Snort, Snort, Bitches

I just want to point out what a process it has been to get to the point where I can dress up as a pig, albeit no ordinary pig, and have men yell "Piggy, Piiiiigy, and Piiiiigggyyy" at me, and enjoy it. I've tossed around the idea of being Miss Piggy for Halloween before, but I always quickly ruled it out. Any true fat girl will know why this might give you pause. Given how I AM Miss Piggy, this was ridiculous and sad. To make my case about being Miss Piggy-- an over-the-top, confident to a fault, glamour loving, possibly delusional diva, I present this:

After rewatching this as an adult, I realize that Miss Piggy was one of my first profound influences. I remember experiencing some cognitive dissonance: I knew she was a sexy and fabulous, but I also already knew that larger women weren't sexy and fabulous. I get it now, and thank Miss Piggy for this model. Yes, I like to pretend that she is real. Anyhow, now that I've embraced the pig, I'm pretty sure I'll be Miss Piggy again and again. Snort snort!

Food Memories with Joan

I recently lost one of my best, and youngest, and sweetest friends to brain cancer. The time between her diagnosis and her passing was so quick, that I, like others, am left with a lot of thinking and reflecting, to accept what has happened, to even accept that it is a thing that happens in the world, but also, to define what Joan meant to me and will continue to mean to me.

Through the magic of bonding and networking, I'm discovering all of the different Joans that existed. So many people connected with her so deeply and treasured her in various ways: Joan Jolt, derby player; Nichole Mikko-Causby, the academic; Nikki, the girlhood pal and daughter; Nichole Sgarlato, the wife and daughter-in-law. In our fast friendship, she had already been several kinds of a friend to me, but one of the most important roles she played in my life, without a doubt, was eatin' buddy. For this reason, I cannot possibly carry on an eatin' blog, without memorializing her here first.

St. Louis 2011

From our very beginning, in Merry St. Louis, we bonded over food. At that time, we were both less conscious of what we ate, so we began with Billy Goat Chips, the barfood pizza at Lemmons, MEAT PIES at The Silver Ballroom, and continued on to daily specials at The Royale on Kingshighway, cookies from Whole Foods, and one of her faves for fish and chips: The Bleeding Deacon, which apparently closed not long after our time in STL (probably we ran them outta beer) but apparently has a cousin, The Crow's Nest, though it can't be as divey good as the Deacon. We ate at the Lemp Mansion (gross, but haunted?), at somewhere delicious in Soulard, and introduced our dogs at the Tower Grove Farmers Market. (Yes. We both came to a seminar with our dogs thus causing us to rent rooms, both in South City, cause that's how we did and why we loved each other quick.)

Often, it is so damn MUGGY in STL that it seems like the only thing to do is get a little drunk in an aboveground pool, aka hooz hole. The first time we did this instead of doing the homework for the very academic seminar that had brought us both to the city, we ended up laughing hysterically about how you feed company if you are SOUTHERN, and this is were we cemented our phrase ALL THE FOOD, which was pretty much the motto for the rest of our trip...and our friendship.

 At one point, our group took a side trip to Chicago to visit Hull House. I can tell you *some* stuff about Jane Addams, but I can tell you everything that we ate there. I'll just stick with her favorite, which was the hummus from The Parthenon in Greektown. You want to go to there. We quested for ALL THE FOOD in Chicago, but somehow couldn't manage it, so we had our pizza at Pi and our Chicago dogs at Pam's Chicago Style Dogs, both in St. Louis. The picture above is from Pam's where Joan was expressing her sorrow over the end of the Midwestern episode of our eating festival. Damn, I can't believe I remember almost everything we ate. Probably because we relived it a lot. It was not uncommon for us to send texts and whatnot that merely read "meat pie." One more: on the 4th of July, 2011, I made my famous meat cupcakes and she showed me how to mix chicken stock into the mashed potato icing for even more goodness. It was a down home Southern heart attack waiting to happen.

I'm supposed to present at a social studies conference in St. Louis in the fall...actually Joan and I were supposed to present on fashion and feminism, but I'm afraid I'll starve if I go. Though I spent 7 weeks in St. Louis before 2011, we definitely marked that place with our friendship, and I wish I could say I'd celebrate that in person there, but as is, I think I'll just feel the loss:(

Missoula 2012

In March of 2012, I decided to escape Texas for Montana and see my Joan Jolt for a bit-- I know that's backwards weather wise, but I craved some Joan and a trip. It was an interesting trip since she was teaching and working, but we fit in plenty of time for eating and eating. If you are going there, have a bison burger and sweet potato tater tots at Al and Vic's or its upscale neighbor, James Bar. She also took me to the Mullan Station, so I could marvel/hipsterjudge how a restaurant is also a bar that's also a casino that's also a laundromat that's also a convenience store. I don't recommend that for anything other than comedy.

