Monkey Monday: sheer determination edition. 28 January 2008 7:23 am
Posted by Tracy in : books,health,recipes,school , trackbackGreetings from the far side of an all-nighter, readers! For some reason, sheer determination and staying up all night was just what it took for me to write a five-page critical journal on the first third of the readings for my food and gender anthropology class. The all-important news is: It’s done! Woo! The rest of my news items will be brief, a way of clearing other random detritus from my brain while I decide whether I need to nap and shower before class (yes) and how much (um, that depends…) There will be scatterbrained discussion of my recent non-class readings, and some cookery discoveries, complete with links.
For instance: over the weekend, I finished Gina Kolata’s Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss — and the Myths and Realities of Dieting. Good stuff, well worth the overdue fines I’ll have to pay (I know, I’m a very bad monkey but I swear something went wrong the first time I tried to renew it and I lost two weeks, dangit!) Yesterday Peter looked at me and said, “You didn’t rethink anything!” but that wasn’t the point so much as I learned the names and institutional affiliations of the people doing the interesting research about this stuff. Now I just gotta focus on not having nightmares about people who decide to starve their kids during critical periods of growth in the hopes of somehow programming their metabolisms so that they’ll be skinny adults. Brrrr. Also, now I am thinking about doing my class project about THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC (doom doom doom!)
My old project idea? Gender in Superbowl ads for food. Except this afternoon I watched just a teeny bit of an NBA game and to make a long story short (too late!) I’m not sure I have the mental fortitude to collect enough advertising data for a useful sample, even with fast-forwarding! So it’s back to the drawing board in a big hurry, since we are four weeks into the term, after all.
Speaking of possible project topics, I started Michael Ruhlman‘s The Reach of a Chef: Beyond the Kitchen on Saturday, in between a few different cooking adventures, and he hooked me HARD on page 13, like so:
Ours is a country that for years held out a silver cross at eggs. Eggs are bad for you! Eggs! The most natural food on earth, a symbol of life and fertility, a compact package of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates whose versatility in the kitchen, pleasure at the table, and economy at the store is unmatched by any other food. We learned to hate the egg! Do you need any further proof that something is seriously wrong with this country that teaches people to avoid eggs?
Oh, amen. I am in.
Also! I learned a nifty way to make fluffy couscous, which came in handy for eating the leftovers of my made-up winter vegetable stew with North African spices (I wrote down what I did, but also what I did wrong, so that’s going to need a bit more testing before I share it here).
And speaking of North African spices, I made my own harissa last week, from that recipe and the almost-instructions in A Year In a Vegetarian Kitchen and then of course a few days later I found this recipe here. I am so not trusting the mint in that one, I tell you what. But then again, I think I forgot the garlic in my own made-up version of the recipe, so what the heck do I know except that it sure did clear my sinuses?
It occurs to me that a tablespoon or so of harissa would be a good quick and dirty way to season kushari sauce. Maybe it’s just the sleep deprivation talking, but I think that might be brilliant. Still, I should probably go get some sleep. Yes. Sleeeeeeeeeep.
Yep, that’s all for today! Tune in tomorrow for a bit more about the cookies in Friday’s pictures.
