I was heavily influenced in my desire to can by two factors. One: The Butt'ry Shelf Cookbook. This curiosity, still widely available on the internet, was written in the mid-20th century by a New England eccentric and centered around her family's year as seen through the well-stocked "butt'ry" where she and her relatives industriously filled the shelves with homemade liqueurs, ripening fruitcakes, an ever-increasing store of foodstuffs and, of course, all the homemade jams and preserves a country housewife's heart could desire. It is not surprising that the book, already nostalgic at the time of publication, was illustrated by the author's neighbor Tasha Tudor. It's also not shocking that it was a major influence on my mid-childhood years (tweens didn't exist in the 1980s.) It was under its auspices that I attempted to "cure" meats in the playhouse in our back yard, have a taffy pull by myself, and churn butter in my dollhouse's 4" churn.

It will come as no great shock to regular readers of this space that these efforts met with sincere approbation by my grandfather, the family patriarch and eccentric, whose fear of a vague apocalyptic phenomenon known only as "The Bad Times" had led him to install an enormous deep freeze, build a makeshift compound, and melt and bury various metals under the house. "When the Bad Times come, they'll be eating each other," he'd say darkly, then go to a yard sale and buy another dozen pressure cookers. (Money bonfires also figured in the prognostications.) Some attributed his death to disappointment that none of this ever came to pass; had he but waited a few years...

Naturally, canning and preserving played no small role in our Bad Times Survival Guide. As such, my enthusiastic attempts at jam-making and pickling were encouraged. I didn't know what I was doing; I didn't really think about botulism or sterilizing or mold or recipes. All I knew was that we had to preserve as much as possible. I'd aid my grandfather in preparing the endless jars of nearly-inedible plum jam he distilled from the tree in the yard, or throw some herbs and vegetables in a can, add some salt water, and call it a day. (One particularly memorable jam involved pine needles.) Most of what I made molded before we could enjoy the fruits of my housewifery - despite the mysterious preponderance of pressure cookers, we never processed anything - but I was undaunted.

As I got older, I got keen on the notion of homemade jam as a gift. By 12 or so, I'd read up on procedure and had come to understand the two most important things about canning: 1) It's really, really expensive and 2) It's an enormous, horrible ordeal. Far from making practical use of the overflow of home-grown produce and ensuring a few vitamins through the long winter, for most of us, canning and preserving is an exercise in self-indulgent excess. If you buy farmer's market fruit, even the "damaged" varietal - and what's the point otherwise - it's exorbitant, and that's without even talking about the ready supply of ball jars you'll need. Once you've got your canner, your wide-mouth funnel, your selection of ladles, you're set for life (and those sales of the belongings of a dead old woman by her not-interested-in-canning boomer children are a boon in this regard) you're set, but it's an outlay. Then comes the actual process: whether it's stirring a kettle of jam in the summer heat or minding an insolent kettle of apple butter in the fall or just the sticky, messy ordeal of covering stuff with syrup or processing pickles, it's kind of nightmarish. (And the kitchen cleanup is second to none in its scope and difficulty.) The satisfaction of having that smug row of jewel-hued jars is, yes, almost worth it. But after the process, I find I am greedy: I don't want to give away my expensive, beautiful, labor-intensive preserves; I want to hoard them. If I can bring myself to give some away, I secretly want to ask for the jar back. Just last week I had to suppress a scream of wounded fury when I saw my boyfriend had opened a jar of rhubarb-and-onion relish (I specialize in the kind of thing no one actually wants to eat) to accompany a turkey burger. I guess this is a small taste of the pain of old-timey household drudgery: not just the labor, but the pain of seeing your laboriously-scrubbed floors muddied or hand-washed clothing soiled and the knowledge that you'll have to do it all over again, ad infinitum. In this regard, it really is a taste of the past.

