Pre-Victorian England had some pretty gigantic flaws when it came to the way women were treated and used, but there was one aspect of raising women (and, to an extent, men) in that era which seems to have fallen by the wayside to our general detriment - the idea that being accomplished is an attractive trait and should be cultivated; in fact I think it needs to be brought back bigger, better, and for both sexes.
Everyone should be accomplished. Everyone should have at least a skill or two (or many, many more) that they can look at and say "I am good at doing this, and being able to do this increases my sense of self-worth as well as my value to others."
I have rarely made any New Year's Resolutions that have proved to have any value. A few years ago I resolved to not buy anything that was not strictly necessary - the resolution lasted for six months, saved me a great deal of money, and helped to establish a sense of frugality in me; thus far it has been my best resolution. Last year I made four resolutions: to be able to do hand-stand pushups, to publish an article on Cracked.Com, to improve my command of German and French, and to walk the distance from Hobbiton to Isengard (1664) miles by the end of the year. Well, my doctors have told me that because of my poor damaged back I should never do hand-stands (and rarely do push-ups), I have started this blog instead of trying to publish on Cracked, my German is much better (when reading) and my French is slightly improved, and I've walked 513 miles in 2013. While I have not done everything that I wanted to, I have made steps in the right direction and continue to strive for improvement and, I think, continue to improve.
I don't actually like New Year's Resolutions - it's a system that is set up for failure. People either think "oh, I messed up on the second day, I might as well quit now" or "I have a whole year, there's no need for me to get started yet" when it comes to meeting their goals. It is because of this that I propose accomplishment as a goal: determine to improve the accomplishments you already have and to introduce yourself to at least one new skill or idea each year and decide whether or not you'd be interested in mastering it.
There are a few things I'm working on now - I'd like to be a better poet, better writer, better artist, better photographer, better dancer, better musician, more efficient employee, improve my financial habits, improve my health, and explore new things. None of these are binary resolutions, and none of them are mutually exclusive. I can do all of these things at once, focus on them for a week at a time each, or ignore some for now and focus on the things that need the most work. Best of all, there's no failure - if I work at all, even only for one day this year, to get better at dancing then I will be better at dancing than I was before.
So that's my proposal for mating Accomplishment with Resolution: determine what you like about yourself and do more of it, determine what you don't like about yourself and to less of it, and overall attempt to make yourself into your own vision of an ideal human.
Don't go with the "lose weight," "go to the gym," "eat a salad for lunch," resolutions - those are cheap and stupid and likely to fail. Instead resolve to be a better version of yourself and work on the things that you enjoy in order to make it happen.
A final note on accomplishment - one of my favorite Heinlein quotes is as follows: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,
die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
There is no expiration date on self improvement. You can always learn to do something, and what you do know how to do you can always learn to do better.
So happy New Year, go forth and kick ass.
Cheers,
- Alli
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Saturday, December 28, 2013
A Pocket Manifesto
I was going to promise not to rant but then I realized that I feel pretty strongly about this incredibly minor (to most people, seriously suggestive of overarching cultural problems to me) issue. Here's the deal: sexism is still a thing. Sure, almost any woman in most developed nations can hold almost any kind of job, and yes, there are repercussions for overt sexism, but women the world over (and anyone who doesn't exclusively conform to the gender binary) still have to cope with sexism on a daily basis.
What I want to discuss in this post is implicit sexism - not something that comes from an individual standing up and saying "you don't get X because you are a woman" or "women don't deserve Y" or "get back in the kitchen" (which some normal, otherwise intelligent people STILL don't view as sexism), just something that hovers almost below your consciousness. Something that makes up the background radiation.
I have a problem with pockets. Specifically the lack of reasonably useful pockets on women's clothing; none of my dresses and only one of my skirts have pockets, none of my shirts have pockets, and all of my pants have pockets but none of those pockets are big enough to even fit my cell phone. There is a dearth of functional pockets in women's clothing and while my own small selection of clothes is only anecdotal evidence, if you ask most of the women in your life I think you'll find that they seem to be missing pockets too.
I've been a bit of a grind about this subject for about a month now. I'm starting to get eye-rolls from some of the people in my life when the subject of pockets comes up. The most common response I get it that "no one is stopping you from buying clothes with pockets," which is something that I've also seen in response to other women who have written about this pocket problem. That is just not true - there is an entire industry (fashion) and a standard business dress code that is keeping me from buying clothes with pockets.
