Excuse me while I throw this down, I’m old and cranky and tired of hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better. Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing. Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are [...]
I have a little problem with a phrase I hear with some frequency, namely the contention that some people who belong to X group or participate in Y behavior or enjoy Z activity are “more evolved” than everybody else. The reason? It’s ugly social darwinism. Your sense that something you do — and the phrase [...]
Some people I know like to share links to articles and reports about the various purported health benefits and risks of particular foods. I’m not naming names and not pointing fingers, because there are actually quite a lot of them and it’s a pretty common behavior. It goes on in public — what are all [...]
It has become clear, in reading the comments that you lovely and insightful people have kindly left here on Homework, that at times, when I express a strong opinion about a particular issue, some people take it very personally. Some people appear to feel that when I express a strong opinion about, say, the questionability [...]
I suppose it’s all connected to the whole New Years Resolution change-your-body-change-your-life thing so many people do at this time of year, but all month I have been hearing and overhearing conversations where people talk about what they’re giving up, food-wise, and what benefits they think they will realize by doing so. There are the [...]
I’m a fat, mostly healthy person. A fat, mostly healthy person who eats a lot of vegetables and whole grains. A fat, mostly healthy person who eats a lot of vegetables and whole grains that she cooks herself, with care and love and talent, with product she buys predominantly from local and regional producers. [...]
I distrust restaurants that cannot spell their own menu items correctly. Not just “bruchetta” and “au juice” and “capuchinno” and other perhaps predictable errors with languages that are not necessarily that of the restaurant staffers, but things like “stripped bass” and “deserts.” Perhaps especially “deserts.” You may be able to prepare it, but if [...]
I was a little shocked when I found out that canning had become trendy. It was as if shining your shoes had become the hot new hipster domesticity pastime, or perhaps repairing toasters or darning socks. The mental dissonance of discovering that something you’d been doing all your life — sometimes grumpily because your mom [...]
Dear Family, I don’t know if you noticed me, the Other White Person in a room otherwise inhabited entirely by Asians. But I noticed you. What’s more, so did everyone else in the restaurant. This, I am pretty sure, did not register with you, because if you had been even the slightest bit aware of [...]
Tagged eating out, when I am Empress of the UniverseWhen I am Empress of the Universe, the following things will be banned immediately in all restaurants: 1. Waiters offering diners freshly ground black pepper on their food before diners have had the opportunity to taste their food. (Also, what the hell gives with the waiters being the only people in the establishment authorized to [...]
Tagged restaurants, when I am Empress of the Universe