And yet - or perhaps because of - the blatantly farcical nature of modern urban canning, it's becoming a thing. Like quilting, embroidery and all manner of DIY, canning's now the purview of the young, with more than half of enthusiasts, according to UPI, under 40. The "Recession" argument's obvious: we want to feel connection and security and the illusion of self-sufficiency. Maybe the general fuckwittery of the system has motivated a subconscious desire to live outside the grid - or at least cleave to the competence of another era. It makes sense in the scheme of eating locally and seasonally and there's also the little matter of avoiding corn syrup, a near-impossibility with anything mass-produced (and really, the good stuff's as pricey as doing it at home, albeit less of a headache.) As a result, we are seeing a rash of dubiously-spiced homemade jams in marketplaces and boutiques across the land. I succumbed to one amateur canner's "experiment" last week: peach jam with tarragon, for $10. I lived to regret it. But even so, I wondered that she was able to part with it: the sense of achievement, and the security of that store, is, for many of us, comforting in a way money never can be. And anyway, come the Bad Times, only gold will be worth anything.

Canning Not Just For Grandma Anymore [UPI]

"Hot Jezebel," for those unfamiliar, is a mixture of apricot preserves, mustard and horseradish, which you chill and pour over a block of cream cheese. Um, that's it. Since I had a King Ranch Casserole in the oven and an ex coming over for dinner, the time seemed ripe.


So I did my marketing


And I served it with crackers.


It looked really unappetizing. But I made everyone eat it anyway.


It tasted exactly like duck sauce.


Or maybe really mild chutney, or ham glaze, on a big hunk of cream cheese. It didn't exactly move.

I had a lot left, so I put it in the blender.


Then I made some salami-cream-cheese rollups.


But no one wanted those either.

In Serious Eats' "Chewing the Fat" feature, the latest installment features maverick chef and tall drink of water Anthony Bourdain talking sex. Which is great, except he talks it with Mario Batali, whose orange crocs you can just sense lurking under the table as he pontificates about how “there’s a couple of ways of making someone happy by putting something inside of them." In fact, if we had to make a list of people we wouldn't want to ever see talking about sex, Mario Batali would be right up there with Alan Greenspan and Dakota Fanning. And as if the idea of the crocs on a nude Batali wasn't quite enough, he talks about sex in this gross, knowing, smirky way that's kind of left a frozen expression of horror on our collective faces. Bourdain, however, is typically louche. Which is to say, watch it.
Mario Batali & Anthony Bourdain Talk About Sex And Now My Vagina Is Confused [Serious Eats via Best Week Ever]

Some of us love to cook and hate mixing it up with the math-tinged boringness that is "food science." We might follow Cooks' Illustrated meticulous recipes, but studiously avoid the dry sidebars explaining the whys and wherefores of leavening. A piece in today's Times critiques this kind of mindless order-following, as the author, Kenneth Chang, takes to the kitchen with kill-joy food scientist Shirley Corriher, for whom I've always cherished a deeply unjust animosity.

Cookbooks bark out instructions like boot camp orders — Add oil to pasta water! Salt the eggplant! Brown meat to seal in juices! — and legions of home cooks obediently follow them. I wondered how many of these truisms had a scientific underpinning and how many were but myths. Browning meat, for instance, does not seal in juices. The char adds flavor, though.

Corriher watches as the author cooks, and demystifies beans, grilled shrimp, and braised Brussels sprouts.

A duck leg basted with a soy sauce-rice wine-garlic-ginger-honey sauce provided another lesson in browning.
In addition to adding sweetness, the honey helped brown the duck skin, taking advantage of chemical reactions described by Louis-Camille Maillard a century ago. In the Maillard reaction, at high temperatures, fructose and glucose in the honey reacts with amino acids in the duck, producing a variety of new molecules that add flavor and color.