If I wear men's pants they fit at my hips but not at my waist and there is a painful wad of excess fabric between my legs; if I wear men's shirts I either end up with too much fabric around the waist that gets in the way or no room for my breasts; and if I wear men's clothing at all to work I am in violation dress code - what looks neat and professional on my male coworkers looks sloppy and wrong on me because it doesn't fit my body shape. If I try to find women's clothing with a similar number of useable pockets as men's clothing has I get nothing, clothing for children, or winter-wear as my only options. My problem here is not with the concept of gendered clothing but rather with the concept of over-gendered clothing, the idea that clothing for women not only has to be cut to fit women, but must also be identifiably female and meant to showcase the female body with no functionality to distract from the display.
Let me back up a bit. The thing that first REALLY brought the issue of pockets to my attention was a dog jacket. The two that I found were identically sized and constructed, obviously the boy/girl versions of the same jacket, except that one was pink and purple with a floral pattern and the other was gray and green with a pattern of stars and bones. The latter had a pocket. I stood in the aisle and fumed for a second, then took a minute to make sure that I wasn't being completely (only partially) crazy. The same manufacturer had gendered versions (but no neutral versions) of every jacket and sweater on the rack. I wasn't seeing the male gendered jacket and ignoring an out of stock female gendered jacket. The boy jacket and girl jacket were identical except for the color and the inclusion of a pocket on the male version of the clothing. For dogs.
Dogs don't need pockets. They don't have thumbs, they don't carry keys, they don't need someplace to stash a cell phone.
Humans, however, DO need pockets. And the fact that I was able to find a jacket made for male dogs that had a functional pocket when I am unable to find a cardigan for female humans with a pocket literally felt dehumanizing, and THIS is where I have a problem with the concept of over-gendering clothing.
Women's clothes are missing pockets and I wanted to find out why. There are a variety of explanation (women are silly and carry a huge amount of frivolous junk, men wanted to increase women's dependence, female privacy wasn't valued or was considered dangerous in the good old pre-Victorian days), but the modern rationale on minimal pockets comes down to one insulting excuse: to include pockets in women's clothing would ruin the line or the hang of the garment.
Here are the two major issues that I have with that STUPID FUCKING ARGUMENT that I've heard so much of in the last few weeks:
The first problem is that just because I was born a woman, with breasts and hips that do not fit in men's clothing, does not mean that I am an object on display to be looked at. The lines of a sculpture can be ruined, the lines of a painting can be ruined, the lines of a photograph can be ruined; these things are art, and while they may be nice, they are not functional. You never hear anyone bitching about the ruined lines in shipping containers or 747s or forks or pencils or fucking dog jackets because they aren't meant to be pretty, they're meant to be functional; clearly, if the lines of a garment are what we're worried about, we're worried about how that garment makes the person wearing it look. Christian Dior (one of the men responsible for reshaping women's fashions in the latter half of the twentieth century) once said "Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration," which sounds an awful lot like "men are meant to work hard, women are meant to look good."
The second problem that I have with this argument is that it operates under the assumption that men are clever enough not to overfill their pockets but women aren't. This belief is fairly pervasive and is built on what seems to be deliberate misunderstanding of pocket distribution and more unfortunate side-effects of fashion (and occasionally biology). Men don't tend to overfill their pockets because they HAVE pockets - a pair of men's jeans always has a minimum of four and sometimes as many as eight distinct pockets, most of which are large enough to contain an adult human hand. Women's jeans sometimes have as many as five pockets, and usually no fewer than three, but rarely are these pockets large enough to securely hold a small cell phone. A men's blazer or coat always has at least two large pockets, and sometimes as many as four. A women's blazer frequently has no pockets, and I've never found one that has more than two. This is all the more frustrating because men have less to carry day-to-day than women do. Men, at a minimum, are expected to carry their wallet, cell phone, and keys. Women carry their wallets (which are almost all significantly larger than men's wallets), cell phones, and keys but may also have to carry tampons or pads, birth control pills, and many also carry makeup (which in some cases they have to, at least if they want to be considered competent). Even if you strip away the tampons, birth control, and makeup and give a woman a man's wallet, you still have the same baseline level of stuff with significantly less pocket space.
In fact, here are a few quick comparisons using my clothing and my husband's clothing along with a very typical women's wallet:
1st row: Women's slacks rear pocket versus men's slacks rear pocket (front pockets not featured
because the women's slacks had no front pockets).
