I gave a talk on Virginia Woolf a few years ago. During the question-and-answer period that followed it, the subject that seemed to most interest a number of people was whether Woolf should have had children. I answered the question dutifully, noting that Woolf apparently considered having children early in her marriage, after seeing the delight that her sister, Vanessa Bell, took in her own. But over time Woolf came to see reproduction as unwise, perhaps because of her own psychological instability. Or maybe, I suggested, she wanted to be a writer and to give her life over to her art, which she did with extraordinary success. In the talk I had quoted with approval her description of murdering “the angel of the house,” the inner voice that tells many women to be self-sacrificing handmaidens to domesticity and male vanity. I was surprised that advocating for throttling the spirit of conventional femininity should lead to this conversation.
What I should have said to that crowd was that our interrogation of Woolf’s reproductive status was a soporific and pointless detour from the magnificent questions her work poses. (I think at some point I said, “Fuck this shit,” which carried the same general message and moved everyone on from the discussion.) After all, many people have children; only one made To the Lighthouse and The Waves, and we were discussing Woolf because of the books, not the babies.
The full AP investigation on cops who have lost their badges for “sexual misconduct” (that category includes rape, btw):
In a yearlong investigation of sexual misconduct by U.S. law enforcement, The Associated Press uncovered about 1,000 officers who lost their badges in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.
The number is unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action. California and New York — with several of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies — offered no records because they have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. And even among states that provided records, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.
On the chaos and corruption of Florida’s mental hospitals:
FLORIDA’S STATE-FUNDED MENTAL HOSPITALS are supposed to be safe places to house and treat people who are a danger to themselves or others.
But years of neglect and $100 million in budget cuts have turned them into treacherous warehouses where violence is out of control and patients can’t get the care they need.
Captain Awkward on how to tell your dysfunctional family why you’re not coming for the holidays:
People from fucked up families do not owe people from ‘normal’ families the performance of ‘normality’ or happiness, especially around the holidays. The hot shame and terror you feel when people ask “What are you doing for Christmas” or say “But what about your faaaaaamily!” without realizing that their small talk is your stuff of nightmares is real, and I’m sorry. It’s such a shitty combination of feeling put on the spot, shown up for not being ‘normal,’ maybe with the stab of grief for the memories you *should* have had, and anger at the happy obliviousness of the questioner. Sometimes the best answer is a non-answer, like “we like a very quiet Christmas” (who’s ‘we?’ who cares?) and sometimes it’s “that’s not a very happy time of year for me, but I am glad it is for you” and sometimes it’s “haven’t really made a plan yet, but tell me all about yours?!?” and sometimes the best answer is the naked truth: “My parents are alcoholics and all my worst memories are of Christmas with them. I’m trying really hard to make a new tradition for myself, and thanks to boyfriend I’m happy to be a part of yours this year.” Or “The holidays are triggering for me, and sometimes I can’t always predict how I’ll react.”
Anna Fitzpatrick to her teen self and any teen selves who are so anxious about sex they’re gonna puke (also who know virginity is totally heteronormative anyway):
You’re growing up in a liberal Canadian city during an era when Degrassi: The Next Generation is airing the abortion episode that was banned in the States. Your parents are cool with letting your older sister date. Your high school has a strong sex-ed program where you’re learning that it’s okay to want sex. Your health teachers educate you about contraceptive methods. The teen magazines you consume voraciously are all run by third-wavers who challenge the word “slut.” Your friends talk openly about their experiences. You agree with these things on a political level. You are sex positive, you budding feminist you. You believe people should do what they want with their bodies. And yet, this ironically makes you feel guiltier that you aren’t doing what you want with yours. Everywhere you look, it seems, people are doin’ it — and you’re still a virgin. (Even your fictional nerd friends have betrayed you. The sixth Harry Potter book just came out, and he’s getting more action than you.) With every passing day, week, month that you go without having sex, your anxiety grows and you wonder if there is something inherently wrong with you.
On the history and science of the sports bra:
In the Victorian era, women turned to corsets to keep their breasts from moving too much. Those competing at Wimbledon in 1887 returned to their dressing rooms in between matches to “unhitch their bloody corsets,” having been “repeatedly stabbed by the metal and whale bone stays of the cumbersome garments” as they played.
By 1911, women got a “sports corset” with flexible material, and thanks to the 1914 tango craze, someone even invented a dancing corset. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that bras started to replace corsets in the United States, and while brassieres designed for athletic purposes were patented as early as 1906, they simply never caught on.
I have some DELIGHTFUL news to share, which is that our beloved tech goth Maria is now our beloved tech goth Marco (Marco is transmasculine, and would prefer he/him pronouns but is still chill with being called Maria OR Marco right now) and is having a lil fundraiser for top surgery! Marco has been with the site almost from the beginning, is devastatingly handsome, and we love him and are thrilled that he’s taking this step, and we at The Toast would be super grateful for your support.
On a commonly misinterpreted study that anti-trans people like to reference:
McHugh’s fact assertions were uncritically repeated by The American Conservative, Lifesite, The Christian Post, The Washington Times, Newsmax, One News Now, The Libertarian Republic, and Fox News. While McHugh’s misrepresentation of the study was debunked, the “trans medical care = suicide” meme was born. Since McHugh’s Wall Street Journal article, this meme has managed to worm it’s way into everything from news outlets to comment sections.
4. Even if you forget to ask for their number, it can all work out in a beautiful and unexpected way.
Was walking back to my dorm on my way to class and I heard someone say, “Ay you smell good.” I turned around and saw this beautiful woman standing there. I went up to talk to her; I was so nervous that I walked away without asking for her number and her name. I saw her again a few weeks later and refused to miss my opportunity. I got her number and we set a date to hang out. The first night we hung out we ended up talking in the lobby of my dorm until the sun came up the next day — that’s when I knew she was special. We’ve been together ever since. We met at Tuskegee University #SkegeeLove.
What Willie Nelson wants, I want (even if I am now more a cultural stoner than a practicing one):
This begins to add up when you do the math. Nelson has spent the past 60 years touring the American landscape; the current version of the Honeysuckle Rose is the fifth tour bus to bear its name; each of the buses has crossed the country dozens, if not hundreds, of times; and even now, in his ninth decade, Nelson spends about 150 nights each year on the road. Just about everywhere he stops for the night, he is greeted by a welcoming party of local growers, many of whom have been visiting him on the Rosefor years and are eager — one might say determined — to give him a taste of their best grow. Nelson has developed, then, what may be the most expansive network of marijuana suppliers in the country, and as a daily pot smoker leading the unfettered life of a meandering troubadour whose habits are a secret to no one, it is distinctly possible that he has smoked more high-grade weed over the past six decades than anyone else alive.
