Food-themed post! And some other stuff.

[spritechan]

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.

Comments

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

I can definitely see where you're coming from, but I honestly don't remember my parents saying anything about my nutrition besides "Don't eat too much candy." Especially when we were tight for cash, we ate a lot of things like raviolis and Campbell's soups and whatnot. My parents never forced things like milk or specific fruits/veggies on me, and never really supported milk. It was always present for cereal (2%), and then when my brother was a baby (whole), but otherwise not. The Got Milk ads always disgusted me, because the thought of drinking milk straight has always been repulsive. Maybe because we aren't really a picky family (the children)? If we didn't like something, we didn't have to eat it or could find an alternative - Bethany made a lot of her own "meals" and August gags if he tries something he doesn't like but is otherwise fine.

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*

[silver-tiamat.livejournal.com]

Even just the act of always having milk around, or presenting cereal as a viable option for food, is part of the same advertising mentality that I mean. It doesn't seem like it's there, especially since it was never overt, but because we've been told for a long time through ads that cereal with milk (or oats with milk, or creamed wheat with milk) is "breakfast" food, we accept it as the natural order of things. My family never learned how to drink milk straight either--I also was repulsed by the idea of drinking milk on it's own (my mom NEVER did the milk+cookies thing--we had TEA and cookies XD).

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).