Austin July 2012

When Joan Jolt got off the plane, I immediately drove her to the wonder that is Austin's flagship Whole Foods. By this time, we were mostly following paleo-like eating plans and I knew she'd be hungry, plus ZOMG the Whole Foods. I've gotten used to it, like it's a normal place to shop for groceries, but the downtown WF is really outta control for the amount of high-priced goodness. It was great to see this through someone else's eyes again to realize how truly remarkable it is, and how lucky I am to have it, never mind its one million logistical problems. Let me tell you what we ate: she had a rotisserie chicken meal and I had chopped beef on top of a bed of greens, and yes I remember even this mundane meal. Foodwise, the rest of the trip continued like that. We had Tacodeli, followed by Torchy's (where she famously called the queso "cheese dip" :)) followed by Tacodeli. We made our own breakfast...sometimes, grilled while setting up my very own inflatable garage sale hooz hole, and had made our own ceviche at the beach. I showed her what a Whataburger was (#paleofail) and when I dropped her off at the airport, I cried. Right after I told her where to get tacos in the airport. (I prefer the Ray Benson/ Salt Lick taco cart, except they need to offer corn tortillas.)

September 2012

So how did I get her back so quick? I broke my damn leg and I'd break it a hundred more times, if I thought it would bring her back. Since life is fast and full on my watch, she knew how catastrophic this would be for me."How will you eat all the good food? Who will play with the dog? How will you shop?" What kind of friend quits her job and drives down from Montana to cook for you? The Joan kinda friend. I had surgery on 9/4 and Joan was here by 9/11.

We were still indulgent on occasion (see Tacodeli above) but this was where we both discovered first hand how powerful good nutrition is in healing. I had already made a commitment to a year of no fail healthy eating (no, I didn't make it through the hardest year of my life eating totally healthy) and I figured that the leg made this even more important. Joan agreed, and we embarked on a plan. Our plan involved intense and rigid meal planning, since she would be cooking nightly for two people including the next day's lunch, and I would be paying for it all. Meal Planning FTW, especially since Foot Hongry was always happening at first. Fortunately, during the period where I was non-weight bearing, Joan cooked meals ALL THE DAYS. Except when we occasionally picked up food from Chipotle, Zen, Elevation Burger, or Fresa's. The net result was that when I returned to the doc for my 6 week post-surgery follow up, I was Ahead of the curve! The doctors said my bone was healed very strong and ahead of time, by at least several weeks, and my time remaining in the boot got cut from another 6 weeks down to a mere 4. Joan was with me during this appointment, and I know their words made a big impression on her too. There really was no other explanation other than taking good care of myself, foodwise and otherwise. Over the next 6 months we continued to discuss the ways that nutrition affects health, and the many dramas of Seymour related to my nutritional intake: i.e. if I eat bread, Seymour(the foot) don't wanna walk! 

I wasn't in the same city with Joan when she was diagnosed with the tumor, and phone contact was a little hard at times, but I know that one of the first things she did was turn to nutrition for answers, to the goodness of whole foods. For this reason, and because my mother taught me that food is what you do when tragedy strikes, the first and only thing I could think to do from afar, was send her a gift card for food. I wish I could have done more, and I wish that anything I could have done would have saved her.It breaks my heart to think of it now, but after a few weeks of radiation, she sent me a message saying "had an 'ahead of the curve Seymour type meeting with my doctors!" She believed in nutrition. It didn't go the way we hoped, but she wasn't wrong though. Food heals.

Missoula 2013

I don't know what to say about this one. I counted it up and I was only ever in the same city with Joan for like 100 days, including these four hard but precious days in Missoula that turned out to be her last days. Even then, it was still about food. Her husband made her smoothies, her mother-in-law brought her kale chips, I made sure she had a non-inflammtory milky milk type drink, her parents fed her, and we all talked about food. She asked for Tacodeli,  and I told her I'd get the recipe for the Otto to Montana. I brought her a Thunderbird bar, which caused her to tell me about her Raw Revolution Spirulina bars, and when her dad asked her if she wanted a bite of one, she said, "only if Aimee shares it with me," which I did. She could barely talk, but somehow we all talked about food, and everyone in the room agreed that Joan had influenced their thinking about food. She was my eatin' buddy, and I spent more time eating with her than anyone outside of my family, but she was also everyone's eatin buddy. Someday, all the memories and even this one, will just make me happy, but for now, I write this and I cry in the chocolate aisle.