2nd row: Women's fleece front pocket versus men's fleece front pocket (photo in the men's pocket
features wallet outside of the pocket because it was completely hidden by the pocket).
3rd row: Women's jeans rear pocket versus men's jeans rear pocket.
4th row: Women's jeans front pocket versus men's jeans front pocket (photo in the men's pocket
features wallet outside of the pocket because it was completely hidden by the pocket).
5th row: Women's coat pocket versus men's coat pocket.
And just for shits and giggles, here's a comparison between the women's wallet that I used to carry and the men's wallet that I now carry (and have gotten a few derisive "butch" comments about):
So now we have a real-world, visual demonstration that women are expected to carry more (or at least larger) stuff in less space - unless they use a purse.
That is, of course, the other argument as to why women don't need pockets; they carry purses, so why should they have lots of bulky pockets cluttering up the lovely lines of their clothes?
Well, other than that purses are easily stolen and lost, prevent you from having your hands free when walking, make it easy to lose and hard to find small items, take up space, are expensive, can be trip hazards, and can actually injure their owners, I guess that purses are perfect and should be carried by everyone.
And that's why I really started paying attention to pockets - my doctor told me that carrying a purse was contributing to the back pain I've been living with for three years now, and that I shouldn't carry a purse at all if I could help it.
So what can you do if you want to get by without a purse? Men's clothing is only an option so much of the time, and women's clothing is woefully underpocketed - what are your options?
Well, the first thing to do is to get angry, and the second thing to do is take action. I've decided that pockets are my New Year's resolution. I'm refusing to buy women's clothing that doesn't have a comparable number of pockets to similar men's clothing, and I'm refusing to buy or carry purses. In the US it's hard to underestimate the power of the consumer - if enough women are willing to pay for pockets and are willing to punish the manufactures who exclude pockets from their designs by not giving them your hard-earned money, eventually we can make a change.
If you'd like more pockets in your wardrobe, Scottvest is a clothier that sells wonderfully pocketed clothes for women and men proving that pockets don't have to "ruin the line" of a garment. If you'd like to make a change in fashion, stop paying money to retailers who reinforce gender stereotypes and start paying only for what you want.
(*As hard as it is to find women's clothing that isn't made exclusively to objectify women, it's a million times harder to find clothing that steps outside the gender binary - support Trans* Positive retailers and support gender diversity wherever you find it.*)
Cheers,
- Alli
What I want to discuss in this post is implicit sexism - not something that comes from an individual standing up and saying "you don't get X because you are a woman" or "women don't deserve Y" or "get back in the kitchen" (which some normal, otherwise intelligent people STILL don't view as sexism), just something that hovers almost below your consciousness. Something that makes up the background radiation.
By the talented David Willis from his comic Shortpacked.
I have a problem with pockets. Specifically the lack of reasonably useful pockets on women's clothing; none of my dresses and only one of my skirts have pockets, none of my shirts have pockets, and all of my pants have pockets but none of those pockets are big enough to even fit my cell phone. There is a dearth of functional pockets in women's clothing and while my own small selection of clothes is only anecdotal evidence, if you ask most of the women in your life I think you'll find that they seem to be missing pockets too.
I've been a bit of a grind about this subject for about a month now. I'm starting to get eye-rolls from some of the people in my life when the subject of pockets comes up. The most common response I get it that "no one is stopping you from buying clothes with pockets," which is something that I've also seen in response to other women who have written about this pocket problem. That is just not true - there is an entire industry (fashion) and a standard business dress code that is keeping me from buying clothes with pockets.
If I wear men's pants they fit at my hips but not at my waist and there is a painful wad of excess fabric between my legs; if I wear men's shirts I either end up with too much fabric around the waist that gets in the way or no room for my breasts; and if I wear men's clothing at all to work I am in violation dress code - what looks neat and professional on my male coworkers looks sloppy and wrong on me because it doesn't fit my body shape. If I try to find women's clothing with a similar number of useable pockets as men's clothing has I get nothing, clothing for children, or winter-wear as my only options. My problem here is not with the concept of gendered clothing but rather with the concept of over-gendered clothing, the idea that clothing for women not only has to be cut to fit women, but must also be identifiably female and meant to showcase the female body with no functionality to distract from the display.