A consequence of all this highness is that Nelson’s tolerance is supernatural. He can easily smoke 30 or 40 hits in a session and then play a flawless two-hour show. He does not always deploy this talent toward noble ends. He is famous for smoking new friends to oblivion and then challenging them to a few hands of high-stakes poker. Willie’s game is cash-only, and all debts must be settled at the table. This has led to stories among his intimates of the time he refused to let Woody Harrelson leave the room until he could deliver $40,000 in cash. It has also led to more than one folk song about the perils of smoking with Nelson, including a Toby Keith ballad with the refrain “I’ll never smoke weed with Willie again” and a new jingle introduced by Jack Johnson at Farm Aid this year whose chorus revolves around the line “Willie got me stoned and took all my money.”
Re: Cop sexual assault.
Whenever anyone brings up cop misconduct, I always advise them to pop over to the PoliceOne Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/policeone/ to see what actual cops think. Believe me, it’s not pretty. And you can bet no one there will ever mention this article.
But but but bad apples #bluelivesmatter #notallcops
I’m sick and fucking tired of it. I’ve known some good people that were police. Not all cops are bad people. But a ton of cops are just in it to bully people and abuse their power and the complete failure of the good cops to police their own ranks is what allows this to fester.
Yep. That argument is so weak because the good cops are still part of a culture that insists that all cops must be defended at all costs, no matter their sins.
Somebody pointed out once that the point of “a few bad apples” is that they make all the other apples mouldy. A few bad apples is not a defence! The POINT is that the whole barrel has to be thrown away!
Guys guys guys this beautiful article ran last week and I just want to constantly repost it every time anyone ever discusses food and “food back then SUCKED” and the Authenticity Of Food and all .http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-30/friday-food-post-the-economics-behind-grandma-s-tuna-casseroles READ IT, for real, I wanted to quote it but I really just wanted to quote the whole thing.
Also, that virginity article is beautiful. I didn’t have sex until I was out of undergrad and I spent the entirety of high school and university feeling like a gigantic loser for it. It was a real blow to my self esteem, even while I consciously thought “This is not a big deal!” There’s a big gap between the part of you that rationally says “sex is not that big of a deal!” And the part saying “well then why doesn’t anyone want to have sex with meeee?” And that piece just nailed it.
That link somehow pasted incorrectly, and replying to say so means you can’t edit it, so this should be clickable: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-30/…
Thank you for fixing my fuck up! I blame, as always, my piece of absolute shit phone
That was a really, really good piece. Thank you so much.
My sister and I still make our grandma’s Chicken Catherine recipe which embraces cream of mushroom soup. It was something I loved even when I was a picky eater, so haters can just leave more food for me. OM NOM NOM.
I was having kind of a shitty week, so I made my grandma’s macaroni & cheese, which is noodles with cheddar cheese, milk, and cream of mushroom soup, with more cheddar cheese and French’s “French” “fried” “onions” on top and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in recent memory.
Ugh that sounds so good! My favorite mac & cheese add (apologies if you’re a vegetarian) is ham. I fry it in the pan first and then mix in the grease too. Grown up me has started adding brussels sprouts to the fry up part, but kid me is totally rolling my eyes about that.
Life goals include imbuing my children with the same love for Pineapple Delight* as my mother and grandmother did for me.
*Mix together canned pineapple, whipped cream, mini marshmallows. Eat out of mixing bowl with a spoon.
ETA: I think we can, however, leave creamed salmon on crackers by the wayside. Sorry, mom.
Agree re: creamed salmon. My mom had a special mold for this, such that when you served it, it was in the shape of a fish! It seems unimaginable now.
THAT WAS WHAT THAT WAS FOR! I used to have one of those I bought from Value Village that I used to make fish-shaped cakes (which I did more than once because they are awesome). It obviously wasn’t really a cake pan but I couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be for.
I also remember that in the 1960s and 1970s, doctors were cautioning against all sorts of high calorie, high fat, high cholesterol food. In particular, bacon. In my family, bacon grease flavored everything: eggs, steak, hamburger, potatoes, eggs. The fat made the food taste good. So people were trying to eat healthier, and suddenly, they had to figure out how to spice up food without having the old reliable: bacon grease.
I also remember my mother trying to add wheat germ to everything (cottage cheese? Are you kidding??), because wheat germ was Good For You. We rebelled, but we still had to deal with whole wheat flour and trying to add spices to that to make the food have any taste at all. (We also had a 1/2 acre garden, as well as cows, pigs, chicken … so our diet was usually fresh food in summer, frozen meat and canned food made from fresh produce in winter… which is surprisingly modern as everything is buy local these days).
I have distinct memories of eating homemade yogurt with wheat germ on it. Let’s just say some things were never meant to meet. (My mother contains multitudes, apparently)
My mother made all our hamburgers in the 1980s with wheat germ and Worcester sauce mixed in. Her meatloaf was also made with wheat germ. Wheat germ was the bane of my childhood.
My mother would regularly serve Lentil Pizza. Basically home made whole-wheat pizza with overcookeddhal on top. It was AWFUL. It wasn’t just once, either, it was in regular rotation. I only have been able to look a lentil in the eye in the last few years, because of that.
I loved the point in the article about people who were not good cooks having to cook anyway. I think about that when I sew, a lot. A hundred years ago, two hundred, this wasn’t a hobby. It was how to clothe your nakedness. UGH. And then typing that comment about the lentil pizza made me realise that yeah, my mum was not at all a good cook, and she hated cooking (I already knew those things) but she cooked because we were poor and could only access nutritious food if she spent time cooking it. We were well-fed. It just wasn’t a fun experience for anyone, and that’s the tradeoff you make.
I love reading about food from the 50s and 60s. Recently I started buying old church and women’s group cookbooks from that era and it hasn’t been disappointing. There are many (many) recipes I’d never make, but some of them are A+. One of the books is from a Texas rural electric coop and there’s a recipe for cornpone pie which is basically chilli covered with cornbread batter and baked. Brilliant.
Also, my family is originally from South Jersey where creamed chipped beef gravy on toast or potatoes is still considered a breakfast of champions because it is delicious to all people, young and old. Growing up in the midwest I assumed people out there didn’t know about it was (like the Jersey delicacy of pork roll) and that’s why we couldn’t get it at restaurants. Later I learned that people outside of South Jersey see this beautiful gift from the gravy gods as low class food when back in Jersey, it was always a special treat. (There’s one cafe in the beach town we visit that serves creamed chipped beef gravy on top of a hot Philadelphia-style pretzel and it is truly a breakfast fit for a queen.)
I have a collection of this kind of cookbook, with an emphasis on ladies’ societies and churches that catered to specific ethnic groups. Even when I don’t make any of the recipes (they are not always easy to follow), they are such a fascinating glimpse into the history of women and immigration in America.
Totally! The crown gem in my cookbook collection is a photocopy of a fundraiser cookbook from a sewing circle. I’ve never had a recipe from that set fail.
I too collect these kinds of cookbooks! They are fascinating, not just for the types of food the authors decided to include, but for how the recipes are written. You can see how recipes changed over the years from skeletons and aides memoires to ultra-precise step by step chemistry projects. I love old cookbooks!
I have also had the whole “Uh, actually America DOES have a TON of culinary history” conversation with dumbass food snobs altogether too much.