I try to memorialize Joan at least twice a week by going to Tacodeli for her. If you'd like to participate, here's a list of some other things that I know she'd want you to eat in her honor. If you are a friend of Joan, feel free to add your own in the comments.

Avocados

Mango
Any fresh ingredients smoothie

Coconut Creamer
Ice cream ala Joan-- mashed frozen bananas with dark dark chocolate shavings

Thunderbird Bars

TAZA stone ground Mexican chocolate

Raw Revolution

Kale Kale Kale

Latin Quinoa Salad

Grandma's Hummus

Larabars
Kale Chips

Coffee Coffee Coffee
A lot

Paula Deen: My Two Cents

Whether I've said as much or not, this blog circles around Southern foodways a lot, by default. As the daughter of a southern lady, who can outcook and outbutter (fer real) Paula Deen, I can't really think about food or eating without embracing, rejecting, or somethinging the South and its food. My parents' return to the Deep South signaled a full license to return to southern foodiness to my mother. I've written privately about the considerable trials and tribulations of eating while visiting, but I don't really want to publish such publicly until I find a way to make it sound like less of an ungrateful indictment of my mom and all southern mothers, who are just tryin' to keep their babies fed, y'all.

Given that, I feel compelled to chime in on the whole Paula Deen racism mess. If you aren't familiar or you read this at a time when this has fallen out of our very shallow collective memories, here's the scoop.

Here's a little joke my Joan Jolt and I like to tell to each other often, for amusement, and as shorthand for southern eatins and hospitality-- which are the same thing. Picture: Some relatives are coming over. Your mom wonders aloud if she should make ham or chicken. The correct answer is... "yes." Biscuits or cornbread? "Yes." Pie or cake? "Yes." Really that's not even a joke. It just IS. If your table isn't full and your relations don't got the 'betes when they leave, you effed up. You will feel guilty and people will talk about it. And this isn't even for the good relatives. Just the shitty racist ones that you only like out of obligation.

Which brings me to my point. I think I'm in the camp of people who aren't surprised about Paula Deen's comments about race and racism, but not because I think that all people of the South are racist, or not even because I associate her down home style with backward racist attitudes. In my experience, I associate Deen's style, foodwise and otherwise, with the complicated blend of tradition and tragedy that is the South. When something is complicated, obviously it calls for analysis and reflection to negotiate, and there are plenty of people doing that in the South. However, whether you are talking about race or food, there is also plenty of encouragement to NOT think, to latch onto something perceived of as a charm of the past without thinking the implications of preserving that thing.

Here's an example. My dad is right on the cusp of having diabetes. His blood sugar can stay fairly low if he chooses the right things to eat. You know, like choosing steak at a restaurant over a pasta dish. Except recently he ate a steak and his blood sugar was high after. Why? Because the steak was dipped in molasses. Why? Because its the South. Multiply that traditionally inspired meal times a million, add in fast food, subtract some salads, and you've got the diabetes epidemic of the American South. It's perfectly obvious that people simply can't continue to have the sugary buttery overserving ways of the past mixed in the industrial agrobusiness foodcrap of the present and expect to stay healthy, but it a) tastes good and  b) is "just the way it is." It's not that people feel they are choosing the unhealthy tea over the healthy tea-- they are just drinking tea. Tea has sugar. Duh. (Seriously, I had a very hard time getting an unsweet tea at a Whole Foods in midtown Atlanta.) My point is that there's plenty of ways to just not think too hard about the consequences of food choices, which is how Paula Deen managed to sip sugar tea aka tea, all day for years and then be surprised by the diabetes.

Negotiating the ugly racial history of the South, can be similar. In my experience, there are progressive people and racist people in the South for sure, but the majority of the people just seem to turn away from the issue, to not think too deeply about it whenever possible. Society makes it possible. This, as you might suspect, is utterly ridiculous in a place clearly still recovering from a war about race (depending on who you ask, good God), still processing the travesties of Jim Crow, and clearly still marked by racial division and inequity in important things like...education. It requires effort to look away, to accept the simplest or most convenient versions of stories, but it happens because to look dead on requires confrontation-- and confrontation is impolite and messy-- not something that you do according to the southern messages of my mother. So it becomes easier to just pretend that a plantation is just a nice farm and that a flag is just a flag.

So this is how Paula Deen, and others like her, can really believe that a reference to black servitude is relatively innocent. Or choose to believe. She knows enough to know that her attitude is politically incorrect and of the past, because those ideas are on the surface-- but understanding exactly how hurtful it is to tap into that history with a sense of longing?-- Nope. Beyond her now public comments, I don't actually know what she is like. Perhaps she is a blatant bigot. Certainly, she is remarkably bad at talking about race. But I imagine that mostly she is just an unreflective person, minimally educated on the topic of race, raised in a racially unjust past, and living in a present space that only requires or promotes so much change. And she isn't alone in that. At all.