Let me back up a bit. The thing that first REALLY brought the issue of pockets to my attention was a dog jacket. The two that I found were identically sized and constructed, obviously the boy/girl versions of the same jacket, except that one was pink and purple with a floral pattern and the other was gray and green with a pattern of stars and bones. The latter had a pocket. I stood in the aisle and fumed for a second, then took a minute to make sure that I wasn't being completely (only partially) crazy. The same manufacturer had gendered versions (but no neutral versions) of every jacket and sweater on the rack. I wasn't seeing the male gendered jacket and ignoring an out of stock female gendered jacket. The boy jacket and girl jacket were identical except for the color and the inclusion of a pocket on the male version of the clothing. For dogs.
Dogs don't need pockets. They don't have thumbs, they don't carry keys, they don't need someplace to stash a cell phone.
Humans, however, DO need pockets. And the fact that I was able to find a jacket made for male dogs that had a functional pocket when I am unable to find a cardigan for female humans with a pocket literally felt dehumanizing, and THIS is where I have a problem with the concept of over-gendering clothing.
Women's clothes are missing pockets and I wanted to find out why. There are a variety of explanation (women are silly and carry a huge amount of frivolous junk, men wanted to increase women's dependence, female privacy wasn't valued or was considered dangerous in the good old pre-Victorian days), but the modern rationale on minimal pockets comes down to one insulting excuse: to include pockets in women's clothing would ruin the line or the hang of the garment.
Here are the two major issues that I have with that STUPID FUCKING ARGUMENT that I've heard so much of in the last few weeks:
The first problem is that just because I was born a woman, with breasts and hips that do not fit in men's clothing, does not mean that I am an object on display to be looked at. The lines of a sculpture can be ruined, the lines of a painting can be ruined, the lines of a photograph can be ruined; these things are art, and while they may be nice, they are not functional. You never hear anyone bitching about the ruined lines in shipping containers or 747s or forks or pencils or fucking dog jackets because they aren't meant to be pretty, they're meant to be functional; clearly, if the lines of a garment are what we're worried about, we're worried about how that garment makes the person wearing it look. Christian Dior (one of the men responsible for reshaping women's fashions in the latter half of the twentieth century) once said "Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration," which sounds an awful lot like "men are meant to work hard, women are meant to look good."
The second problem that I have with this argument is that it operates under the assumption that men are clever enough not to overfill their pockets but women aren't. This belief is fairly pervasive and is built on what seems to be deliberate misunderstanding of pocket distribution and more unfortunate side-effects of fashion (and occasionally biology). Men don't tend to overfill their pockets because they HAVE pockets - a pair of men's jeans always has a minimum of four and sometimes as many as eight distinct pockets, most of which are large enough to contain an adult human hand. Women's jeans sometimes have as many as five pockets, and usually no fewer than three, but rarely are these pockets large enough to securely hold a small cell phone. A men's blazer or coat always has at least two large pockets, and sometimes as many as four. A women's blazer frequently has no pockets, and I've never found one that has more than two. This is all the more frustrating because men have less to carry day-to-day than women do. Men, at a minimum, are expected to carry their wallet, cell phone, and keys. Women carry their wallets (which are almost all significantly larger than men's wallets), cell phones, and keys but may also have to carry tampons or pads, birth control pills, and many also carry makeup (which in some cases they have to, at least if they want to be considered competent). Even if you strip away the tampons, birth control, and makeup and give a woman a man's wallet, you still have the same baseline level of stuff with significantly less pocket space.
In fact, here are a few quick comparisons using my clothing and my husband's clothing along with a very typical women's wallet:
1st row: Women's slacks rear pocket versus men's slacks rear pocket (front pockets not featured
because the women's slacks had no front pockets).
2nd row: Women's fleece front pocket versus men's fleece front pocket (photo in the men's pocket
features wallet outside of the pocket because it was completely hidden by the pocket).
3rd row: Women's jeans rear pocket versus men's jeans rear pocket.
4th row: Women's jeans front pocket versus men's jeans front pocket (photo in the men's pocket
features wallet outside of the pocket because it was completely hidden by the pocket).
5th row: Women's coat pocket versus men's coat pocket.
And just for shits and giggles, here's a comparison between the women's wallet that I used to carry and the men's wallet that I now carry (and have gotten a few derisive "butch" comments about):
So now we have a real-world, visual demonstration that women are expected to carry more (or at least larger) stuff in less space - unless they use a purse.
That is, of course, the other argument as to why women don't need pockets; they carry purses, so why should they have lots of bulky pockets cluttering up the lovely lines of their clothes?