The anti-scientist might tell herself that if generations of peasant-women can cook without knowing this sort of mumbo-jumbo — using instead instinct, experience, sight and touch — surely we can do without it, too. If something tastes good, we think defensively, it tastes good: who cares why? Of course, if we are honest we know full well the real issue is the panic brought on by the memory of staring blankly at high school's impenetrable chemistry formulas and the horror that was mandatory college science courses. For my part, I was intimidated, I was afraid, and so, like a Medieval ignoramus, I preferred to see Galileo executed than face the realities of a brave new scientific world.

The point of the article, is, ultimately, that the two schools of thought need not really be in conflict. Chang discovers that his mother's "folk wisdom" — adding sugar to a stir-fry out of habit and tradition, for example — is based upon sound principles of food science. Because, as we are meant to see, there is no point to the science if it doesn't result in good-tasting food, and no point to the "folk wisdom" if it's not founded on a chemistry that makes ingredients respond in expected ways. It's all in the way you look at it: food scientist Harold McGee might see that a honey-braised turkey has browned up well because of a Maillard reaction, where a "cook" will just see a luscious skin. The proof of the pudding, as a man once said, is in the eating. And there is something to be said for having grasped the fundamentals of chemistry without every cracking a book.

At The Stove, A Dash Of Science, A Pinch Of Folklore [New York Times]

Here's the whole query:

Dear Amy: My husband and I are very friendly with a couple that we enjoy very much. We vacation with them and spend time with them in social gatherings. We love to entertain and are very good cooks. Whenever my friend and her husband come to our home, they always eat everything, and they usually have second helpings. My friend loves to entertain as well and does it well. You always feel very relaxed at their home. Our problem is that she used to cook wonderful meals, but now everything she cooks is fat-free. Her menu is always tasteless. She cooks it all in the morning and reheats it before serving it. She always makes a comment that she cooked too much because there is so much food left over. I would love to tell her it's because no one wants second helpings. My feeling is that most of her guests feel the same way we do. I don't want to hurt her feelings. Do we suck it up for the evening or say something? My husband said that we should just not accept invitations to her home for dinner and just go for parties, and eat before we get there. We were invited for Thanksgiving dinner, and the dinner was awful. Once again, she was overloaded with leftovers. How would you handle this situation? - Friend in Need

Amy says that, in the name of friendship, "Friend" must indeed make the best of the crap food - because "the most important aspect of being a guest is to allow yourself to have a good time, partaking of the fellowship of your friends, even if you don't particularly enjoy the food." Further, "your friend might have health issues necessitating her switch to low-fat cooking, or her tastes and abilities may have changed during the time you've known her."

In my opinion, there are a few details here that must be considered. 1: "friend in need" is something of a boastful jerk with misplaced, petty priorities - and yet, I trust her implicitly. 2: There is nothing worse than being trapped somewhere with horrible food, especially on Thanksgiving. 3: If the bad cook - who has no excuse since she used to be a good one, and how could her "abilities" have changed? - can't eat normal food, she has no business inviting people over and forcing them to conform to her diet. Harsh? Maybe. But if she's going to pull this kind of crap, then her friend can be equally selfish and turn down her invites (since, apparently, going to a restaurant is not an option and their relationship is completely based on foodieism.)

That said: obviously "Amy" is right and if you're a nice person you don't hold tasteless food against your friend and put the most charitable possible spin on her behavior. If you're not actually that nice but know you need to pretend to be, here is what you should have in your purse: beef, turkey or salmon jerky; dried apricots; almonds; if at all possible a Nature Valley fruit bar. (Some advocate a hard-boiled egg but I have had unhappy experiences with broken shells.) If you aren't on the go for a long time, a BabyBel cheese is a good addition, and the ball of wax is handy to have for molding under the table into miniature Easter Island heads. All of these can be downed during a clandestine trip to the powder room. Also: whenever at a deli, grab some of those little salt and pepper packets so as to easily doctor tasteless food on the sly. I know of what I speak: if, like me, you have certain close relatives who have been known to serve one ancient, unrefrigerated, dessicated carrot sticks, week-old supermarket rotisserie chicken with a soupçon of mold on the drumstick, and undefrosted clam chowder, such measures are a necessity.