So no, I wasn't any more surprised by her comments than I was by her diabetes.

Now, in the style of one of my favorite slices of the internet, Tom and Lorenzo's Mad Style, I'm gonna put in some bullet point items that BELONG here, but just didn't fit in a paragraph.

• So...at Mother and Sons, Deen's Savannah restaurant, you get assigned a time to uh...gather. Then you are herded into your pen for your turn to feed at the trough. Seriously. When your feeding time is done, they put you back in the pasture. Also, my mom's food is better.
• The only time I that won my friend's Iron Chef contests, was when the theme was "this is why you're fat." I made meat cupcakes that incorporated all elements of homestyle goodness. One had a chicken leg up on top of the mashed potato icing! Thanks, South.
• My parents used to live at the base of the Kennesaw Mountain Civil War Battlefield, where the gift shop included many items and serious books on States Rights! but the only mention of black people... like existing... was a single Harriet Tubman coloring book. I'll never get over that. Stunning.
• When I visited the Mississippi Delta in 2008, I got to listen in on a panel discussion, concerning the Emmett Till murder, by the Committee on Race and Reconciliation in Sumner County.The recently formed committee on race and reconciliation. Discussing how to handle an event from 1955. It was clear that some people wanted to look at the history and its enduring legacy, but the mechanisms for doing so, were slim.
• I'm very confused about why people are upset about Paula Deen saying that she has racist relatives. Do they not have relatives? If you have relatives, some of them are racist. That's what relatives do, right? You can't control what your relatives do, and if you try, your mom will glare at you because you are the one causing the scene, which is also why everyone eats that biscuits that are served even if they have diabetes. Already.
• I don't hate it! I don't!

Like a '59 Cadillac

So, if you read my FB (and you must, at least somewhat, cuz how else would you get here?) you probably have the idea that I've been irreparably harmed by my heterosexual dating experiences. Broken-hearted, bitter, suitable only for a future as a spinster or maybe a stand-up comic whose shtick is reading emails and texts from her ex-boyfriends.

I wouldn't say that's totally untrue. Nope. However, there is one particular upside, an actual benefit, dammit, that I have gained from some of the men I've dated. This blog post will be somewhat of an expression of gratitude toward them, insofar as I am capable of that.*

The Miss Lady Foundation for Adoring Herself Indeed would like to thank Boring Ray, Stupid Melodramatic Jacob, Fat Matt, Cockpunch, Casey the Dumbass, Depressed Chef, Gas Station Joe/SpiteFuck, Emotionally Unavailable Jeffrey, and Stupid Scott for their contributions to my naked confidence. To be clear, there are a few more men than this, but not all of the men I've known biblically (cause my tits are like religion, thank you) have been open admirers of my physique, either admiring it only insofar as it was pleasing them, because they had fallen in love with my mind (which I appreciate), or in the manner of a few fools who may go to hell, not at all.

I absolutely do not think that women should base their self-concept on the opinions of men, nor do I think they should look to the male gaze for validation. Having said that however, I confess that I have. Since it's merely a part of the cocktail of my sources of self-worth, let's hope I'm not fucking myself up too much by doing so.

The men listed so politely above have, at one time or many, made sure that I knew I was beautiful naked. They wanted to see it more or up close or from a variety angles or whatever.  When Boring Ray first insisted on this, I had a hard time believing it. I knew I had some good parts, but the idea that I was wholly beautiful, and that the big voluptuous picture was not ruined by any of what I considered flaws was new. Since then I've had a bevvy of admirers, who, though they pretty much fucked up everything else, did worship my body without hesitation, and somewhat in isolation from the naked gratifications possibly taking place before, during, and/or after these compliments. I know that not all women would be surprised that men find them attractive when naked, but plus size women (well...all women really) receive plenty of bs telling us that our bodies are not eligible to be attractive. Clothing makers, advertisements, everywhere. I know that's not news, but I think the volume of negative messages just can't be overstated. Thus, I wasn't really sure until I heard it over and over.

My latest adventure was from a man who proclaimed me perfect. (Numerous times; in fact, even when he was dumping me via text by telling me to google the lyrics to this song about a woman who is perfect but the speaker still wants to be with everyone else....grrrr...)  He adored me physically so much that it was almost uncomfortable. How do I tell him not to nuzzle my FUPA so much?! Before he said all the stupid things though at the end, he did say this while drooling at my form: "You are shaped like a '59 Cadillac."

See, I'm willing to acknowledge that men are right sometimes.


