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New York, 6:14 AM
Sun Nov 8
22 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/02/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
Humans are fairly resilient and good at adapting when necessary.
Unfortunately, when change happens too fast for us to keep up with, people will suffer and/or die.
I don't imagine "women's work" will be redefined in these countries any time soon (or soon enough to make a difference). So, hopefully the issues at hand can be addressed in practical ways.
My off-the-cuff suggestions:
For long treks to get water and wood: Irrigation and water delivery systems built and maintained. Alternative fuel use.
For educational disadvantages - schools for girls and women only, with alternate hours of attendance, and perhaps location closer to women's gathering places.
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
I wanted to stand up and say, "what part of GLOBAL warming do you not get? It is the average temperature of the WORLD that is warming, not this city's temperature at 2pm this afternoon, you jackass. What, are you going to wait until your Florida beachfront property is 10 feet underwater before you realize this is for real?"
09/18/09
08/22/09
What has made it all work for me is training and accumulated knowledge. Most good cookbooks have a "pantry" section. It makes a huge difference to have a stocked pantry and freezer. Familiarity with a lot of different cooking techniques and food combinations also helps. Mark Bittman periodically does lists of 100 simple recipes around a theme in the NY Times which are great for ideas (not to be his agent but his cookbook "How to Cook Everything" is equally great for ideas.)
There are a lot of healthy meals that can be made in a half hour or less. My typical mental process is -- I really don't feel like cooking, we could have x and all I would need to do is cut up those 2 vegetables, throw the other frozen vegetable in, do y with the grain from the pantry that will take 10 minutes and cook that protein that will take 5, that actually sounds pretty good, I'm going to make that right now because I'm really hungry. Also, when the mood strikes I make big pots of soups and stews that we eat for lunch a few days and freeze the leftovers.
I do really get how tedious cooking can be, but I also think we have all been a bit brainwashed by the food industry to default to convenience foods. Fresh, home-cooked food doesn't have to be that time-consuming.
08/22/09
08/21/09
In the smallish Midwestern town where I live, we have a very popular farmer's market. And I think it's great - I love to shop there myself - but not necessarily because it's local, or the eggs don't come from chicken factories, or certain booths are organic. I think it's great because it brings a sense of occasion and wholeness back to food. When I go to farmer's market, I go with an eye for what I want to cook. The food becomes a part of my life - not just an afterthought. I can talk to the people who grow it and find out how to eat kohlrabi, or why certain bees are dying off but my honey lady is well-stocked.
And let me tell you, a bunch of radishes never appealed to me before I saw loads of them piled high next to carrots still muddy from the ground, and bunches of zucchini, and glossy eggplants all from a local farm. Somehow, I never feel the food calling to me in the same way at the supermarket.
And lastly, I think food is - or should be - about the sharing and connecting aspect of mealtimes. Which is why gender in the kitchen is not an issue for me. I like to cook. My boyfriend doesn't know how. But he doesn't expect me to make him food, and I love it when I have more of an occasion to cook a meal and share it with someone. I feel like you could easily swap our genders and have the same situation. Food is about humanity.
08/21/09
I don't know. But I think that whatever it is, it should address the social issue, not just the one about nutrition and health.
08/21/09
There's also the issue of communal subcultural practices being subsumed by the larger culture, and then there's what Penny brings up in her comment about labeling and organic produce.
It's a long conversation, but I've been looking for a cookbook like Bryant Terry's for a long time, as a partial solution. So thanks for interviewing him and bringing it into the mix.
08/21/09
08/21/09
08/21/09
Bottom line, if it's to be important to us that someone in the household be cooking, schools and workplaces need to support that before anything will change. And because I'm a cynic like that, I don't see it happening any time soon.
08/21/09
08/21/09
Every weekend we make a menu for the upcoming week and do all the shopping for that week with a comprehensive list. It takes two hours at the most, start to finish (when you have that list at the market, man does the shopping go quickly.) We've been doing it for a couple years now and the difference it makes is amazing. Not only do we eat fresh, unprocessed food three meals a day, we don't have to think about what to make for dinner when we get home at night, it's already been decided. Additionally, we have pretty much zero food waste- everything gets eaten. We also plan weeknight meals that will generate leftovers for lunches the next day, or even for two or three days, so we're eating home cooked food at pretty much every meal. And our grocery bill is the same amount every week, because we can plan to eat simpler food on weeks that we need to make big purchases (detergents, cat food) and get the imported olives the next week.
My point is that for a lot of people, cooking at home is like anything else- it takes time and effort and organization but once you get used to it, once it becomes routine, it can become easy and not a huge production but rather a natural part of each day. Even when that day includes an hour commuting time and 12 hours at a desk.
Admittedly, it makes a big difference to have someone who shares in every aspect of it equally. But the weeks when he's away, or when I'm away, whoever is home sticks to the routine. It's really all about planning ahead and sticking with it, whether it's for one person or ten.
08/22/09
08/22/09
My MIL used to work for a place where you could go and make several "home made" meals that you'd then take home and freeze. I think places like that are awesome and we need more of them (and cheaper ones, it was a little pricey) as well as higher quality prepared foods (like they have at WF) in every supermarket. (She now works for TJ's, which I think is a pretty decent place for processed, inexpensive foods.) A lot of people don't have access to these types of choices and that's really the problem.
Another issue: it took years for my partner to adjust his tastebuds to enjoying home cooked food more than Chinese takeout, so I think we're working against some very strong learned tastes. I'm not sure how easy it is for people to make that transition to fresh whole foods if they've eaten mostly processed stuff in their life.
But the biggest issues are ease and availability, and I was just trying to show that it can be done without killing yourself, eating up all your free time, or breaking the bank. Basically, I think we probably agree.
08/22/09
It was that aspect of the general argument, from many sources, that I was meaning to refute, not your comment specifically, though since I was responding to your comment that wasn't exactly clear. I apologize.
On that note, I should say that I can vouch for the meal planning strategy - in half an hour or less you can think of or look up several meals, make up a list, buy the stuff you need and not throw out half your produce when it goes bad because you've only bought what you need. And it gives me a good excuse to look up new recipes and try stuff I otherwise wouldn't try. I also make enough for leftovers and it saves me the time of throwing together a sandwich in the morning. But it's not perfect, I still buy lunch sometimes, and sometimes my boyfriend and I still have meals of dried pasta, tomato sauce and random vegetables because we didn't have time to go shopping. C'est la vie.
08/21/09
A lot of it is because we assign moral, as opposed to nutritional, values to foods. Which then gets translated into the same ideas about different body types, and then the people who have them.
If we start viewing all of this as related, we start being able to really get at the problem. Which starts at what, how, and why we eat (other than the obvious, which is to live).
The only thing I'd say in slight disagreement is that there's a lot of talk of "organic" food and while it's certainly not wrong to eat that way, it's not necessarily "better" than eating non-organic when we're talking about vegetables and fruits and things like that. Organic food doesn't, so far as any research indicates, more nutritional value. And it still uses pesticides and other things or they'd be eaten by bugs and whatnot (thank, you, Penn and Teller's Bullshit).
This is not to say we shouldn't eat organic, but it's important not to view that as some kind of food savior. It's possible to eat well and not be primarily organic. A lot of the language around organic food still uses that same moral phrasing, and I just don't think that's ultimately helpful.
08/24/09