Ask Amy: When host's food isn't to guests' taste [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

Peanut Butter: Doubtless we're about to have another round of feel-good comfort foods (or maybe food that feels fancy and restaurant-y so you can justify it as a treat, but is actually secretly reassuring? Or do pastry chefs not overthink stuff like we do?) Anyway, apparently PB is showing up all over the place. Bon Appetit provides recipes for "Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cheesecake Swirl Brownies," "Peanut Butter Cheesecake with Caramelized Banana Topping", and "Peanut Butter and Jelly Shortbread Wedges," none of which really sounds as appealing as that perennial poor gal's dinner, "peanut butter spoon."

Breakfast: Allegedly, breakfast for dinner (lazy mom style!) is big. And cheap! We are big fans of this "trend," which Bon Appetit interprets as "dressed-up waffles, pancakes, and eggs. Delectable biscuits, scones, and croissants." They forgot: cold cereal.

"Anything With An Egg On Top": Suspiciously similar to the "breakfast" trend, but we must concur: eggs on stuff will be big in '09. Especially if by "stuff" you mean "toast." Also, "plates." We have been known to bake an egg on top of a baked potato: this will be a trend.

Cheap Wine:Okay, they call it "Great Bargain Bottles," but a plonk by any name is a trend we're guessing we pioneered.

Ricotta: Dubious.

The Obligatory Cheap Dinner Party: Their menu, by Rick Rodgers, is all about cheap stuff masquerading as pricey stuff: "eye of round is a delicious stand in for prime rib, American caviar is a homegrown indulgence, and who needs truffles when you can have truffle oil?" Who indeed? While they are not wrong that cheap dinners will be popular, we forecast pasta, eggs, breakfast for dinner, "mulled wine," "sangria," and, our personal favorite, "pot luck." We are also fans of the, ahem, "trend" of charging our guests $5 for dinner.

Also big in 09 according to us: Ramen, chicken in various guises, boxed mac & cheese, yogurt, canned tuna, cabbage, bananas, ground beef, "leftover takeout rice creativity." Also, portable meat pies like miners used to eat, just because we like the idea. And baby food. In fact, "anything with baby food on top." Ooh, and maybe those hard candy balls that no one really likes; they're due for a comeback. And matzoh; unleavened bread will be very big in '09. Oh, and we'll see their "ricotta" and raise them an "Edam." Hey, we don't make the trends! We just forecast them.

The Hottest Food Trends For 2009 [Bon Appetit]

There was recently an anthology released, Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant (based on a terrific Laurie Colwin essay of the same name) composed entirely of essays on the pleasures of eating alone: the opportunities for iconoclastic experimentation and self-pampering. One assumes that virtuous French-woman-style lifestyle plans involve much of this sort of "because I'm worth it" behavior, and there's certainly something appealing about the fantasy of being the sort of woman who pours herself a glass of wine, whips up creme brulee for one and dines solo by candlelight because she enjoys her own company so much!

For most of us, eating alone falls somewhere between this twee self-catering and the cliche of the lonely diner eating cold Chinese food or a cup of Ramen. In some ways, the whole "eating alone" phenomenon seems to make it a bigger deal than it needs to be — like you need to face the reality of a single existence and embrace it! Haven't people always cooked for themselves? Then too, it's not like most of us live in French villages or near great butchers: it can be hard to get just that one exquisite chicken breast or single fresh roll, not to mention pricey. I for one have never been so sensitive that it made me cry when I saw a recipe listing quantities for four — I can do basic division if needed and don't require my own, special recipes. Besides, when I cook four portions of a meal, it's not because I couldn't figure our how to make less or because I'm in denial and expect a bunch of phantom guests, but rather because if I'm going to the trouble, I want to get several days' worth of meals out of my work.