Well, other than that purses are easily stolen and lost, prevent you from having your hands free when walking, make it easy to lose and hard to find small items, take up space, are expensive, can be trip hazards, and can actually injure their owners, I guess that purses are perfect and should be carried by everyone.
And that's why I really started paying attention to pockets - my doctor told me that carrying a purse was contributing to the back pain I've been living with for three years now, and that I shouldn't carry a purse at all if I could help it.
So what can you do if you want to get by without a purse? Men's clothing is only an option so much of the time, and women's clothing is woefully underpocketed - what are your options?
Well, the first thing to do is to get angry, and the second thing to do is take action. I've decided that pockets are my New Year's resolution. I'm refusing to buy women's clothing that doesn't have a comparable number of pockets to similar men's clothing, and I'm refusing to buy or carry purses. In the US it's hard to underestimate the power of the consumer - if enough women are willing to pay for pockets and are willing to punish the manufactures who exclude pockets from their designs by not giving them your hard-earned money, eventually we can make a change.
If you'd like more pockets in your wardrobe, Scottvest is a clothier that sells wonderfully pocketed clothes for women and men proving that pockets don't have to "ruin the line" of a garment. If you'd like to make a change in fashion, stop paying money to retailers who reinforce gender stereotypes and start paying only for what you want.
(*As hard as it is to find women's clothing that isn't made exclusively to objectify women, it's a million times harder to find clothing that steps outside the gender binary - support Trans* Positive retailers and support gender diversity wherever you find it.*)
Cheers,
- Alli
Friday, December 20, 2013
Holiday indulgences and food allergies
It's the most wonderful time of the year to eat delicious candies and cakes and carb-heavy meals, as long as you don't have to deal with any food allergies.
See's Candies are making their rounds in my office right now, and tempting me horribly in spite of their corn starch and vanilla extract and maltodextrin and other things that I can't digest. Popcorn has been another popular corporate gift this year, with kettle corn and Harry & David Savory Popcorn varieties floating around ad nauseam.
I've mentioned before that food is a huge part of our culture, and it seems like this is more apparent than ever from the end of November until the beginning of January - everywhere you look there is something tasty being offered in the name of holiday cheer.
I tend to spend a lot of my time during the holidays glaring at food. The buckets of popcorn and cookies at the office, the scones at my family's Christmas tea party, the puddings at restaurants, and the white chocolate mochas everywhere that coffee is served have all been subjects of my recent ire.
But, in spite of all the foods that people with allergies can't eat, there are options out there.
My wonderful husband has just returned from a trip to Washington, where he procured me a lovely box of chocolates. I've been there with him a few times before, and on one of our journeys we discovered a wonderful shop called Galaxy Chocolates. The owner, Kathryne Paz, was incredibly patient with my questions and very helpful when it came to figuring out which of the ingredients I could and couldn't eat. If you're looking for chocolate either as a gift this holiday or just to indulge your sweet-tooth it's the place to go. Stop in if you're in western Washington, and if you're anywhere else, call and ask what's available to ship to you (my personal favorite is the lavender chocolate - it's unspeakably good). Failing all of that, if you have the money to spare please make a donation to Help Save Galaxy Chocolates - it's a tough world out there for a small business, and I know of few places as deserving of help as Galaxy Chocolates.
Another option for allergy-safe holiday treats is Happily Ever After Confectionery, a SoCal baking concern that is very compliant to customer wishes. Allergy-safe food comes at a pretty steep price, with a cost of about $4.25 per gluten-free cupcake and a minimum order of a dozen but it would be well worth it for a special occasion. One of the bakers remembered my allergies when they catered a wedding for a wheat and corn allergic bride, and gave me a cookie to sample from the spares - based on the evidence, the carefully-crafted allergy-safe wedding food was a success, and a tasty one at that.
And if you are truly paranoid, as everyone with allergies has a right to be, you can always try your own hand at crafting tasty treats.
This Scissor Candy recipe makes a nice treat for parties or year-round if you replace the Karo Syrup with brown rice syrup and make sure that you're using safe powdered sugar, flavoring, and coloring.
This Fudge Recipe works well with Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips and allergy safe condensed milk.
I'm working on a grain-free dressing/stuffing recipe - if it works out well, I'll post it here for everyone else to use as well.
Eat happy, eat safe,
Cheers,
- Alli
See's Candies are making their rounds in my office right now, and tempting me horribly in spite of their corn starch and vanilla extract and maltodextrin and other things that I can't digest. Popcorn has been another popular corporate gift this year, with kettle corn and Harry & David Savory Popcorn varieties floating around ad nauseam.