We have an awesome food history! How could it not? It’s a huge place. Although, I’m of the opinion that all food history is really fascinating. I’m the only person I know who read and enjoyed Cod, Salt, Banana: the fruit that (changed the world? history? something like that). There’s a great book about Lobsters and an article about Oysters in the West vs Eastern US that I wish I’d kept somewhere. I’ve run into a lot of folks making snide comments about food in the States, and it’s so weird to me, because that’s not even a monolithic thing? Because we have such a rich and regional food history. Maybe I need to start pushing back, but I do also want to make some friends here…
This article by Stacia Brown on the untold history of African American cookbooks is excellent and is about the history of US food http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123233/untold-…
Ahhh thank you! This is so perfect! I opened the article and then immediately also started opening all the links in the article, so now my browser window is filled with food history pages. <3
Nope, I have all of those books and lots more besides. Several books on bananas because the impact on Central American politics was astonishing, but yeah, I’ve got an entire shelf of food history books. ~*~kindred spirits*~*
Yes! It was! If you have some others to recommend on the banana, I’d happily read more. I mean it continues to be such an issue, and it also really drove home the just because something is organic does not mean it’s good for the environment, re all the clearcutting that happens to plant virgin fields of bananas.
It’s so nice to have a food book twin! And now, out of exuberance, I’ll share my other new factoid, which is totally unrelated to anything, but I just learned it: in Henry VIII’s kitchen, they didn’t really use baking dishes, so the pastry crust functioned as a cooking pot and as a sort of saranwrap/aluminium foil substitute. But no effort was made to make the pastry crust edible or tasty, it was basically just flower and water. People would tear off the top and then eat the insides and then discard the outsides. So pastry crust was basically the disposable wrapper of the tudor period. It boggled my mind.
Cornish pasties are still that. The big knob on the top was made extra thick so miners could eat it using their dirty hands and not have to touch the rest of their food.
Do… I have to feel shitty about eating bananas, now, too? Oh well. I guess I knew it was only a matter of time…
But now we don’t have to worry about all the harmful tin-mining-related substances on our hands poisoning us, we get to eat the rest of the pasty *and* the extra-thick pastry overload bit. Win-win!
I liked Cod better than Salt (Cod is actually super delightful in audiobook format, for whatever that’s worth), but yes to food histories, always and for all time.
My podcast app tells me I would enjoy Gravy, which is about southern food culture and history- I have not listened yet, but it seems super interesting: https://www.southernfoodways.org/gravy-format/gra…
See also 97 Orchard: An Edible History, if by some strange chance you can still see over your “to read” stack…
I LOVED Salt. I found Cod tedious, though. I have asked for a book about the food history of Avocados for christmas.
Those cookbooks were what my Master’s thesis was in! Now I am sad that I dropped out before I finished 🙁
Not if it would make you sad, but I’d love to read something here at the toast on that subject. Maybe you have some tidbits tucked away that would be fun to share in an informal setting like this?
Oh jeeze! My thesis had a Canadian focus, so I’m not sure if that would change your interest. I’ll spend the weekend checking out what remains 🙂
It has changed my interest! Consider my interest now doubled. I watched the Anthony Bourdain show about food in Quebec (he visited a sugar shack and whatnot) and even though Anthony Bourdain is kind of definitely a jerk, I was riveted. So I’d love to hear about some Canadian food traditions from someone who is not Anthony Bourdain. That would be wonderful actually.
Let’s see if I can double it again! My focus was on (it has been five years since I left g school, so I’m just remembering both the topic and the language I need to discuss it) how church cook books (particularly in the prairies when colonist settlements began to fully realize) worked to codify community norms and delineate community boundaries. Something something Benedict Anderson.
That’s totally awesome! I think there’s something about being remote from home or kind of isolated that makes food feel like an extra important thing. I cannot even imagine what a challenge it must’ve been! And I think that must totally still be a thing, because I’ve started reading so many food blogs and watching youtube videos of people making certain staples that I miss from home, because I want to feel like I can do it the right way whatever that means. When I was living where I grew up, I was totally fine cutting corners. All of a sudden though, I need exactly the right peppers and whatnot. It’s kind of a strange to notice such a difference in my food attitude.
Actually! That reminds me of something I just recently read: http://www.buzzfeed.com/genamourbarrett/yuh-jus-h… The generational aspect of passing on certain techniques and ingredients is so interesting too.
I’d be totally into reading that! Canadians always talk about how we have no food traditions outside of Quebec and that’s so not true.
God, my husband loves that show, but you cannot trust anything Bourdain says at all. His show is not at all about food traditions or what normal people eat, it’s about what trendy hipsters and Bourdain’s foofy friends like to eat. So much crap.
Indeed! He totally comes off like the smuggest jerk who ever smugged.
My collection of similar cookbooks came from my grandmother and the churches and women’s orgs she belonged to, and include recipes she submitted for publication. Such a treasure
Wait, people think chipped beef and gravy is low-class? It’s delicious! What else do you do with leftover roast beef?
Actually, I’ve made baked chili covered with a cornbread batter in a cast iron skillet. But I love chili and cornbread together soooo…. It’s really delicious and the cornbread absorbs some of the chili deliciousness. Ugh, so good on a cold night.
I love these kinds of cookbooks. I actually find they are a good source of gluten free stuff, too. I mean, you have to wade through the recipes that are like ‘take some wheat. Roll it in more wheat. Stuff it with barley’. But then other stuff will just be naturally gluten free, which is the stuff that will be delicious, not the stuff where you use ten flours and pretend it’s anything like bread. (I do still make that stuff but you know… it’s not bread)
That article about food was great. Sometimes people do the reverse thing and wax nostalgic about “old-fashioned home cooking”, but they forget that we enjoy access to a LOT of out-of-season and non-local produce, that regulations regarding food mean we know what we’re getting, that modern processing, shipping, storage and climate control help keep our food fresher longer, and that we have standardized cookbooks (and the Internet) to help us learn how to cook pretty much everything. Standardized measurements in recipes are a relatively new thing, historically, so if you were a cook trying to make something new, even if you HAD a recipe you weren’t guaranteed not to fuck it up (and it’s not like you could just order pizza when you did fuck up).
I heard a piece of trivia that Mrs. Beeton was the first to innovate the convention of listing all ingredients to a recipe out before the body of the recipe, which is just freaking brilliant when it comes to shopping. It becomes clear reading cookbooks from before say The Joy of Cooking that authors also relied on you to basically know the techniques already, so they’d explain stuff like, just do what you’d normally do to make a pie crust and then try out these fancy new combinations for the fillings. You can see why people would be hesitant to deviate too far from the methods they knew worked.
That said, I also just went to a museum that featured a tour of Henry the VIII’s kitchens at Hampstead Court, and I came away with the impression that food (for the mega-rich) used to be much much more complicated. Imagine assembling a whole peacock pie and then covering it in the skin and feathers of that very same peacock. It tripped me out to think of how impressive that must’ve been on a table.
“Make a sauce, to which add a goodly amount of red wine, stirring over a low fire until it be well-thickened.”