I guess in the old days, single working girls weren't thought to eat much — those retro Helen Gurley Brown types were probably thought to either smoke their meals or let a date pick up the tab, and in a lot of ways "cooking for one" seems to be code for "women" — single women who like and appreciate good food. Or, alternatively, older people who, I guess the thinking goes, can't figure out how to cook for less than a whole family. And that's nice, but I think we can handle it. And you know, those days I have a bowl of cold cereal for dinner, it's not out of some deep self-loathing or lack of self-esteem. I do it because I can, and it's easy, and it's a luxury you don't have when you're cooking for other people. Oh, and it's really easy to measure a single serving.

Cooking for One? That Means You Can Have Your Steak And Freeze It, Too. [Washington Post]

Earlier: Why Takeout Is Evil And Other Stuff To Feel Guilty About

“'More and more, people are looking at calories in, and calories out,'” one shrink tells The Times. Here in New York, we kind of have no choice but to look at them: chains have to post the calorie content of each item in plain sight. Last month, California became the first to require the calorie counts statewide, while variations on the mandate are sweeping the nation; two proposals currently before congress would make posting calorie content a nationwide law. At customers' request, Starbucks has added "nutritional guardrails" for each item. Coke and M&Ms will soon list calorie content on the wrappers.

"Public health officials acknowledge that people rarely change their eating habits overnight, and that there is a lot more to good nutrition than simply counting calories. Still, they are trying to make sure consumers stay calorie conscious. Just to hammer the point home, the New York City health department earlier this month put signs inside subway cars pointing out that most people need only about 2,000 calories a day."

Well, does it work? Hard to say. Apparently, the New Yorkers polled were surprised by the calorie content of their favorite treats, and obviously some elementary notion of nutrition is not a bad thing. Then too, apparently the practice has led some places, like Starbucks, to reduce their portion sizes — never a bad thing. Yes, people obviously need to lose weight; but even in this piece The Times refers to this drastic measure as a "Hail Mary" by desperate public health officials trying to halt the spread of diabetes and obesity. While I certainly believe hearts are firmly planted in the right place here, my concern is that such policies could do as much harm as good. The article quotes a young woman who works at Chipotle (which under NYC law discloses calories): "The customers talking calories, she said, are mostly women, and mostly slimmer older women. Men, especially the younger ones, just ask for everything, and often ask her to double the portions."

Look, I'm not surprised some people gravitate towards calorie-counting, and even that they've demanded places like Starbucks do the math for them. Formulas and numbers comfort people, but they are also an easy way to develop compulsive attitudes towards food. The times in my life when I counted calories were not my happiest, nor my healthiest: I may have eaten fewer calories, but I also smoked more and lost a lot of the pleasure in good food that I think keeps me healthy now. Anxiety and guilt are as likely to be the product of such paternalistic practices as are thoughtful choices. (I should say that my boyfriend, thin and cheap, was delighted to see how many calories a Dunkin' Donuts bagel and cream cheese had: "so much more energy for my money!")

You shouldn't be not eating Starbucks baked goods because they're calorie-laden; rather, you shouldn't do it because the banana bread has the texture of sawdust and the glazed donut tastes like Play-doh smells. I'm skeptical of the canonization of French women, but I do think this sort of nonsense would be greeted with heavy skepticism in any reasonable Parisian boulangerie, if only because it so officiously interferes with the sacrosanct pleasures of eating. In fact, lately I avoid these places not out of guilt but because the calorie count makes me anxious and I start to get that unhealthy twinge of "numbers over nutrition" thinking. There is a wonderful Iris Murdoch quote: "Every meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger." Amen.

Calories Do Count [New York Times]

While traditional gestures like serving ladies first, giving the guy the check and letting women have the banquette seat (courtly or paternalistic?) are far less prevalent than they were — to the confusion of servers everywhere — certain distinctions apparently still apply. Well, obviously: I mean, in an industry where success can hinge on the width of a napkin ring, no one's gonna blow off the divides in a customer base's priorities, expectations and tastes.“Women are looking for somewhere comfortable,” says Mario Batali. “Men are looking for somewhere to show off.”