I've mentioned before that food is a huge part of our culture, and it seems like this is more apparent than ever from the end of November until the beginning of January - everywhere you look there is something tasty being offered in the name of holiday cheer.
I tend to spend a lot of my time during the holidays glaring at food. The buckets of popcorn and cookies at the office, the scones at my family's Christmas tea party, the puddings at restaurants, and the white chocolate mochas everywhere that coffee is served have all been subjects of my recent ire.
But, in spite of all the foods that people with allergies can't eat, there are options out there.
Seriously, purple chocolate is amazing. Photo by Alli
My wonderful husband has just returned from a trip to Washington, where he procured me a lovely box of chocolates. I've been there with him a few times before, and on one of our journeys we discovered a wonderful shop called Galaxy Chocolates. The owner, Kathryne Paz, was incredibly patient with my questions and very helpful when it came to figuring out which of the ingredients I could and couldn't eat. If you're looking for chocolate either as a gift this holiday or just to indulge your sweet-tooth it's the place to go. Stop in if you're in western Washington, and if you're anywhere else, call and ask what's available to ship to you (my personal favorite is the lavender chocolate - it's unspeakably good). Failing all of that, if you have the money to spare please make a donation to Help Save Galaxy Chocolates - it's a tough world out there for a small business, and I know of few places as deserving of help as Galaxy Chocolates.
Another option for allergy-safe holiday treats is Happily Ever After Confectionery, a SoCal baking concern that is very compliant to customer wishes. Allergy-safe food comes at a pretty steep price, with a cost of about $4.25 per gluten-free cupcake and a minimum order of a dozen but it would be well worth it for a special occasion. One of the bakers remembered my allergies when they catered a wedding for a wheat and corn allergic bride, and gave me a cookie to sample from the spares - based on the evidence, the carefully-crafted allergy-safe wedding food was a success, and a tasty one at that.
And if you are truly paranoid, as everyone with allergies has a right to be, you can always try your own hand at crafting tasty treats.
This Scissor Candy recipe makes a nice treat for parties or year-round if you replace the Karo Syrup with brown rice syrup and make sure that you're using safe powdered sugar, flavoring, and coloring.
This Fudge Recipe works well with Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips and allergy safe condensed milk.
I'm working on a grain-free dressing/stuffing recipe - if it works out well, I'll post it here for everyone else to use as well.
Eat happy, eat safe,
Cheers,
- Alli
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The joy of recombinant cooking
Looks gross but isn't - Boxed gluten-free Mac'n'Cheese and a can of split pea soup turned into
two surprisingly tasty lunches.
“Having now lived for a few decades in parts of the United States and Canada where cooking was treated quite seriously, and having actually employed professional chefs, he was fascinated by the midwestern/middle American phenomenon of recombinant cuisine. Rice Krispie Treats being a prototypical example in that they were made by repurposing other foods that had already been prepared (to wit, breakfast cereal and marshmallows). And of course any recipe that called for a can of cream of mushroom soup fell into the same category. The unifying principle behind all recombinant cuisine seemed to be indifference, if not outright hostility, to the use of anything that a coastal foodie would define as an ingredient." - Neal Stephenson, from Reamde
Recombinant cooking is a luxury that people with food allergies often can't indulge in but it is so prevalent in the US that almost everyone has a favorite recombinant dish - green bean casserole, rice krispy treats, or something from a crock pot. My favorite used to be something that my aunt had named "Wet Dog Chicken" in a fit of pique - Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, chicken breasts, and sour cream served over Uncle Ben's chicken rice, all cooked together in a crock pot for several hours until it smells faintly but unmistakably like a wet dog. Poor man's stroganoff, basically. Recombinant cooking is so popular that allergy cookbooks include recipes for home made versions of things like condensed soup and bouillon cubes so that you can get the out-of-the-box flavor with the made-from-scratch effort (basically the worst of both worlds).
Out of sheer boredom I recently started playing with the very few pre-made foods that I can eat and was pleasantly surprised with some of the tasty combinations that I found. Boxed Mac'n'cheese mixes very well with canned split pea soup to make a creamy, salty, and filling lunch. Canned vodka sauce can be poured over frozen haricots vert to make a savory side dish. Rice cakes, sunflower seed butter, and cranberry relish can be combined to make a reasonable simulacrum of a PB&J. Rice thins can have allergy safe chocolate chips melted on them to make a terrible parody of an oreo.
