Sprite (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spritechan) wrote2011-02-04 04:12 am
spritechan) wrote2011-02-04 04:12 am
Food-themed post! And some other stuff.
That's turkey (with cheese because we had an odd number of slices so I used 1/4 to 1/3 of a slice), hardboiled egg (with the yolks, though not for long!), grape tomatoes, peppers and onion, sushi rice, and OH MY GOD SALMON (asian sesame salmon, to be precise).
Ignore the chunk taken out of the salmon, I was picking at it when I finished cooking it to see if I'd combust when I consumed it. I miraculously did not.
I don't know why I'm so terrified of fish. Maybe because of the smell, and maybe because I had a horrible-tasting piece of swordfish once, and mostly because I psych myself out. I've eaten several kinds of fish, most of which I can't name because I was in another country (Spain or Mexico) and there were varieties of fish before me. I eat tuna almost regularly (not albacore). I got it into my head one time I might be allergic to fish because I have such a strong reaction to the smell, but I know that's not true. Steve LOVES salmon and I want to start getting into sushi and trying/liking more fish.
My verdict on the salmon: ...I don't know. I don't hate it. I don't think I even don't like it. It's just... weird. That's really all I can say to describe it. It tastes kinda... smoky, and... ugh! No words! I am so unfamiliar with seafood and my mind is screaming that I shouldn't like it with every bite. I gotta get over this! But as far as I'm concerned, it was made perfectly. Flaky, not too stinky. The part that actually caught me off-guard when cooking it was the fact that it was still attached to scales! O_O It was like a DRAGON!
In other, sane news, Joe Waid's birthday is tomorrow so we're throwing him his birthday fun at midnight. Because Pat works days now, Steve and I work nights, Nick works evenings, Nikki has a life at his college, and Faith goes to school a couple hours away, and Joe Waid works weekends, it's been hard trying to plan it! I think Steve and Pat have most of the kinks worked out for what we're going to have him do (in my friends group it's usually a "work for your presents through challenges or scavenger hunts" type deal), and I came up with the cake idea (and Pat said he's on board as long as he gets to get all cranky and bossy and likely take the whole thing over in order to make it perfect). I finished his
yesterday, though I have one major mistake I need to fix. It's an easy fix; I was just being careless in the duplicate stitching. The symbol especially looks good in person and I'm proud of that chart ^_^ Joe Waid's a really hard person to shop for, and Pat's already said how jealous he is that Joe Waid gets a scarf and that it's obviously going to be the best gift :P What I felt like was a near cop-out is apparently quite popular.I got to chat with my sister for awhile yesterday, and that was fun. It served to remind me I need to find weekend time to visit her. Whenever I bring it up, she always tells me when the next time she's bringing Cayden over to our parents' house, which I find odd. I don't need to go home to see my nephew, and I almost prefer our quiet time to big family hullabaloo. Anyway, she just wanted to vent while she smoked (she's like me and gets bored when doing menial things and likes to make phone calls) about how she feels like she's not getting any support for getting an apartment and applying to school and getting her GED and working full-time, and in fact said that our parents discouraged her from going to school right now. Bethany says it's the perfect time to go to school because Tony can afford to not work (vs paying more for a daycare that money Tony made from a job wouldn't be worth), and she can support the three of them on her job at Mystic Lake Casino. She obviously doesn't want to be a server forever, so she wants to at least get an Associate's. It's always so hilarious to me when she talks about Paul's "mental issues", or as I call them, "a failure to realize that the parent-child roles change when the kids are adults, living on their own, and having children."
We also talked a bit about death and I gave her the rundown on Pam's dad's funeral. She brought up Paul's dad again, because she recently found out he'd been given 6 months to live - 6 months ago. And he quit chemo (I don't blame him). He has lung cancer; I'm pretty sure he knows what that means for him no matter what he does. So now Bethany is kinda expecting to hear every day that he's died, because of the length of time he was given (the same sentence was given to Bre's grandma, who lived like 4 more years, but she had liver cancer and therefore could do surgeries and she smoked weed ["just a couple puffs"] to keep her appetite up and her pain down). When Bethany and I were listing in what order we thought we'd lose our like 50 grandparents (okay, like 8), Ron hadn't been high on the list. It's just weird. He's only 65.
This THEN led to her talking about her opinions on food consumption after re-watching "Food Matters" (it's instant on Netflix, btw) and how she really believes food does affect your body and cause cancer and that you SHOULD eat healthy and mostly raw, etc. She commented on her recent gallbladder issues - they offered to take her gallbladder out because it's coated in sludge right now, assumed to be from energy drinks. She said no, and told me that, "It's my fault it is this way. Removing it would be the easy way out so I should try to fix it on my own first!" And then she said, "And of course after I watch it then I go through BK drive-thru but whatever!" XD I actually think half of it is her fear of pain and doctors and needles.