Now that the old rules don't apply so much anymore — no smart restauranteur is going to assume a woman can't handle a wine list — and some of the gender gap has been closed by fads like the gender-neutral low-carb trend or equal-op annoying foodie-ism, the more fundamental divides between the eatin' sexes are apparently becoming manifest. Since we all love being told about ourselves by groups of strangers, here's the breakdown!

We sit in banquettes: Even though it's no longer the protocol — like any guys still know that rule, anyway — apparently women gravitate towards the seats that give the best view of the room/potential assassins.
We Need Warm Rooms: We apparently "tend to dress with more skin showing" so the thermostat's got to be up.
We Like Healthy Food: "Women more often ask if a menu has leaner, healthier options. Men more often ask if they can get a decent steak."
We Don't Like Crappy Places: "A woman is more likely to take offense if the restrooms are cramped, ugly and messy. "
We Do Like Awesome Places: "She’s also more likely to appreciate color and playfulness in a restaurant’s design, while there’s more risk that a man will be cool to that." Apparently this one mint-green restaurant with a seafood-heavy menu was attracting such a disproportionately female crowd that the owner redid it to make it more gender neutral. “There’s more meat now — a Niman Ranch pork chop, veal breast, a lamb T-bone,” and it's been repainted cream.
We Like Meat But We Like To Be Tricked Into It: "Stephen Starr, who owns Buddakan and Morimoto, said that women more often hesitate if the name or look of a dish is too blunt a reminder that they’re biting into an animal. 'If it’s something that says chorizo with some sort of egg, they’ll eat it,” Mr. Starr said. “If it’s a suckling pig, they’re not going near it.'" (Not true. Suckling pig delicious.)
We Don't Actually Tip Less, But Parties Of Women Still Suck for Waiters: Although the pernicious fiction that women are bad tippers is apparently a myth, we do tend to order less and hold tables hostage four hours so a server can't turn it over.
We're Less Insecure: "A man is more likely to care about being greeted rapturously and treated like an insider," whereas we apparently just want to eat fish and "eggs" in stifling hot mint green rooms, for hours, while seated in a banquette.

Old Gender Roles With Your Dinner? [New York Times]

Johnson notes that historians interested in genetics believe that the roughly simultaneous emergence of urban living and the manufacturing of alcohol set the stage for a survival-of-the-fittest sorting-out among the people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and, literally and figuratively speaking, went to town.

To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had — what Johnson describes as the body's ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases. This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone. Those who lacked this trait could not, as the saying is, "hold their liquor." So, many died early and childless, either of alcohol's toxicity or from waterborne diseases.

The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors — by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. "Most of the world's population today," Johnson writes, "is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol."

Yeah, this doesn't really explain that super-species of excessively-cerebral alcohol-allergic people you encountered in college who are now entirely too accomplished to hang out with you, but, you know, fuck 'em, right?

Earlier: Who's Sabotaging Your Relationships? It Could Be Darwin, But You're Probably Too Distracted To Care

Remember that eating disorders are inherently an existential struggle over the very notion of free will.
You can worsen them, and you can encourage them, but you cannot singlehandedly instill them in your kids, nor can you prevent them. The coolest thing about my mom is that she kind of got this. Her reaction to my adolescent 800-calorie-a-day diet was one of concern but also, exasperation; she had specifically taken such great care to rear me on healthy food and ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION OF MY WEIGHT; I was not even at all overweight, and now, as my big display of free will and rebellion I'd chosen anorexia? She made it clear she thought it was fundamentally shallow, and intellectually, I agreed, but by that point I had almost given up on free will when it came to eating; food issues were just my DESTINY, my curse and fate and blah blah blah. Anyway, that was probably mostly depression. I didn't medicate it, but eventually I suppose it subsided, and my intellect took the wheel again, which was lucky.