Thanks a lot, guys. Really helpful.
I think a goodly amount of wine is whatever you manage not to drink while trying to follow a convoluted recipe.
Like, those are the only two bits I ALREADY KNOW
How are we defining a goodly amount of wine? I LACK HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR THESE MEASUREMENTS.
“authors also relied on you to basically know the techniques already”
My favorite example of that was from the TV show “The Victorian Farm” (where British historians re-created running a farm during that time period, using mainly primary source materials).
The Victorian cookbook they were using helpfully advised them to “prepare the sheep’s head in the usual way”.
I love how breezy they are about that stuff, “Like, oh, no need to get fancy, just your regular methods will do when tackling this sheep’s head.” Which is the complete opposite of the America’s Test Kitchen approach, which is “We tested 47 different temperatures of water to tell you definitively which temperature is best for cooling your fork when making pastries. If you don’t follow this and several other tips on the following pages, prepare for certain doooooom.”
There’s still a bit of that thought. Like, a recipe will say ‘brown the onions and garlic’ ok that’s a lot less to assume than ‘prepare the sheep’s head’ but you still have to know. I helped teach my sister to cook and am now watching my partner’s teen learn to cook – he already knows how to do all the steps but hasn’t mastered the ‘being in charge of a whole recipe and doing things in the right order and knowing what everything means without having it explained’. It’s astounding how hard and complex it is. Every time I feel like giving myself a freaking medal cos you know what? I’m REALLY GOOD at chopping things. It doesn’t sound impressive but I think it kind of is?
I also notice it when trying out a new cuisine – if I’m cooking chinese food or middle eastern I don’t actually need the recipe as such, it’s the techniques I need. Do I add the spices at the end or brown them right at the start? How hot does the pan need to be? How thing do I need to slice things? (I recommend Fuschia Dunlop’s SiChuanese cookbooks – I can now finally cook things that taste like the things I ate in China and tbh most of it is about how you slice things, no joke)
I have the cookbook that my stepmom’s mom used to learn to cook, which happens to be a Scandinavian one not because they had any scandinavian ancestry, but because it was the only one where she could consistently follow the recipe and get a good outcome at the end. And it’s still definitely more vague than many of my other cookbooks….
Great article! The most striking thing to me was the bit about “there were a lot of bad cooks back then.” So people had to come up with shortcuts (like canned soup in a casserole) because the only reasonable way to get prepared food was to prepare it. I’d never really thought about that before, how cooking was just as much a thing you have to be talented at, or practice a lot, and have the time for, etc., as it is today. It’s easy to fall into thinking every housewife back in the day grew up cooking at her mother’s side and had home ec classes and spent the day in the kitchen. And that thinking falls apart with just a little poking at it, of course. It’s just a little mind-blowing to realize that the 2015 person who gets takeout or heats up a frozen dinner for every meal existed in 1940 and was cooking badly/hurriedly/etc instead.
Related: Are “my wife’s cooking sucks” jokes not really a thing anymore for this reason? Or are they still going strong in social circles I avoid?
Totally! TV dinners were totally a thing way back when. My dad was a latchkey kid of a single mother who was herself the latchkey kid of a single mother. I don’t think either of them ever learned to cook anything more complicated than a scrambled egg.
My favorite episode of Julia Child was when she chopped about 9 pounds of onions to make a french onion soup and then was, like, wow that was a lot of time, you could just use a can of soup and then add some wine and maybe chop just one onion for more texture. It was brilliant chill cooking at its best.
My mom’s mom was actually a pretty terrible cook, and it’s been really interesting now that I’m an adult to think about how that affected how my mom cooked when we were kids, and also to watch my mom get way more excited about cooking as she’s gotten older (and also as technology/availability/finances have allowed, of course).
Very true! Otherwise, Peg Bracken’s “I Hate to Cook-book” wouldn’t have been such a huge seller in the ’60s. (There are some great recipes in there, by the way, including a super-easy one for pot roast wrapped in tin foil).
My grandmother (who cooked for six kids for YEARS, day in and day out) was absolutely thrilled when prepared foods, microwaves, etc., came into fashion and she didn’t have to do all that work anymore. She made good (though basic) things, but was never particularly into cooking as an activity.
I really liked that article! My favorite part: “Yet tripe has absolutely nothing to recommend it as a food product, except that it is practically free; almost anything you cooked with tripe would be just as good, if not better, without the tripe in it.”
throwing tripe shade
I know! I caught that too. Guns at dawn, good sir. *glove slap to the face*
But it made me happy, because I’m the odd one out in my family for not eating tripe. I just don’t like it! And sometimes for politeness reasons, I have to push through and eat it, and if there’s anything worse than tripe, it’s tripe eaten begrudgingly.
If you’re on Twitter, there’s a hilarious mock-advisory council for the British Tripe Board.
I love that food article. It strikes just the right levels of interesting, historically based, and not judgy about past people. It also makes me want to dig up the recipe for pistachio pudding with pineapple, nuts, and cream cheese that is a family holiday staple.
It’s not a bad article, taken in isolation… but the author, Megan McArdle, was a notorious food snob for a long time, regardless of what she claims her mother taught her. (She’s also an annoying glibertarian who’s generally made a fool of herself by picking arguments with the likes of Paul Krugman.)
lol pink himalayan salt writer! At least she’s found something to write about other than how Romney’s 47% comments will be popular with swing voters.
I kind of agree with Megan McArdle (how I hate typing that) insofar as it’s silly to scoff at 1950s and 60s people for their terrible palates, but I think her economic argument is off base and there actually are a lot of sociological and gender-linked and plain weird reasons why food tastes have changed. (Well, I don’t really know why people liked aspic and now don’t, but there are lots of sociological reasons why convenience foods invented in wartime had to be marketed to newly unemployed housewives in new and time-consuming ways.)
But I strongly doubt that meat was more expensive and harder to afford then. I’m pretty sure the opposite is true. And housing and education were radically cheaper, so you could spend more of your disposable on food anyway. In any case, there were a lot of precedents in both Depression and wartime thrift that made recipes with canned and packaged stuff appealing, and don’t forget how recent refrigeration was–people expected to have a long season of few fresh vegetables and a lot of cans and packages. Meanwhile with improved transportation and shipping, our standards for variety of produce and how fresh everything has to be have gone steadily up. When my mother was in high school in the 1950s, BROCCOLI was a slightly exotic vegetable.
In conclusion, I like tripe.
But that fucking Swedish study, though. Like, even if it did “prove” the thing all of these awful people claim it did, it would definitely be one of the cases where anecdotal evidence trumps all that bullshit.
Also, hooray Marco! I just started a new job and am saving for top surgery of my own, but once I have a little disposable income, hopefully I can get some your way!
Yeah, about that. As one of the resident Scandinavians on this here message board (the Toast is basically a message board with a few articles now and then, right?), let me tell you about Sweden’s policy on gender reassignment as it was until the year of 2013: sterilisation.