There aren't a lot of breaks for the food-allergic. We get left out at parties, thwarted by restaurants, and frustrated by the grocery store. On top of all of that it's not cheap to purchase allergy safe food, especially when you're dealing with something as basic as grain; I can get Kraft Mac'n'Cheese for a dollar a box but I have yet to find Annie's Gluten Free Shells and White Cheddar for less than $3.50, five pounds of all-purpose white flour sells for around $2.00 while 1lb of rice flour has a hefty price-tag in the the neighborhood of $4.00, Campbell's condensed soups are around $1.00 apiece but I have to pay $2.00 for 16oz of watery split pea soup - it's twice the price for half the food.
Because of the ridiculous prices for my food I don't like to throw any of it out. I'll freeze 3/4 of a jar of pasta sauce so that it won't go bad before I finish it. If I have less than a cup of rice pasta shells I'll throw them into a soup or casserole that I'm making. I've been eating cranberry relish with peanut butter for weeks now because I couldn't bring myself to throw out the relish left over from Thanksgiving when it cost $5.00 for a 18oz tub.
And now, largely because of boredom with my limited food options, I've started mixing odds and ends before they become odds and ends. A whole box of expensive mac'n'cheese got mixed with a whole can of expensive soup (as illustrated in the photo at the top of the post) just so that I could have something for lunch this week that wasn't exactly the same as what I have every week.
There are no ground rules when you have food allergies. I have yet to find a definitive set of practices to cook without wheat and corn and sesame while including eggs and tree nuts and milk. A lot of allergy-safe food is constructed to be all-or-nothing when it comes to the top 10 allergens so you end up with vegan food when you aren't a vegan, or nut free when you have no nut allergies. Because of this variance, I can't tell you what to mix together in your kitchen that will work with your allergies or diet or food philosophy, but I can tell you this: playing with your food is awesome. I had no idea, until just a few months ago, that chicken tikka masala mixes perfectly with leftover mashed potatoes. Just last weekend I ate an omelet with eggs, bacon, cheese, salsa, and more of that slowly dwindling cranberry relish - it sounds terrible and tastes great.
So play with your food; mix the store bought cans and boxes that you can have just to see what you can come up with, see if you can make some kind of Frankenlunch out of two night's worth of leftovers,
and try to cobble together a recipe for cookies out of what you have in your cabinets. Not all of your experiments will be successful, but they will teach you more about the properties and flexibility of the food that you're buying and successful or not it's important to have a break in the monotony when your diet is limited by your physiology.
Eat and Experiment Happy,
Cheers,
- Alli
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Factoids for a coffee addict.
Everyone I know knows about my shameful coffee addiction. Wherever I show up I'm clutching a 20-32oz cup, usually from McDonald's (don't you dare criticize - it's relatively strong coffee that tastes like coffee instead of maple nut crunch with blueberry notes and it's cheap), and hiding behind it. My iced coffee cups became something of a joke in my morning classes in college. I recently ran into a friend from elementary school whom I hadn't seen for a while; he asked what I was drinking and when I said coffee he responded: "Of course - you were the only 5th grader in the district who had to start her day with a cup of joe." My first job was at a coffee shop. My favorite job was at a coffee shop. I kind of have a thing for coffee.
When I recently found a list of which countries consume the most coffee per person, I had to see where I stand. Norway comes in at number one, with the average Norwegian using 23.6 pounds of coffee per year, or about a one pound bag every other week. The lowest country included was Ireland at 17th place, with each person using only a meager pound and a half of coffee a year (though they do drink the most beer). The US came in 12th, drinking 6.6 pounds worth of coffee each year (about 1/10th pound per week) though we were FAR AND AWAY bigger fans of soda, drinking 216 liters of soft drinks apiece each year.
Using my coffee shop experience as a baseline, I assumed 13g of ground coffee per 8oz of water to brew a pot of coffee. On average I drink 40oz of coffee per day which comes to 65g of ground coffee. Multiplied by 365 days, this gives me 23.725kg (or about 52 pounds) of ground coffee per year. I have to admit that I was a little startled to discover that I am consuming about a third of my weight in coffee annually.
So then I started thinking about fluid volume; if I consume 52 pounds of coffee, how many gallons do I drink? And what does that look like. Again using my 40oz a day as a baseline, my fluid coffee consumption comes out to about 114 gallons of coffee per year, or as much coffee as there is water in this fish tank (about 15 cubic feet):
When I got over the fact that I could easily drown in the coffee I drink, I started to think about how much caffeine there is in all of that coffee. At 135mg per cup of coffee I consume about 8.7 ounces of straight caffeine annually, or enough to kill me 25 times over if I swallowed it all at once.