With naked confidence,
Miss Lady





*To be fair to me, many of these men did stupid and/or shitty things that would complicate anyone being nice to them, not just a mean ol hag like Miss Lady.

Fat Friday

Finally, I feel fat enough to post something. Hooray?

So, I'm having a fat Friday. Do you know of this? It's exactly what it sounds like. It's Friday and I fucking feel fat. All the fucked up day long.

"Oh that's so sad!" say people who haven't had a fat Friday. Or "Oh you're not fat." Eff it all, it's Friday and I am fat.

It doesn't matter that I've got triathlon arms and legs at the moment, that make me love myself from the inside out. Admiring myself proudly in my new two piece cherry printed bombshell suit...doesn't change a thing. New paramour that thinks my body is the cat's meow? Nope.

Never mind that I had to win all that shit up above. Never mind that I had to wrestle my self love away from the media, my upbringing, etc. and never mind my commitment to loving myself. Being a plus size American middle class (is this specific to being white? or any of those things?) woman, means that you can still have a Fat Friday no matter what, pretty much instantly.

Umm...there may also be other confusing emotions mixed in here. Emotions = fat. Fat= emotions. Please see Betty Draper Francis for more.

Good news= after decades of me as a project, I could just as easily have a Sexy Saturday.

Cooking with Miss Lady

So, this post is going to be like this time I texted my friend from a bar to say that I had a successful interaction with a man. I described it and we were both excited, but then we realized that I was basically saying that at 30something I had finally learned to talk to boys. You got it; I finally learned to feed myself with mild success.

Previously, my rate of cooking efficacy--like you could cook, eat it, and possibly feed it to someone else, was like 50%. Chickens cooked by Miss Lady...hmmm....could be delicious (less likely), could be merely edible, or could be just...no: dry, raw, weird. There's no telling. Recently, my rate of total edibility went up, maybe to like 75%, oddly due to poverty. You see, when you spend 1 million dollars on veterinary care for your pet, you can't really afford to waste money effing up dishes, especially if you still mostly insist on using expensive items from Whole Foods. Anyhow, I'd like to share my recent successful recipes, especially for other cooking challenged people. Nothing here will be earthshatteringly gourmet, just accomplishable.

Italian Sausage and Stuff
Ingredients

• Italian Sausage (Or if you can, this artisan sausage from the farmer's market near my house on Sundays. Course, if you do that then you can't embarrass the meat counter guy and possibly yourself by saying "I neeed some hawwt Italian sausage, the big one, please." Not that I did that this weekend. Nope.)
• Basil or something else green
• Something brown, like bulgar, rice, or quinoa
• Tomatoes, fresh or in a can
• Maybe some spices or garlic powder.

Method
Find your big pastel skillet. Put the sausage in it and brown it. Sausage is greasy, so you don't need oil, which most people probably know through common sense, not trial and error. While you are doing that, it turns out to be efficient to cook your brown stuff. I do that by boiling to wrong amount of water, then pouring some out once that becomes apparent. I lost my measuring cup several years ago, and um...it hasn't come up that much till now. Don't worry--if this system stops working, I'll buy one. Once the sausage seems brown, which is confusing because it still kinda looks pink even when its brown, you put in the tomatoes, and spices. After you stir that put in the green stuff. I originally did this with basil, but I've been using Organic Girl Viva la France greens lately. I wouldn't say it adds much flavor, but it does add veggies. Anyhow, once all that seems pretty done, you mix in the brown. Oh yeah, at some point you already remembered to turn down the heat. How much brown stuff depends on how much you haphazardly made, how carby you are feeling, or how many of your storage containers are clean. If most of them are dirty and still at work, you could even skip the brown stuff, though I usually need it to be full.

Curry or Vindaloo Rotation Type Dish

Ingredients

• Chicken breasts or thighs-- This could depend on how much money you have and/or whether or not you are a protein type a gal. Turns out that dark meat is a little better for my metabolism AND I find it a little easier to cook.
• Veggies like carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli. It's nice if this is fresh, but it is easier to keep a few frozen bags of this mix on hand, so that's what I've been doing lately. It's like if being prepared is an excellent way to be prepared.
• Chickpeas/Garbanzo-- WTF do they have two names?
• Green stuff like in the last recipe
• Some Indian sauce marketed to white people-- I rotate them out, or otherwise I get overloaded on the flavors, but my favorites are the $7 tubs of Vindaloo or Curry at Whole Foods in the cheese section, which is probably not their official name. The Korma is excellent too, but it has too much cream for me to do for daily eating. Target oddly carries a green curry sauce I like too.
• Brown rice