You could be diagnosed as trans (as in, diagnosed by a psychiatrist) without being sterilised. But only if you didn’t want treatment. If you wanted your legal gender changed and/or surgery, you had to “consent” to sterilisation. Or, actually, to give up your germ cells, forever. So, you couldn’t even save your own sperm in a sperm bank or freeze your eggs. No bio kids ever.
I WONDER HOW THAT POSSIBLY MIGHTA COULD HAVE IMPACTED FUTURE HAPPINESS
What the actual fuck
Yep. Sweden has a long and proud (=absolutely shameful) history with forced sterilisation. This Wikipedia article is not great but will tell you the basics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilis…
Also, I ranted a bit about it downthread…
Congratulations Marco!
woooooooo Marco!!!!
Hooray Marco!!!!
Yay Marco!!!
Hurrah Marco!
YESSSSSSSS MARCO! Congratulations!
I’m trying to imagine what would happen if _I_ walked up to a strange woman and told her she smelled good. I’m not going to try it.
It’s definitely the kind of comment that goes from perfectly acceptable/nice when you know the person to serial killer when you don’t.
I am a fragrance nerd and am *still* careful. Though maybe not as careful as I ought to be? In France, once, I caught a most beguiling scent wafting off a fellow and chased after him to figure out what it was. I couldn’t remember how to say, “That fragrance smells good; would you mind telling me what it is?” So instead, I said “quelle est cette odeur agréable?” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyWDomKr9AA)
He did tell me (CDG Homme 2), but it took him a while to stop laughing.
Categorizing rape and other kinds of sexual assaults as “sexual misconduct” is like calling death “unbreathing”
Part of me agrees with you, absolutely- it’s vague enough to soften the visceral impact of the word “rape” and people shouldn’t seek to make themselves more comfortable with the fact of assault. But I’m also a campus official who works a lot on Title IX, and having a spectrum/array of names for the rotten things that people experience all gathered under the term of “sexual misconduct” can be productive.
I work with survivors who are more comfortable requesting accommodations and support and investigations when they can call what they experienced “misconduct.” In those cases, that’s because it allows them some privacy and some space to define what happened for themselves. It also helps to illustrate that stalking and harassment and intimate partner violence and non-sexual discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity are different expressions of the same perfidious heteronormitave sense of entitlement and casual misogyny– and all of those behaviors are unacceptable. I hope that the way we talk about it at our school makes use of “sexual misconduct” as a term of art with strategic ambiguity to try to create a more inclusive intellectual home for folks. I don’t believe everybody uses the term that way, but I think it can be more than only a dismissive euphemism.
My profession also uses sexual misconduct as an umbrella term that gathers a lot under it; and if it helps, I would say that it describes the violation of the profession ethic, not the act itself.
This was an illuminating read/watch this morning, about how teenagers view these distinctions.
I have never in my life smoked marijuana, but if Willie Nelson wanted me to smoke up with him, I would seriously consider it. Even if I don’t have $40,000 to spend on poker debts.
All the congrats to you Marco!!!!!!!!!!
“Sorry Willy, I don’t carry cash on me!”
Yep, I have never smoked and I don’t know how to play poker but I would try both if Willie offered.
Man, Florida’s mental healthcare system is bad, and ALSO aren’t they one of the states that can do permanent involuntary commitment?
The bra science article is so interesting! Most sports bras are SUCH garbage, and the fact that the vast majority are sized S/M/L/etc. rather than by actual fucking bra size infuriates me.
They really are pretty trash. Manufacturers don’t quite seem to understand that I would like to strap my boobs down WITHOUT compressing my rib cage to the point of pain.
Yeah, and the larger your boobs, the less likely you are to even find a sports bra, much less one that actually works as advertised.
Especially because most bra manufacturers seem to think that boob size is directly proportional to overall body size somehow. Smaller lady with big boobs? Bigger lady with small boobs? GO FUCK YOURSELF.
Yesss
I was just about to comment “it’s hard enough just to find a 40B at all, much less S/M/L where both dimensions are even close to being what I need”.
I have been lucky with certain Hanes sports bras with adjustable straps. I can shorten it on my smaller boob side so that it doesn’t bounce too much, and take out the padding on the other side so that it isn’t painfully squashed. I got mine at Walmart of all places! Though it’s been a year and the pink one still bleeds pink all over my white biking shirts.
I’m totally on the other side of this: I’m a 30E or F!!
My fave sports bra for running is by Shock Absorber. It’s not the comfiest thing but it keeps me from painful bouncing!
Yep, around 30H here (although I just got new bras and the fitter decided I was a 34 HH/J. I think the back is too big, though!) and finding large cup sizes with smaller band sizes is hard. I would hate to try to buy a sports bra with just S/M/L – my shoulders and ribcage are fairly narrow, but my breasts are not.
I recently broke down and upped my budget per bra for sports bras to match my regular bras, and it’s been sooo worth it (and not only because my old sports bras were so old as to also be unspeakably gross….) But of the zillion sports bras I tried on at Title Nine, only one was really any good for what I needed (including, as a key feature, the ability to take the damn thing off!)
The Captain Awkward article was fabulous and chock-full of great things but I have to say the part that will stick with me the longest is in the very first comment thread
This year, I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving with a menu that doesn’t involve Paula Deen’s Pineapple Casserole. (canned pineapple + cheddar + butter + breadcrumbs… served hot.)
Oh god, I just happen to have all of those ingredients … it’s like a horror film, except it’s my pantry that holds a deep terror, instead of the basement.
Should I make it and report back? Should I just chuck out the can of pineapple and run?
I am horrified, but also DEEPLY curious.
The actual recipe exists soooo it might be an interesting (?) experiment…?
lol there’s also an entire cup of sugar
…
D:
My feelings exactly.
Anyone else just straight up skip the sugar in most recipes that call for it? (Except on the rare occasions when I’m baking something dessert-y)
A little bit of brown sugar in a marinade or stir fry can be really good, but I’m generally not a huge fan of sweet food that isn’t dessert. (I could happily eat dessert for every meal, though.)
Yes. I don’t like sugar in my tomato sauce, salad dressing, or marinades.
Also, it is rare that there is a thing with fruit in it that I prefer to the fruit itself. My preferred adaptation of that casserole would be, Eat a can of pineapple.
Sugar *and* salt. I blame my mum’s influence, who disapproves of both.
I was tempted because it would have given me something to report back about on the Open Thread, but then I saw that picture and did a full body shudder.
I can get behind pineapple on pizza, but that is too. much. pineapple.
Also, 1 stick butter? I love butter, but there’s also 2 cups cheddar cheese. Is that not enough already? Have mercy.
I started dry-heaving a little, just then, ngl.
It has a 5 star rating? And 295 people have not only made this thing but also taken the time to review the recipe? I really don’t understand.
That Bloomberg article linked in an earlier comment explains Paula Deen’s recipes. Seriously. Deen’s food is the food of Midwestern church ladies, fancied up for tv. She’s certainly not my kind of cook, but she is aiming at her audience of the people who still eat tuna casserole unironically and all that. They exist. I’m related to some of them, and the Bloomberg article pins it neatly.
