has retaliated with its own version called Maaza).

And, hey, here’s something positive about the Bush presidency (I *am* trying): removal of the barriers to imports of Indian mangoes:

The Indian wing of DHL even offers a courier service specifically for mangoes, although the United States has long been absent from its list of destinations because of its ban on Indian mangoes. But the ban should soon be lifted as part of a deal struck by President Bush on his March visit to the country, which will also give India easier access to nuclear technology. Quid pro quo, as far as many Indians are concerned. “The U.S. is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes,” he said at a press conference, cheering up a local press that he had earlier disappointed by not seeming too well-versed about cricket and Bollywood, two other Indian passions.

Hmm. Mangoes for nukes.

Unfortunately, it looks like Indian mangoes won’t be available here until next year. But if this description of how to eat a mango is any indication of how good they are, it’ll be worth the wait:

Inside knowledge always helps, so this reporter called upon Deepanjana Pal, a wine critic in Mumbai who is just as enthusiastic about mangoes. The most important lesson: How to eat a mango, presented in a three-part mime. She first holds out a cupped hand, in which sits the imaginary glistening orange oval of a whole peeled mango; she then deftly flicks her hand at the wrist to propel the phantom mango against her mouth, which gets busy sucking the flesh down to the seed; finally, outrageously, she deploys the full length of her tongue to lick her arm, elbow to wrist, to recapture an inevitable trickle of invisible mango juice.

“That,” she says after a long moment’s rapture with a fruit that’s not even there, “is the best bit.” She goes on to speculate that there is something alchemical in the mingling of sweetest mango juice with a salty sheen of sweat.

(Later, a local driver reacted with horror to the mime. “So you don’t eat them like that?” I ask. “Well yes, at home, of course,” he says. “But not in the streets! People will think that’s where you live.”)

Mom’s Recipe Box

My sister, who posts here as Kat (albeit without bothering to tell me she was doing so and then going all “well, duh” on me when I asked her who she commented as, even though I never knew her as Kat, a nickname she picked up after leaving home, and dont’ think of her that way) has started putting recipes from my mom’s (and grandma’s) recipe box online.

Here is the blog. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you’ll see my mother’s 8th-grade photo.

I’d like to put out a request to Kat to post Mom’s engagement/college photo. And to have a copy made for me, since I don’t have a copy of that one. Or, frankly, any photo of her other than the early-70s family photo.

I can vouch for the chocolate cake, brownie and banana cake recipes, as well as the home ec coffee cake, which both Kat and I made in Mrs. Volpe’s class (though she got married partway through our home ec career in middle school which lasted 4 years, and neither of us can remember her maiden name). Kat is digging for Grandma’s chocolate mint fudge icing recipe, which usually went with the 20-pound chocolate cake.

The Wetback Delite, aside from having a vile name that nobody thought was vile during the 70s, made me vomit the first time I ate it and put me off ranch dressing pretty much forever. I think I may have had it with milk, which only made things worse.

So send a little traffic Kat’s way and make a few of Grandma’s/Mom’s recipes. And then wander over to her knitting/nephew (well, my nephews, her sons) blog, Krazy Kat Knits.

On Food

One thing I’ve noticed from being a commenter at Steve Gilliard’s blog for a while, is that the posts that get the most comments are the food posts, followed by the going-off-Cary-Tennis-relationship posts.

I’d like to do more food posts; particularly because I’m now trying to adopt a vegan way-of-eating, using Mediterranean and Indian recipes-that-have-always-been-meatless. I’d love to get links to other peoples’ blogs or their recipes in comments.

So, bring it!

Hummus

Why have I never made this before? It’s so easy, and so much tastier than store-bought.

I lurves my stick blender.

Share your food revelations in comments.

Well, *this* is going to put me right off omelets

An EPA advisory panel has identified a compound used in Teflon as a “likely carcinogen.”

I’ve known for some time that superheating a nonstick pan can kill your canaries, since it releases a toxic gas at high temperatures (which you can pretty much only achieve by turning the stove onto high and leaving an empty pan on the burner, but people do fuck up from time to time). But Teflon is used in all kinds of products, such as Gore-Tex fabrics and pizza boxes, not to mention stain protectors for fabrics and carpets.

But the worst thing about this is, surprise, surprise, the coverup. The company that makes Teflon — DuPont! — knew about this for quite some time:

The EPA is in the midst of a major investigation into how the compound, which is used to make stain- and stick-resistant surfaces and materials for products including Gore-Tex fabrics and pizza boxes, gets into consumers’ blood and whether it affects their health. It is also seeking millions of dollars in fines from DuPont Co., which makes PFOA in Parkersburg, W.Va., on the grounds that the chemical giant failed for 20 years to report possible health and environmental problems linked to the compound.

God only knows what the cancer rate among their employees is. Or whether they bothered to tell their employees of the potential dangers. That’s what got the asbestos companies in deep shit — they knew about the hazards of asbestos for decades before they got caught (in fact, the reason we have OSHA is due to the malfeasance of asbestos manufacturers). I did asbestos litigation for a while (my firm represented an insurance company that did industrial health stuff back in the 1930s, pre-OSHA), and the human toll is just incredible.

I still don’t know what motivates company management to try to suppress stuff like this. I’m sure everyone and their uncle is doing hard-core CYA rather than thinking long-term. But it’s almost always easier to deal with fallout when you admit error and ‘fess up quick. This was a lesson I learned quite early in my legal career, when presented with a senior partner who would lose his temper, but only when you’d really fucked up — to defuse things, all you had to do was say, “Mike, I fucked up. Let me know what I can do to fix it and I’ll learn not to do it again.” Hiding things just made it worse, because he’d find out eventually. That got one of my coworkers fired.

In any event, I own one non-stick pan, a rather nice Calphalon omelet pan I got for a great price using a friend’s employee discount. It doesn’t claim to be Teflon, and the material seems to be integrated rather than sitting on top of the pan, but I just don’t know. Probably won’t have omelets for a while.