Archive for February 2008

A Trinity of Fatness

scrappybadger February 4th, 2008

As usual, I’m being bombarded with fat-related news this week. I’ll quickly sum it up:

  1. A few days ago Piig read about that insane bill in Mississippi that would have restaurants refuse service to fat customers. I wish she hadn’t told me about it, but there has been enough press coverage (and subsequent yammering about the dum-duh-duuuuuh Obesity EPIDEMIC) that I would have heard about it no matter what. Have we seriously grown so afraid of fat that we would subject people to public weigh-ins or BMI calculations before letting them eat out? Oh wait, that’s what Weight Watchers did for us, it (and a host of other diet programs) normalized public shaming of fat people while glorifying the loss of even the smallest amount of weight. Lose a pound? Yay!!!! Congratulations on your hard work and dedication! Gain a pound or fail to lose any? Awwww. You’ve let us all down with your overindulgence and lack of willpower. Willpower builds character and proves that you deserve things — like the freedom to live in your own skin.
  2. If you are able to rip yourself away from the Abercrombie and Fitch scandal you might have heard that 5 women were killed in a Lane Bryant store this weekend. Call me cynical, but I can’t help but wonder if we’d be hearing more, if the story would have been more than a blip on my local news, if a bunch of Victoria’s Secret shoppers had been killed. Just the opportunity to flash pink thongs on the news probably would have made that story too good to pass up. I can see it now. Anderson Cooper would be interviewing witnesses in front of the Valentine’s Day crotchless panties and feathered negligees.
  3. The Fat Avenger, Oprah Winfrey, had yet another weight loss surgery show. Never one to rest on the success of previous episodes, she made this story exclusively about teenagers. Viewers just didn’t get enough of the adolescents on Oprah’s other weight loss surgery shows, so she put several former teenage fatties on all at once. They expounded on the wide and various health benefits of having their insides tied up or cut out, and one young girl returned to visit the clinic in Tijuana where she’d had her surgery at the age of 13. According to the girl and her mother, she just mysteriously started to put on huge, massive amounts of weight. Suddenly her body started to change and she couldn’t explain it. It’s called fucking puberty!That’s right, I watched it. I had to; I couldn’t stop myself. It was like some sick obsession. In the end all it did was infuriate me, of course. And if Oprah had overemphasized the words hundred or two or three (as in two hundred pounds or three hundredpounds) just a couple more times I would have barfed. I expected to see the self-hatred oozing out of my tv screen like the not so uncommon postoperative anal leakage.

And I’ll leave you with that pleasant thought.

Move Over Chicken Noodle

scrappybadger February 1st, 2008

I’ve been sick with a cold this week. It has mostly given me a sore throat and made me feel run down. It’s the kind of cold that screams for soup, so when I saw a recipe for Hot and Sour Cabbage Soup at VeganYumYum I decided to try it. It was fabulous, and it soothed a 7 year craving for hot and sour soup. I hadn’t had any since becoming a vegetarian because it is nearly impossible to find it without chicken broth.

The best part is that the recipe is very flexible. I used red cabbage because that is the only thing the grocery store had. I also used one can of vegetarian broth in place of 2 cups of water. I didn’t blend the tomatoes, chopped the cabbage in not so little pieces, and used a regular block of tofu instead of the baked tofu that the original recipe calls for. You see, I have this problem following directions. That’s why I’m always appreciative of recipes that can handle substitutions. You can even add more water or veggie broth after the fact if you decide that the soup is too sour for your taste. I like it puckerific though.

The next time the wind is howling, and all you can think of is something warm, try this soup.

Here’s what mine looked like the next day. I like that deep purple color, though violet tofu is slightly disturbing. VeganYumYum’s picture is much nicer and looks more like the hot and sour soup you’d get in your neighborhood Chinese restaurant.

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Sometimes Weight Does Matter

scrappybadger February 1st, 2008

But not in the way that most people would have us believe.

As I drove to my morning classes today I heard a report on NPR that pointed the finger at high priced medical equipment as being the number one cause of rising health care costs. (I would like to include a link to the clip from Morning Edition, but I couldn’t find the story in the archives.)

You can’t turn around these days without hearing about the dum-duh-duuuuuh Obesity EPIDEMIC.* What’s worse, fat people are being blamed for skyrocketing health care costs while insurance companies and high priced specialists sit back counting their money. Nowhere in the typical fat-is-horrible-and-scary story are these or other issues mentioned. The NPR blurb just goes to show that, of course, the issue is never as simple as so many make it seem.

Oh, and those overweight medical machines obviously need to go on a diet.

* I swear, one of these days I will record an audio file to do that for me.