I always find it odd that people always exclaim about how much butter, etc. she uses, when the modern-style cook often uses just as much fat, but it’s not butter, it’s duck fat or coconut oil or caul fat–something difficult and expensive to buy, ha!
I’m not anti-butter. I also use lard in recipes, because that is the cheap fat of my people, but I will totally use butter too. However, there’s a point of diminishing return for all fats in a recipe. At a certain point it stops doing it’s job of sticking things together and amplifying flavors and starts just sort of pooling up at the top and masking the other tastes.
Deen is, I think, supposed to be a southern cook, but she does it badly, in my opinion. There’s no reason to toss a whole stick of butter in to something that would get the same benefit from having a 1/4 of a stick. It just doesn’t make sense. And I grew up poor and have a lot of love for cheap eats. So beans, rice, greens, those are food I grew up eating in truckfulls. It can be done well and it can be done badly, a whole stick of butter when the cheddar itself should already have milk fats and oil is just unnecessary. Digging on her for using butter at all would be uncalled for, but it’s not unreasonable to say she over does it.
But I will totally check out that Bloomberg article! It sounds super interesting.
You have not eaten some of my family’s ‘special’ recipes. They are very like Paula Deen’s, and yes, adding a cup of cheese and a stick of butter is common, in fact, they would probably add even more cheese on top, ha!
They make gravy with the usual roux, get it all nice and gravy-ish, and then add huge scoops of margarine, yup, margarine, not butter, to the finished gravy, and yeah, it’s an oil slick. But the margarine makes it ‘good’, or so I am told.
I also know someone whose grandma added sugar to *everything*, because when she was a little girl, sugar was not available. It’s more than being poor, and I sure can’t explain it, but many of the people I know who grew up being ‘not enough food ever’ poor will make and eat some extraordinary things.
The article, which I’m trying to link again, in case people don’t want to scroll up, really touches on things that are so my family. Most of them don’t like cooking, some don’t even like food, they just want an excess of food. The question of the day is not, ‘how did it taste?’ but ‘Did everyone get enough?’ And eating out is still a huge treat for many of the older people in my family.
.http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-30/friday-food-post-the-economics-behind-grandma-s-tuna-casseroles
I mean, I sort of glossed over it, but I did grow up food insecure, and my grandmother who lived through the depression even more so. I get that all those childhood experiences can really shape your taste preferences for better and worse, but a whole stick of butter just does not make sense in that recipe. In a gravy, adding margarine makes sense because you can stretch a sauce however much you want and more fats will make a richer sauce. I grew up doing flour gravies and red-eye gravy, so I know whereof I speak on that. But adding more butter on top of that much cheese with something astringent like pineapple is basically just a waste of butter. It’s going to run off. I love the style of food that Paula Deen purports to make, but I don’t think she represents it well. That’s my beef with her recipes. Well that plus pineapple and cheese isn’t my jam.
ETA: But I totally enjoyed the article. Food is such a fascinating cultural space.
It sounds, though, like you enjoy and are interested in food. The people in my family and that I know who would serve the pineapple and cheese dish would never consider that pineapple is astringent, it is just pineapple, and special, because no one keeps canned pineapple at home. So add cheese! add more cheese! add some butter! because excess makes it good, no matter what it actually tastes like.
Also, most of my family would never use real butter, only stick margarine, so Paula Deen recipes are super fancy. Another holiday family ‘recipe’ is to cook some largish piece of meat (whatever they can afford) in a crock pot with two sticks of margarine (most people in my family will not use butter–it is ‘too expensive’–even when a pound of butter and a pound of good margarine are about the same price. They’ll buy the cheapest, nastiest margarine available and pat themselves on the back for being frugal–though they also bought the pack of one serving jello cups, instead of making a package of jello and splitting it into servings, ha!).
Food is fascinating, yup, and it is also interesting that people that experienced the exact same conditions will spend their later, more prosperous lives, eating *completely* different foods, and having very different expectations of how food should be prepared, and what foods are ‘good’.
That’s fair! I think food and recipes became an obsession for me on account of not having much control or access, so now I have an encyclopedic approach that as you point it out, does seem like it would be a bit unusual. Which shouldn’t surprise me since it’s something that has come up in therapy a lot because my fixation was a red flag for my therapist, so yeah! I totally get where that could be a branching point. And also maybe not the normal approach.
Single serving packages are so tricksy like that though! Sometimes I feel like it’s worth it, since if I eat them slowly they’re less likely to spoil, but then I look at the price per ounce and I’m torn.
And that actually reminds me of Henry VIII kitchen (sorry, just learned all these facts, so I’m crazy obsessed) because they served a lot of meats and mostly beef, but not usually pork, because beef was considered rich people food and pork was considered poor people food, so even though roasted pork is super tasty, they just never really served it. Because the point was to use ingredients and quantities that screamed “abundant” and not so much emphasis was put on actual taste or preferences.
It’s all so personal too. My sibling who grew up in the same environment, and in fact, had it worse do to certain circumstances changing, has developed completely different habits and preferences but I can tell that we have some of the same motivations. It’s like being shot out of a not very accurate cannon.
My mother grew up in the Deep South (US) in the 40s and 50s, cooking all day every day alongside her mother for a large family. She says they used butter exclusively because it was cheaper, for them, than margarine. Because they had a cow. Milking was her brothers’ job, churning was for her and her sisters. When the cow aged out of her job, the family learned that margarine was the cheaper option for purchase.
But they always skimped with the margarine and considered it extravagant from their early days with unlimited “free” butter.
Did you know the cheapest margarine used to come in a white stick with a packet of yellow die to be stirred into it? That image is … unsettling to me.
Wouldn’t the crackers absorb some of the butter, though?
I figure cheese + fruit is nearly always a good combination, so I am totally willing to attempt that recipe, I just need the right occasion and I’m not sure what that occasion is.
But ritz already have a buttery flavor! And they’d absorb some butter. And yet there are so many other juices for them to also absorb. Overall though I feel like it’s bringing coals to Newcastle. Although now I’m tempted to try it, just to see if I’ve been too hasty. Except that Paula Deen’s racist behavior and apologist comments have stuck in my craw, so could I even bring myself to give her recipe a try? I’ll remain skeptical. Although now that you mention it, there are cheese fruit combos that I do like, but not melted cheese. That’s a bridge too far. Or is it? I feel my resolve slowly fading.
On the Paula Deen front, folks downthread have mentioned similar recipes from different sources, so that’s an avenue you could investigate.
I will admit I’m having trouble thinking of melted cheddar + fruit combos. I did have a burger with cheddar and grilled pineapple recently. It was pretty good, though much less sweet than I expect this casserole to be. And more burger-y.
I have had good roasted pineapple in a savory situations: tacos al pastor are one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. It’s the swerve back to dessert with cheddar in mind. I could do a sweet cheddar pie. I could do a savory roasted pineapple dish. But in my food imaginings ne’er the twain shall meet. It just falls into some uncanny valley of flavor combinations for me. Like my husband as picked up a taste for pickled herring in a mayonnaise type sauce and he’ll have it with sweet stuff like jam on a sandwich. And I know that it’s possible! I just don’t even want to think about it. Even typing it out made me made me feel kinda blegh and I’ve seen him eat and enjoy that combo. It still feels sooo wrong.