With that in mind, ask yourself, are you shallow?
What do you most want for your kid? Happiness and some sort of fulfillment, right? People of all sizes achieve that! The negative correlation between happiness and excess pounds, such that it exists, is totally all in your head, as the field of duh studies has recently confirmed. So if your kids think they're fat, you need to chew on this question: does that have anything to do with you? (Chewing on said question, btw, is a good way to stop yourself from nagging your poor kid!) Like I said, are you shallow? If so, is that the trait you'd most like to pass onto our progeny? (Please, for the good of the country, answer "No.") Conversely, are you so dogmatically un-shallow that they think you just don't have any idea what sort of world world they're living in? That was sort of my problem. In the end it was a good one to have. It was like, hey, the one genetic advantage I have here is that my parents are bright people with strong moral values who don't give a shit how fat I get, except inasmuch as they know I don't exactly have health insurance.

Be honest and remember it's not a big deal.
Acting like a kid's chubbing out is a grave issue that must be discussed in hushed tones is probably not the best idea, especially if they have the sort of grandfather (mine) who will go up to them and play the "Pinch an inch" game. While the Pinch an Inch game is annoying, I never really doubted that my grandfather loved me. I think he just thought kids today spent too much time watching the idiot box and not enough playing elaborate war games in the woods. And he had a point! I asked my friend Don, a former fat kid, whether his mom (a personal idol of mine) had ever said anything to him about his weight, and he recalled a time one summer at the age of 13 when he was eating a piece of pizza while wearing a swimsuit and somehow the topic of his blubber came up. Laughing, she agreed, "Yeah, you really have to do something about that." A few years later, when he stopped eating meat, she worried she'd scarred him; but seriously, Don was picked on his entire childhood for being a fat kid, and she basically played it perfectly, choosing to encourage his positive traits (such as he is fucking hilarious) and accept that he was never going to be as physically attractive as she is. (She is, to be fair here, really pretty.)

Don recommends this movie.
It is, he says, his "Exile in Guyville."

Earlier: Sometimes A Parent's Words Can Bear The Weight Of The World

Image via Skip To My Lou

Deny.
So it doesn't take Frederic Jameson to recognize in John Prescott some maaaayjor class issues. He talks on and on about his problems with "grammar" which the writer suggests he is actually mistaking for "syntax." The son of a Welsh railway worker and child of divorce, the "defining experience in his life" was failing a test sixty years ago and he only got to Oxford through some deal set up with his union. "I didn't feel adequate. I felt inferior and guilty, and I've always had a chip on my shoulder," he admits to the writer, who helpfully calls him "conspicuously working class." But did any of this secret shame/unease within his context/impostor complex play into his compulsion to consume barbaric amounts of Peking Duck and Digestives cookies only to — essentially the dietary equivalent of cheating on a test — puke them all into a Parliament latrine later on? Nah. Says Prescott of his first visit to the eating disorder clinic:

They ask you about your parents. I wasn't too convinced about all that, and walking into a room full of women was a bit embarrassing, but I did it.

A better idea: maybe get more sleep..
This is a good if obvious point. People always eat more when they're tired because the extra energy/indigestion keeps them awake. But when it's time to sleep, the indigestion is less helpful:

I get so tired. The only thing that stops me working is eating. Remember my box [his red ministerial box] comes at 11 at night, and I'm up at seven. I work my box [until] one o'clock. If you want to relax, you eat. Then you begin to find you've eaten too much and actually get a relief from expelling it, and then you're into that.

Focus bile on the haters. (Who are probably just as fat as you.)
Prescott points out that a lot of the shame of admitting one has an eating disorder is the fact that a lot of eating disorders, for all the psychic havoc they wreak, do not have the desired effect of making you thin, rendering the act of keeping them up absurd. But like, yeah, motherfucker, of course eating disorders are absurd; that's why he wrote the book!