But anyway, she said she can't talk to anyone about her food opinions because they don't agree with her. What she means to say is they're ignorant, or don't care. Our parents tout healthiness, but I'm not sure how much they follow these days. They're incredibly elitist about food that anyone else consumes, though. Steve made fun of me hardcore the other day for throwing a miniature fit when the store didn't have the yogurt I wanted. All the brands that were there had sugar added or were made from just milk (no live cultures)! No! But he's so right, I DID sound like my parents. It was really funny. And I don't even care!
It's interesting this comes up for her right when I'm about to start seriously trying to lead a good healthy life, without being limiting or dieting. I'm already about halfway there, with the high fruit and veggie consumption, low meat intake, attempts to balance protein and fat, but I need more.
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I think the scarf is groovy! =D Handmade things are fun. But, I know how you feel about a "cop out" kind of gift. I feel that way every time I give away something that I've made. Like....man. This is so not that exciting. Sigh.
I saw Food Matters, and Food, Inc. But, more importantly, my more recent attempt to convert to an increasingly Raw Food diet comes from an ever stronger realization that so much of what we're told about good food, healthy food, etc is primarily manipulated data for the purpose of selling a product. Even something like yogurt, which really is one of those things that you shouldn't be eating, mostly because it's not something your body needs, is misunderstood (98% of all the yogurt found in the grocery store isn't the yogurt they talk about when they show those studies about how yogurt helps all sorts of things). I think it's very important to learn more about how and why we need to eat certain foods, and to examine more closely where many of our beliefs about food come from. Even our understand of health, and what we need for our body to function is often very skewed information--such as all the "fats" and "carbohydrates" and "sugar" and "fiber" and so on. Some of it is labeling, but much of it is a failure to educate people properly in school about actual nutrition, so that most of our sources are from advertisments.
Don't forget, there are differences in "protein" that are significant as well. Nut protein, plant protein, and animal proteins are all different. Vegetable proteins are by far the best type of proteins for your body. This really is something to look into, and understand, especially when weighing the cost/benefit of something like eating a "bread" made out of blended and dehydrated nuts and seeds, with a burger made of uncooked vegetables (no legumes though), in terms not only of calories and protein, but of "fat." There's a reason why people who eat a raw food diet have much healthier body fat ratios than anyone who follows standard American "healthy" eating practices (like eating "whole grains" and yogurt, and "lean meats" with lots of cooked vegetables).
But, I wish you luck on getting closer to a healthy lifestyle, and a healthy relationship to food. =D I think that more important than just realizing that certain foods are not really healthy for your body, is being able to say something like, "Afterwards, I went and ate a Burger King, because I felt like eating a hamburger and french fries," without guilt.
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We get so much information from a nearly unlimited number of sources, all coming from differing viewpoints, about what we're "supposed" to eat. I try not to follow any one opinion because I think that it's always a work in process, and one person can tell me eating nuts in place of meat is great for you, while another will tell me that you're still not getting all the necessary nutrients for a healthy body. It's complicated, and I think that's okay because I'm not aiming to be perfect anyway. Just healthy.
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So, yes, we do get a lot of information from a lot of sources. In my opinion, it makes it more difficult to decide what to follow...but, that it's a lot like a religious choice. You may need to look and shop around the different philosophies, but eventually it comes down to finding a belief that best follows what you believe even without being told. For some people, that means finding something that doesn't involve cooking most of their food, for others a system that eliminates the need for meat, and for still others a system that incorporates grains and dairy in "healthy" versions without completely eliminating them.
But, just like with religion, it is a lot easier to go with a belief in full, rather than trying to sample from too many. However, I think that many of the more current beliefs about food have come from people trying to reconcile their different needs or wants to a set belief system about food, and researching food in a deeper way to find out what bothers them about the already pre-established views. So, I think it's perfectly okay if you're trying to find a place of balance for your own beliefs, as long as what you're eating is making you feel good, and guilt-free. =)
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I never bothered caring about ACTUAL nutrition as a child, because I didn't need to. I was comfortable with myself. Some of the things you said I can see - milk ads in school + the lunch ladies requiring you to get milk with your food, but I didn't drink it. I gave it to a friend. Actually, the only real pressure I remember receiving was because I wanted to be like Amy and she skipped breakfast and lunch a lot. So I did that sometimes. But started in 7th grade we could buy a la cart, so it was a lot of pretzels with cheese, slushies, and warm cookies! :P In high school, it was a lot of getting pizza from the pizza line vs the actual school lunch. And MOAR WARM COOKIES.