I had a Stilton cheesecake with blackberry coulis once and it was delish, but hard to get my head around.
Also, I feel like the holidays are upon us, and controversial dishes are super fun to take to big potlucks because if it’s a large enough gathering, someone will be hooked.
I once went to a potluck where somebody brought horseradish mac and cheese and I was the only other person who liked it, so I basically sat there with a spoon and finished the whole thing. There’s a lock for every key, is what I’m saying.
Oh, right, potlucks! I actually go to a monthly potluck. People would be disappointed if I brought this instead of my usual mac & cheese, but I think I can swing bringing both some time in the next few months.
Sainsbury’s supermarket in the UK is currently running an ad campaign to encourage people to try new food combinations, one of which is “Try putting horseradish in your mac ‘n’ cheese tonight!” (it also suggests putting instant coffee in spaghetti bolognese, which has caused an uproar on social media). So they would have approved of that potluck!
Wait, do people eat food ironically? How do you eat tuna casserole ironically? I just make it because it’s cheap and simple and I grew up with it. I fear I can never be a food blogger now
Eating food ironically sounds like so much WORK.
ha! I’m too lazy to go find some links, but yeah, food bloggers often have some arch comment about tuna casserole, then post their ‘updated’ recipe that incorporates some trendy ingredient, which may or may not make any more sense than pineapple mixed with cheddar. Or talk about how they *never* make old fashioned casseroles, only cassoulet–
I don’t make tuna casserole very often any more, because of overfishing, etc., but I still use the same old recipe when I do.
You know, I make “tuna” fish salad out of chickpeas (overfishing/ pregnancy) – and I can eat it by the bucket. Would it be insane to make a chickpea “tuna” casserole? And does your recipe have crushed potato chips on top? Because that’s how we ate it growing up. With peas, and I still get a hankering once in a while.
I’m totally going to steal that! I’ve always got chickpeas around, but very rarely tuna.
This is my go-to recipe http://vanillaandbean.com/smashed-chickpea-salad-… but sometimes I fancy it up with like… dried cranberries or what have you. It’s so good! I don’t even miss the tuna.
Ah that would be perfect for lunch sandwiches! And because I cannot read a recipe without thinking of what I could, I’ll say that would also be great with some lentils mixed in, like cooked in the firmer style for even more texture variation. I have to draw the line at cranberries though, because nooooo. *runs very far away* I could maybe, maybe be persuaded to try a one with golden raisins, but even then … not too many.
I have made the Vegetarian Times tuna casserole, which uses a chickpea and chickpea flour cake you break up into flaky pieces, and it was pretty good! I added Old Bay seasoning to the cake, which upped the “fish association” in my mind.
Here’s the recipe: http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipe/mock-tuna-n…
OH SHIT. Oh man, totally going to make that! Sometimes I’ll add a little bit of powdered/roasted kelp for the oceany vibes but Old Bay is a great idea too.
I bet that would also make a really great crab cake swap out. I love the flavor of chickpea flour. Potato could fit in that recipe really well too.
Did you ever know that you’re my heeeeeeroooooooo
OH GOSH. I wonder if I could get this past the teen, who does not like tuna (but likes salmon, go figure). I used to eat so much tuna and I miss it but also… overfishing, etc… Maybe this is the answer? Do you think it would work ok in any other tuna dish, like do you think I could make some weird travesty of a delicious risotto with it?
Speaking of risotto, since we’re trading recipes, I now only ever make this brown rice risotto because it’s so gd easy. http://cookieandkate.com/2014/easy-brown-rice-ris… You just make the risotto base and then add whatever you like once it’s done. Obvs it takes longer in the oven but much less time in terms of, like, having to stand there. Which is the kind of time-poor I am, generally.
I have been making this pressure cooker brown rice a lot lately. It comes out quite risotto-like, it takes half an hour from start to finish, and now that I have the hang of how high to have the heat under it I don’t have to pay much attention while it cooks.
I’ve already reduced the butter a bit and replaced most of the seasoning with vegetable Better Than Boullion and added a minute to the cooking time, so I think I’m going to try medium grain brown rice next. Basically I am iterating towards actual risotto.
no, no crushed potato chips, but I’ve had that kind and it’s good. It’s the elbow mac, tuna, cream of mushroom soup, some milk/water, and, yeah, peas. I’ll have to try the chickpea thing, the ‘tunafish’ salad would be great!
not only do i eat tuna noddle casserole unironically (thank you, Midwestern Church Lady potluck upbringing) but i do a lazy version, too, ’cause even when i go to the trouble of making it exactly to my mother’s recipe, it’s never quite right :*(
1 box mac & cheese (the fancy shells and cheese one with the cheese goo in a squeeze packet)
1 can tuna
1 small can peas & carrots, drained
LOTS OF BLACK PEPPER ON TOP
some crunchy stuff on top (chips, bread crums, etc.) if you already have it on hand
you are all welcome 🙂
I go my mom’s egg noodles/ can tuna/ can mushroom soup/ condensed milk/ chips on top route. Recently I tried the budget bytes version which is very tasty but just doesn’t seem right without potato chips.
Tuna casserole (minus the cheese!!) is one quick food I really like, because it’s fast to make (admittedly, I use one of the pre-packaged alfredo pasta things) and super, super cheap. For someone with a disability who works and goes to school, it can be a lifesaver.
Maybe it’s good! 595 people might not be idiots! I don’t much like Paula Deen, the persona, but that don’t mean she can’t cook good.
I’m not saying those people are idiots- I think it’s super interesting that so many people looove a recipe that doesn’t interest me at all. They’ve eaten it and I haven’t so maybe I’m the idiot who’s missing out!
595 people can totally be idiots.
Wow. Savoury things with pineapple can be nice (pineapple fritters are great, and I am in favour of pineapple on pizza), but that does not sound like one of them.
THIS year? Implying that that poor person has been subjected to that atrocity multiple previous years? Which in turn implies someone, somewhere, made it and served it to other people more than once?
guys, no, I am here to tell you that pineapple casserole is amazing. crumbled up ritz crackers, not breadcrumbs though–you need the salty + sweet combo.
Strong argument, I do love salty + sweet. Mostly in the salted caramel, tart apple slices realm. Maybe I should branch out.
I’ll take your word for it, but I still think whoever invented it is a madman.
Thank you! I’ve never had it, but dang there’s some powerful food snobbery up in this thread.
Life is a rich tapestry, man. Certain food combinations strike some people as gross.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s being intentionally snobby about this so much as like, those ingredients don’t go together in a particularly familiar way to a lot of us and it doesn’t sound good.
I make a mean meatloaf with ketchup sauce and still use condensed cream of mushroom and generic egg noodles for my tuna noodle casserole.