The cost of maintaining this coffee addiction is also a little overwhelming, coming to about $480 a year in coffee (minus shipping, filters, and cost of prep time) if I make it at home, or just over $1500 to go out and buy coffee at McDonald's (or about $1640 if I were to go to Starbucks, but I think their coffee tastes like boiled grapefruit rinds with smoke flavoring and tar so I don't go to Starbucks). In fact it's only about $300 less per year than a pack-a-day smoking habit (at least based on cigarette and coffee prices in SoCal).
So coffee is expensive and if you drink enough if it it will straight up kill you - why does anyone drink it? Well, apart from the fact that it is delicious, it's pretty addictive. I've tried to quit coffee before and oh man, the headaches were not worth it.
Besides that, I think that everyone should allow themselves some vices. Since I can no longer drink soda, eat cookies, or drink most of the fun alcohols in the world, I'll stick with my coffee. Something kills every one of us, coffee probably won't be it for me. And I'd rather have a daily coffee habit than spend all that money on clothes that will go out of style, or shoes that will hurt my feet - but maybe I'll cut back for a few months; my Jeep could use a new transmission.
Stay safe and stay hyper,
Cheers
- Alli
Here is my Twitter user photo. I took this picture of a latte I made at a 2-day espresso training class with the 2008 US Champion Barista before she went on to get 2nd place in the Barista World Championship. The fact that I even know these sorts of things exist makes me a bigger geek about coffee than 60% of the west coast and 99% of the world.
When I recently found a list of which countries consume the most coffee per person, I had to see where I stand. Norway comes in at number one, with the average Norwegian using 23.6 pounds of coffee per year, or about a one pound bag every other week. The lowest country included was Ireland at 17th place, with each person using only a meager pound and a half of coffee a year (though they do drink the most beer). The US came in 12th, drinking 6.6 pounds worth of coffee each year (about 1/10th pound per week) though we were FAR AND AWAY bigger fans of soda, drinking 216 liters of soft drinks apiece each year.
Using my coffee shop experience as a baseline, I assumed 13g of ground coffee per 8oz of water to brew a pot of coffee. On average I drink 40oz of coffee per day which comes to 65g of ground coffee. Multiplied by 365 days, this gives me 23.725kg (or about 52 pounds) of ground coffee per year. I have to admit that I was a little startled to discover that I am consuming about a third of my weight in coffee annually.
So then I started thinking about fluid volume; if I consume 52 pounds of coffee, how many gallons do I drink? And what does that look like. Again using my 40oz a day as a baseline, my fluid coffee consumption comes out to about 114 gallons of coffee per year, or as much coffee as there is water in this fish tank (about 15 cubic feet):
The coffee I drink each year could support a tropical fish ecosystem,
if it didn't kill them all first. Photo from RateMyFishtank.com
When I got over the fact that I could easily drown in the coffee I drink, I started to think about how much caffeine there is in all of that coffee. At 135mg per cup of coffee I consume about 8.7 ounces of straight caffeine annually, or enough to kill me 25 times over if I swallowed it all at once.
The cost of maintaining this coffee addiction is also a little overwhelming, coming to about $480 a year in coffee (minus shipping, filters, and cost of prep time) if I make it at home, or just over $1500 to go out and buy coffee at McDonald's (or about $1640 if I were to go to Starbucks, but I think their coffee tastes like boiled grapefruit rinds with smoke flavoring and tar so I don't go to Starbucks). In fact it's only about $300 less per year than a pack-a-day smoking habit (at least based on cigarette and coffee prices in SoCal).
So coffee is expensive and if you drink enough if it it will straight up kill you - why does anyone drink it? Well, apart from the fact that it is delicious, it's pretty addictive. I've tried to quit coffee before and oh man, the headaches were not worth it.
Besides that, I think that everyone should allow themselves some vices. Since I can no longer drink soda, eat cookies, or drink most of the fun alcohols in the world, I'll stick with my coffee. Something kills every one of us, coffee probably won't be it for me. And I'd rather have a daily coffee habit than spend all that money on clothes that will go out of style, or shoes that will hurt my feet - but maybe I'll cut back for a few months; my Jeep could use a new transmission.
Stay safe and stay hyper,
Cheers
- Alli
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