Method
It is really pretty similar to the sausage. Slice up the chicken small enough to cook in a skillet. Get your big skillet, which is aqua instead of pink as you would prefer. Brown the chicken so that it's cooked. Not like beyond a shadow of a doubt, since you'll probably bring your sauce to a boil, but pretty much cooked. Then stir in your sauce. Add the veggies first and wait a minute if frozen. Add the chickpeas and greens sometime around here. After your sauce is kinda boily, turn down the heat. Ideally you would simmer this with a lid, but I don't have a lid for the big blue skillet, so sometimes I put a cookie sheet on top of that and call it good enough. Other times, I just say fuck it and cook it without the lid. Oh yeah, I hope you already cooked the rice. Once the chicken mixture simmers for a bit-- timing depends on hunger!-- stir in the rice, being sure to be like "oh fuck, there's all this extra water here because I refuse to measure" and pour said water out. Simmer while you wash up some plastic containers and curse it up while you try to find matching lids from your collection of 800 lids. Voila, dinner and lunch and dinner is served.

Also, I do a Tex Mex version of this as well. Same shit, but use beans, corn, onions, and vaguely Tex Mex sauce.

Soothing with Nutrition

I thought I had a reason to be sad when I broke my leg. I thought I had a reason to have the heavy heart on New Year's Day. But I didn't even know sad.

My dogbaby, Jimi Hendrix, has a carcinoma. After a troubling bout of diarrhea that led to finding a tumor, I got confirmation tonight that he has a carcinoma at the junction of his upper and lower intestines. Tomorrow we will visit the doggie oncologist, and hopefully learn right away about his chances for being treated with success and returning to health. From there I get to make decisions.

The whole process has involved a lot of waiting. Waiting to see if an antibiotic worked, waiting for an ultrasound and biopsy, waiting for the lab results to arrive at the vet, and waiting for the vet to call me, and then waiting for the words. And heartbreak, as I reflect over the reality that the time when I lose the best cuddler, hiking companion,travel buddy, comedian, and friend I've ever known might be here. I was holding it together and staying pretty positive, since Jimi was in excellent spirits, but on Saturday, when he actually started to show signs of anemia and an awareness that all was not right with him, I slid right down into an abyss of sadness.

 I know I am certainly not the first person to go through something like this, and that people certainly deal with loved ones even dearer with even more tragic problems; in fact, loss seems to be a hallmark of the human experience...but I can't imagine how. I don't know how we keep having children, or parents, or pets, or friends at all when sickness and tragedy exist. I think I've been blessed so far; though I've lost people and pets, I've never had to deal with the possibly imminent loss of someone so integrated into the fabric of my life. (Silent howl.) I was gladly ignorant to that wrinkle of humanity. For me, as much as I am sad and worried about Jimi, this also reminds me that I want to be close to my aging parents, who are separated from me by numerous states, that I need more financial power, and that I meant to have a life partner to lean on by the time things like this had to be faced. Making decisions like that will mean contemplating different kinds of losses. (Silent howl.)

This is a Miss Lady nutrition and body image blog, so I want to include some stuff about my nutrition. In the past, I've dealt with sadness by eating wildly--see Break-up Ice Cream Diet, or by eating in a nibbly and pitiful manner--see Break-up Starvation Diet. I can say that neither has good results; the former results in weight gain, pretty much immediately for me. The latter results in muscle loss, lowered metabolism, and eventual RAPID weight gain. Whatever the other side of this pain is, I know I want to reach it healthy-- with no mental or physical damage to my eatology. In the meantime, I know I want to be on fucking point for decision-making, appointment chauffering, and dogbaby advocacy. Having a broken leg taught me to absolutely be prepared for nutrition success, so I've stayed on top of stocking up on healthy items whenever I am near them and cooking ahead of time. I'm sure I'm still under-calorie and probably burning up my adrenals for a number of reasons, BUT I eat hearty portions as often as I can and load myself up with whatever veggies I can stomach. Every time I do that, I feel happy and affirmed--or I would if I didn't have a big anvil dark cloud ball of awful thingy sitting on my heart. If you didn't get slapped by that newsflash, lemme break it down for you: a white middle class southern woman, who is currently overweight, and who is me, a woman formerly lost in the forest of nutrition, has truly positive thoughts about feeding herself.