They say I'd failed because I was still fat. Notice how fat they are, the ones who are writing it. You can gain weight. The mistake to make is you assume you expel the food immediately. You don't. You wait. If you look at the letters that have arrived, you're staggered: 'I'm so glad that you've said it. My daughter, who's 19, she's been doing that and now she's come to me and said: if John Prescott did it, it's not so abnormal is it?"

And forgoing even well whiskey for a grain alcohol daiquiri squeezed out at one of those drive-thrus in New Orleans is tragic. A lot of drunk driving accidents happen on account of those daiquiri joints, babe; it's the Louisiana liquor lobby keeping them there, the same ones who've kept them from raising the liquor tax since 1948, which is why the whole state is one big sobriety check. Modern life can be a needlessly overwrought con that way, which brings me back to calorie-free sweeteners.

I used to rip Equal packets into cappuccino foam, and watery oatmeal, sometimes even toast (though Splenda, incidentally, is better on toast.) I had a sweet tooth, I listened to St. Etienne and Stereolab and shit; I fell in love and marveled that my mother reserved her sweetness intake to a Starlight mint after work and a half-teaspoon Sugar In The Raw; in one office, they kept unlimited Diet Coke and I would throw my cans in other people's cubicles to hide my shameful excess, blah blah blah blah. Anyway, at some point I stopped caring about sweets, I think when I realized my mom had about the happiest life possible. (Not especially.)

"After the sugar high," you write, "there is the sharpened sense of everything that is not sweet. After the saccharin, there is a sense of shame at our consumption. These moments of guilty aftermath aren’t more valuable than the moments of indulgence that precede them, it is simply that the tension of this sequence can bring us into contact with the full range of ourselves, as carriers of sentiments both heartfelt and cerebral."

But hold up, sweetie, is that what the comedown from a sugar high is like? We're not fucking talking about Ecstasy here. I haven't had one for awhile, but I recall that the comedown from a sugar high feels like run-of-the-mill lethargy, and I have a feeling you're deliberately misappropriating metaphors here because what's going on can be summed up as
1. An eating disorder and:
2. Unrequited love maybe? Unrequited worship? Do you desire someone older and more knowledgeable than you, or maybe just with better CDs? I know, it's a cliche, like creation itself! (Oooh, Equal on apples: discuss.)

Fear of sugar/sentiment/cliche has crippled your art, you claim, and you cite one of your early characters, Sophie, as an innocent victim of your fears. Of Sophie, a fellow writer offered:

“I know someone’s going to want to kick me in the balls for saying this, but there are times when it seems like the author is just lining up Sophie’s misfortunes: She has a facial deformity that has crippled her self-esteem, she is sexually assaulted, guys don’t like her, she may have an eating disorder, and she’s a transfer student. Does anything ever go right for Sophie?” It was a fair point. Sophie hated herself because I hated her too, and hated myself for making her hate herself so much.

So here's another fair point: depending on the deformity, those are some pretty First World problems, and hating yourself for being too young to dwell on any other sort of problem is extra-First World, but eventually the self-hate will subside, resignation will set in, and coffee will taste better black. And the prospect that he may love you back will be just as awesome, though it may lack the same sweetness, since there's no manufactured shame from which you'll be delivered.

In Defense Of Saccharin

HOT TO TROT: Can pasty, less-than-svelte legs be buffed, sloughed and depuffed into picture-perfect condition in a mere 24 hours?

Um, I'm thinking your legs have to be a slightly less-than-less-than-svelte brand of pasty than mine, but seriously, what kind of challenge is this even? If you don't have time to give a shit about your legs, don't you just wear pants? And where would you suddenly find the time, money and uh, motivation to buy six kinds of anti-cellulite cream, wrap yourself in Saran Wrap overnight, consult numerous professional bloat-removers and perform thousands of squats and lunges? Well duh, you wouldn't. And that is the point. You are not that ridiculous. Look! Elle just made you feel good about yourself!

It's also a mind-blowing experience: I'm full and completely satisfied after three mindful bites.

Putting An End To Mindless Munching [WSJ]