I didn't start caring about what I ate until I was 17 (almost 18 - because I never worried about my weight or health, probably why I have high cholesterol) and took that class in college. I took the food groups/health class with a HUGE grain of salt, because I just didn't feel like it applied to me. It was repeated so many times but not followed by anyone I knew (such as the food guide pyramid), so of course it wasn't important to me, either. And my parents weren't health-conscious until after I was an adult *shrug*
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But, milk was ever present in our home, as was bread. These are the kinds of things that we take for granted as "staples" without thinking why it is that we have them in the house.
Yeah, it is odd how few people actually followed the food pyramid to any extent. I remember when I first raised the question of, "How am I supposed to even eat that many servings of grains in a day AND all the other things? I'm a fairly small girl, and even if I only eat the lower end of the numbers, I'll be way too full at basically every meal." My teacher, if I remember correctly, did a strange dance around actually answering my question, and ended up talking about something like understanding serving size to calculate calories on a label.
But the real point is, of course, to become aware of how deeply ingrained the values of advertisements have become to our daily perception of edible food within a household. After all, as you're no doubt becoming aware through your own experiences with things like bento, there are other cultures that embrace entirely different priorities and staples for food, and do not have the same principles guiding their food preparation whatsoever. (For instance, the importance of butter and herbs in French cooking versus the importance of soy sauce/shoyu, sald, sugar, and mirin/sake in Japanese cooking//the emphasis on meat in Scottish breakfasts versus the chutneys and stuffed breads in Indian/Hindu breakfasts).
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-Don't eat too many eggs (though only was ever said to my brother, who wanted to eat ALL his easter eggs in one sitting)
-Dessert isn't necessary (but I never felt pressure to skip dessert if it was free)
-Take what you can eat/eat only until you're full
ETA:-Soda is unnecessary. THIS is the only major thing I can think of. My parents rarely bought us pop, unless it was like a 20oz "treat" or for parties/birthdays. My bio dad ALWAYS had coke and Bethany and I often found ways to buy our own, but my mom never supplied it for us.
...I really am having a difficult time with this. I didn't spend my life being scolded by my parents or having them tell me all these beliefs about food. The only thing I can think of that was beaten into me was to not get more food than you can eat. And everywhere else just sorta was heard by me but not absorbed in a way where I felt guilty about the way I lived my life.
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1. Dessert is not necessary. (For most of my life, we didn't have any dessert within the house--only after Scott, who wanted it almost all the time, did we have it on a regular basis. I'm not still not accustomed to eating dessert because of this.)
2. Eat until you're full/don't worry about finishing the plate of food. (My mom NEVER encouraged "finish your plate" mentality. In fact, she discouraged it fairly often, especially in a restaurant. She also was a big fan of "your eyes are bigger than your stomach" (which confused the hell out of my child literal brain XD), which were were meant to understand that we may think we want four pieces of chicken, but we're only capable of eating one, and so on.)
3. Soda is not allowed at any meal. We were only allowed water at dinner, and orange juice/tea/coffee at breakfast. Lunch was usually more water, or tea/coffee. We also didn't start stocking soda regularly until Scott, who HAS to have his Diet Coke.
Yet, even though there are only three rules, I can tell you that we never absorbed the idea that potatoes are good for us, because my mom almost never had them in the house, let alone served them. My mom didn't believe in over cooking vegetables, and didn't like to serve a grain as a primary fixture of a meal (such as pasta, or rice, or bread). We very, very rarely went out to eat, and while salt and pepper were made available at the table, we never saw our mom add salt to her food, so we didn't learn to add salt to our food (and especially not in large quantities). As I said before, we didn't learn to snack because my mom didn't buy snacks. We weren't wealthy enough to buy a lot of things when I was much younger, so a lot of the things most kids thought of as normal fare, like Lunchables and Capri Suns, were not present in my childhood. I didn't see ads about these things, but I DID see my peers--I was envious up until the point when I ate my first Lunchable, and realized that it was totally crap food. XD
You have to also think more about the way that food was presented, and how it was served, and what it was. Such as--were you taught that food should be all on one plate, or separate plates, or bowls? Was everyone allowed to serve themselves, or was food served mostly by one person (like mom or dad) and going for "seconds" was discouraged/encouraged? What was usually the primary focus of a meal--pasta, rice, vegetables, fruit, meat? (For instance, in Brian's household, his parents like fruit with dinner, so the "vegetable" place of a standard American meal is often either all fruit, or half fruit, half veggie.) Was canned, or premade, or food-from-a-package part of a regular meal, or was the focus on fresh, made from "scratch," or made that day meals as the norm? Even more importantly than the general rules of the household, these are the governing principles that shape what you eat, how you eat it, and how you feel about eating it. And most of them have been shaped by decades of advertising about The American Meal (especially things like the controversy about eggs, margrine vs butter, whole grain/wheat/white bread, etc).
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And the scarf is so cute :)