An even more important piece of the nutrition story here, is Baby Jimi's nutrition. As with my leg, I've figured out that doctors, particularly those not billing themselves as holistic, only deal with parts and illnesses. And that's fine with me...I suppose. I've not got time to radically rethink how I approach healthcare at this moment. When I broke my leg, my surgeon did the surgery stuff, and did it well, as he should. He also evaluates my x-rays, prescribes the appropriate pain pills, and helps me authorizes shit like parking placards and PT like a champion. The whole person stuff though, that was up to me. I  thought about the health I needed to heal my leg, and I fed myself accordingly. My leg didn't heal all lined up because of this-- that was Dr. Smoot's doing, but ultimately I healed "ahead of the curve" and that was all me (and a good dozen or so helpful friends). What I do holistically, complements what he does allopathically. (Am I using that right?)  The same has been true for Jim Jim. When they prescribe antibiotics, I replenish his GI tract with a multi-strain probiotic. When they put him on a low-fat food to help him baby tummy, I ask "what about the calories he needs to stay strong everywhere?" and work with the vet to find a diet that meets all the furry fur fur needs. I'm struck at this moment by what a journey this has been: just a few years ago, I ate entirely from boxes and had a disasterously meager set of cook skills. Now, I'm thankfully able to choose, procure, and make some pretty healthy stuff for myself and my loved pup without a second thought.

I did something for Jimi the other day that I never thought I would do, something that suddenly made me understand my own mother just a little more: I made my own chicken stock. I've previously scoffed at people who do this-- you're an American; just waste the damn bones, you overachiever! But after I roasted Jimi my first and the best whole chicken ever (turns out the extra ingredient IS love) and boiled him some rice in an almost correct fashion, and pulled the chicken from the bones, I placed them in some water, to make my own chicken stock in case he decided to forgo the toilet bowl (his fav) again and become dehydrated. Why did I do this? I mean, I had a box of organic chicken stock in the fridge. I did it for the same reason that I cooked the chicken and the rice and brought it to him in bed. I did it because I can. I can't make the cancer not be there, just like my mom can't make it so that nothing bad ever happens to me. I cook because I can.

Postscript: I'm not ready to really write about what it means to me, but an update should be here. I did all I could for him, but it didn't work out. On January 20, 2013, Baby Jimi crossed into dog heaven, the only heaven I'm really sure of.

Burger--no bun, with fries, thank you.

So...since I just got done eating this, and I non-resolved to post more, lemme write about my favorite fastish food order. For the purpose of clarification.

I am lucky enough to live in a city with lots of what I call fastish food options. Really, it IS fast food, just somewhat less industrialized and non-food (to varying degrees) than your typical fast food. Chipotle, Snap Kitchen, Fresa's Delicious Chicken, erewhere. I've noticed that the businesses that tend to do the best are the ones that mimic our beloved junk food but in a healthier way-- hence the long lines at P. Terry's. The burger, more than any other item ruined by modern American foodways, seems to call for reform. I mean, it was a simple meat and usually involves vegetables-- how did we make it so awful? So, it is not surprising to me that I can visit Elevation Burger, Flattop, Wholly Cow, P.Terry's, Hopdoddy for a better burger (various combinations of grass-fed, organic, local, etc) -- sometimes without even getting out of my car! You may think that's some lazy American horseshit (it is) but things like breaking your ankle or teaching to the point of exhaustion all day really make you appreciate people first world handing your first world food inside your first world car.

Anyhow, its a good thing, because I love burgers AND they are one of the few restuarant items I can always count on to be adapted to my eatin needs. When I'm not bending and flexing my own nutrition guidelines, I order a plain patty (or two) on top of a salad, BUT sometimes I bend and flex my own guidelines for the sake of sanity and variety. This means that sometimes I get cheese and if I wanna get real wild, I will order french fries, provided the fries being served are just potatoes and reasonable oil, two things that aren't inherently irritating to my system as long as no other french fry hoo doo happens. (As an aside, I really love that P.Terry's gets to advertise fries in canola oil like it is fancy-- what the hell are the fast fast places using? Gasoline? Heart attack sauce? Never mind, I don't wanna know.)

Here's the deal I want to clarify: Every time I order my burger without a bun but WITH fries, it causes confusion. Either for companions or employees, but always someone. Look, people, I KNOW that the whole lettuce wrapped burger or burger salad thing became popular because people were avoiding carbs totally. I KNOW that it would be less calories, etc to skip the fries, but sometimes I get them. I don't think that's exactly what causes the confusion though. What seems to confuse people is the idea that I don't just hog down on all the indulgent items, just because I want one of them. Like when people scoff at the idea of ordering a slice of pizza and a diet coke.  Remember when "pigging out" was a thing you could say you were going to do? That phrase went away though because A) the 80s ended and B) pigging out and eating are pretty much synomous in the standard American diet.

Even though I'm already ramble-ranting, I think it is worth the effort to explain why there's merit in my skipping the bun even when I want the fries. The first reason is simple--the bun is gluteny and gluten makes me feel like shit beyond a certain threshold. And bread is beyond that threshold. By shit, I mean that it causes bloating, irritability, and joint inflammation. I prefer not having those things, though I will put up with for something really good.

