Monkey Monday: head-scratching edition. 11 May 2009 8:18 am
Posted by Tracy in : eating,food snobbery,health,monkeys,news,random,vegetarian,vegetarianism , trackbackToday’s theme is food-related stuff I’ve read recently that made me say “What?”
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For instance, many of the situations described in Gus Rancatore’s “(Stupid) FAQ’s at the Ice Cream Shop” made me feel like I’d found a kindred spirit. (Regular readers may recall that I have a thing or two to say about the joys of customer service.)
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Do you like funny pictures of animals? Of course you do, which means that you must check out this article about Kosher for Passover pet food, if only for the picture of a dog in a yarmulke. I swear, I am not making this up. I could not make this up if I tried. Go look, and then come back here and help me make up funny captions for the picture on I Can Has Cheezburger. I’m thinking something along the lines of “I no can has cheezburger/ is not kosher.”
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Back to The Atlantic‘s food blog, which one of these days I may finally catch up with. Scroll down to the end of this piece about Dan Barber’s winning Outstanding Chef at the James Beard Awards last week for a reconstruction of his acceptance speech. The part that got me was about how he told his father he wanted to be a chef:
There was a long pause and then he said,
“Son….why?”
And I said the only thing that came to mind: You know, I love food.
There was another pause and he said, “I love books, but I don’t read for a living.”
Readers, please, sign me up to eat, cook, read, and write for a living. Please. Don’t waste any time telling me where to sign up or asking if it’s okay to put my name on the list — you are hereby authorized to give them the URL to this blog or my email address. tracyfood at gmail dot com. Do it.
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Next, I’m late to the party, but I’d like to give Time magazine a special sloppy journalism award for their article warning that teenagers who become vegetarian may be doing so to mask eating disorders. Um, what? (Hat tip to Salon’s Broadsheet blog whose takedown of the silliness is well worth a read.) I mean, where to begin? Okay, here’s a thought, one I like to point out to people who still somehow think that vegetarian food is somehow drastically, weirdly different from whatever it is they think is normal food. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are vegetarian — vegan if you pick a short ingredient listed bread. Macaroni and cheese is vegetarian. We’re talking foods that are so bland and boring and friendly to finicky eaters that they show up on those kids meal menus I loathe so very, very much. They also happen to be dense with calorie goodness. If the potentially eating-disordered vegetarian you’re worried about induces vomiting after eating those or any other foods, or refuses to eat PBJs or mac ‘n cheese or anything else that might possibly be fattening, then I’ll grant you there’s cause for concern. But those behaviors would be just as worrisome in a meat eater. Gah.
I could go on and on, but I hope you get the idea. There’s a difference between pickiness — even really, really annoying pickiness — and disordered eating, and vegetarianism (or veganism, for that matter) is yet another thing again. Also I would hasten to point out that we’re all picky about our food in one way or another, but at least vegetarianism and veganism have relatively consistent standards of pickiness (which is why I think it’s annoying when chicken- and/or fish-eaters call themselves vegetarians, and why I’m so happy I came up with the phrase “not even vegetarian” to describe my eating habits. In the unlikely event that I cut my flesh consumption down to dead-fish-only, I might call myself a Moosewood vegetarian, just to be snarky, but since most of my favorite fish are endangered species, there’s not much chance I’ll give up more sustainably-obtained land animals first.)
Anyway. That’s probably enough for today. Back to that vitamin C paper again…