The second reason, people of 'merica, is the 'betes. Fries plus bread! That's just too much sugar to process, unless you just kick ass at processing sugar, and I don't. In the event that you don't know, it works something like this: If you dump a crap ton of sugar, in any form, but most especially in the forms that convert to sugar in the system pretty quickly, you get a profound insulin response aka an insulin spike. Your body is supposed to use insulin to process sugar, but SAD tests the limits of that system and often wears it right the fuck out-- also known as type two diabetes. The insulin response, in my experience and I THINK in science, can be evened out in a number of ways: not ingesting too much sugar/carbs-- why I'm able to keep my blood sugar in the 80s even though my insulin response is a little worn out, combining your sugar/carbs with fat (preferably good fat) which emulsifies it and keeps it from just DUMPING into your system, and using some sense of food combining-- like eating a balance of protein, carbs, and veggies ( for me, at least half as many grams of protein as carbs seems to work.) The latter two support my decision to get the fries instead of the bread, though of course the first point is why I usually don't get them. Oh apparently you can also slow the hell down when you eat though I haven't mastered this. I think it used to be that food traditions helped with this-- milk with cookies, balanced meals, sugar only in desserts, but I can only barely remember such things being widespread in my lifetime. Collectively, America's tradition is to eat like you are at a carnival, always.

So, people really expect me to either not get the fries if I'm not getting the bread-- who do I think I am making decisions that can't be marketed easily as a diet with a name?! Or more often I think it's just expected that I will get the bread because I'm getting the fries and also get a shake or a pie and wash that down with a soda (seriously soda, wtf are you? I'm not even drunk when I drink you. Useless.) Why not? It's crazy really-- even at the places that exist for the purpose of selling a more nutritious burger, I swear people would be more comfortable if I'd just order a dinner that will kill me. Or make me fat(ter). Gawd.

Happy New Year

Sigh. I'm supposed to come up with resolutions or something, but I'm officially in a funk. Not sure what brought it on..post-holiday let down? the bs symbolism of the "new year" that requires you reflect over the past year only to realize that nothing has changed since last year? the fact that I'm (re)rewatching an episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon realizes that her life doesn't change from year to year while I'm realizing that my life doesn't change from year to year which is probably what I did last year? Having only a gay male stranger to kiss at midnight on NYE, again, because another manfriend couldn't live up to my ever lowering standards? Or perhaps having reached the pinnacle of hair awesomeness and glamour with no clear direction  for my next coiffure? Who could know that answer to this? It's probably that last thing though.

Anyhow, my strategy for dealing with the funk is to write a blog entry, finally. I kinda want to clean the house or walk the dog...but unfortunately my bum foot hurts quite a bit (you know...like the kind of hurt that makes you think it will never be normal again and reminds you that you haven't done your PT and causes a pity spiral) from some ill-advised dancing last night. So, writing. Also, I'm worried that soon my friend Nora will point out that I haven't updated my blog in a while, and then I'll have to confront the fact that I haven't updated my blog in a while.

So here it is. Let me apologize for not being my usual cheery optimistic self.

On 9/7, I wrote that I "said it and meant it, no matter what" in reference to my goal of eating healthy for a year. So I was, and am, super proud of myself for maintaining excellent nutrition during the period of limited mobility after my leg break. As it turns out, this period of trying to return to normal is pretty hard too, but the 10 weeks after my surgery were some of the hardest in my life, and it was both awesome for my health and a significant symbolic victory for me to know that I could maintain a nutrition goal no matter what the obstacle. And if you don't count my Tacodeli concession/addiction, I didn't turn to food for emotional comfort at all!

So...if I could stay the course even while my ability to grocery shop or cook was limited, I can do anything right? Sure success, right? Nope.

So if a leg break didn't break me (har har), what did? Teaching. I'm not ready to go into the stresses of my job, which are compounded by my loving of it, but let's just say that you should hug a teacher immediately AND give her what's in your wallet. Anyhow,it started with some tortilla chips, and before I knew it...there was a snickers...and then I ate the Yule Log at my mom's house that she ordered from Gabriel's, the bakery that Paula Dean's cousin owns...have I mentioned this?...and then I ate a Homophobic Chicken Biscuit at the airport...and now I have 800 chins.

It's possible that I'm being dramatic. I'm still eating mostly healthy stuff and I even cooked a fresh and edible turkey chili today. And my beauty grows faster than my chins, so there's that.

Nonetheless, I can't get over the fact that I'm starting the year off with no dating potentials, not able to run, and unsure of where to go in my career. And I haven't taken a bath yet. Oh, and I wrote a wrote a whole post about resolutions without actually coming up with any. Blerg.