That’s my take too (obviously, since I’m one of the people who cannot picture cheddar and pineapple making a happy marriage).
I’m an American living in the UK and in my brief time here, I understand feeling defensive about a regional cuisine, because I’ve gotten a taste, harhar, of the kneejerk “Don’t you guys use too much sugar? Do you fry everything? [And I’ve been to the state fair, where the answer is yes, but come one that’s once a year, folks] And, if you all had smaller portions …. ” All of those are ridiculous generalizations, and it’s worth pushing back on the assumptions behind them.
But that particular combination and that particular recipe both look bad to me. I haven’t had them, but my heart says no. That’s not slanderous or a generalization about the whole cuisine or culture, it’s a judgement about that instance. If someone put it down in front of me, I’d try it. Would I like it? Maybe. I had a grilled cheese sandwich with marmite, and everyone warned me that marmite tastes weird (maybe it does? But mostly it just tastes salty to me (and apparently it’s somewhat related to MSG, and I love MSG) so I’m not even saying that things that sound gross on their face will actually be gross to everyone, but some flavors push buttons for people and others don’t. If I’d had decided that marmite tasted gross (to me) that wouldn’t be a judgement on people who do like it. Some people (on reddit, so ymmv) react to the concept of pumpkin pie like it’s an idea straight from hell, because pumpkins are squashes and squashes should be savory in traditional British cooking. Do I secretly think I could win them over with my pumpkin pie? Yes. Is it the same as the people who make comments about the entirety of American cuisine based off assumptions about what that is? No.
So I’m torn, I get being defensive, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that all food criticisms come from a place of classism. Although I’m happy to talk about classism (and racism and sexism, which are often also present when it comes to ideas about food)! The MSG mention reminded me of another great food article I read once, that I’ll dig up and post somewhere around here.
Yes, this! I am judging the theoretical idea of cheese + pineapple (I also think Hawaiian pizza is an abomination). I am def not judging People Who Put Stuff in Casseroles.
I did not know about pumpkin pie haters, but of course that makes sense if you’ve only ever eaten pumpkin like a regular old squash.
To be fair, the one person I’d met who had tried the pie and wasn’t just talking about it on a forum on the internet, said he really enjoyed it and it mostly just tasted like spices and he was not at all revolted. I think the pumpkin spice latte is catching on here, or at least Starbucks is pushing it really hard, so more people may embrace the pumpkin as a dessert option as time goes on. General disclaimer about my sample size. My only evidence on the Starbucks campaign is that there’s a decal advertisement on the big one across from a certain tube station that I use pretty often.
Yeah I feel…. ehhhn. About pumpkin pie. Although I dislike pumpkin, so. Actually I prefer pumpkin in pie form than in any other form I have every eaten it, because for me it is a savoury, but it’s too sweet to be a savoury, so… I feel the same way about sweet potato with the added insult that it has ‘potato’ in the name but it’s NOT POTATO.
I generally would rather just skip dessert than eat pumpkin pie, and I am a dessert person. It’s just not my bag. But I can definitely see how it would be.
My aunt claims that it is ‘un-Australian’ to not like pumpkin, for… some reason? Who knows. Also my grandma calls pumpkin ‘trombone’ because there is a variety of pumpkin called ‘trombone’ and it used to be the only kind available to her and I find it so charming. But not charming enough to voluntarily eat pumpkin.
Found it! http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnmahoney/the-notorious… It’s been awhile since I read it, and I’ve got too many other fascinating tabs open to commit to a re-read right now. But I remember it being really, really interesting.
Yes, not all food criticisms come from a place of classism, but criticisms of casseroles definitely do. Regionalism and classism, to be precise. East and West coasters loooooooove shitting on Midwestern and Southern cooking traditions and casseroles, in particular, are seen as a “gross” and “low-class” form of cooking.
Pineapple casserole is actually super good. It’s similar to the sweet/savory combination of corn pudding. It’s not quite a dessert, it’s just a sweet side dish that complements things like glazed baked ham quite well.
I’m British, and I’ve realised reading this thread that “casserole” means something totally different in American English to what it means in British English. To me, a casserole is something cooked in a covered dish in the oven, probably meat, most likely starting off with browning the meat in flour and then frying onions. None of the pineapple or tuna casseroles mentioned here meets that definition, so I’m trying to work out what the US definition is!
(I had the same discovery with “salad” when I was dating a Midwesterner. Modern UK English: basically, a salad has to have lettuce in, or some sort of fancy leaves if not basic lettuce. This is not what salad means in the US! In the US it means something like “stuff that is mixed together”! Lettuce is not implied!)
It’s usually something cooked in the oven that has several different components, and usually all the components are in small pieces, though they may stick together as they cook. Most often it has both a starch and a meat.
If you take your US definition of salads and add a requirement that they be heated, you basically get a definition of casseroles.
EDIT: I looked up some UK casserole recipes, and I need to add to my North American casserole definition: casseroles are generally not soupy, but they do usually have enough sauce of some kind that a serving of casserole sticks together.
I think one could argue that shepherd’s pie and lasagna are both casseroles, though they aren’t as casserole-y as something like tuna noodle casserole.
This is genuinely informative! I am trying to find a way of not sounding sarcastic, but I am totally fascinated! There is NO WAY that lasagne and shepherd’s pie are casseroles to me, although interestingly they would be both be Auflauf in German.
Also I have just discussed this with my partner (grew up in Ireland to British parents, but her mother is the 50s-iest of all possible cooks) and it turns out she has the American definition of salad. WHO KNEW.
I’m super fascinated by this explanation too! I’ve just moved over to the UK and re-learning all the food names has been an interesting challenge. I totally take the “stuff mixed together” approach to the concept of salad, so it’s good to know that’s non-standard here. I think there’s usually at least one green thing in there, though for it to count for me: so celery in tuna salad is what makes it count as a salad. And I guess the parsley is what counts in a potato salad? It doesn’t necessarily hold up to much scrutiny, really. I just have hunch about what is and isn’t a salad-type mix.
Oh yeah, for Americans, casseroles are a whole category unto themselves with a ton of different sub-categories.
To the best of my knowledge, the etymology of the word ‘casserole’ and the basic requirements of the dish were very similar in Western Europe and the US until the Great Depression hit in the 1920s. That’s when it started evolving in the US, peaking in the 1970s. Since then, it hasn’t really changed much, although, from my own observations, the advent of Pinterest made a marked increase in casserole recipes becoming more mainstream again since they pretty much act like a one-pot meal (an invaluable resource busy, working adults).
In the US, to be considered a casserole, generally the dish has to be cooked in something like this and is generally baked without a lid on it:
The two main categories in casseroles are side-dishes and all-in-one meals.
Side-dish casseroles generally feature vegetables or fruit as their main ingredient (green bean casserole, pineapple casserole, broccoli, baked fruit, etc., etc.).
All-in-one main dish casseroles are generally composed with the following elements: a starch (noodles, rice, tortilla, potatoes, etc.), sauce (roux, marinara, pesto, cream-of-whatever, etc.), protein (tuna, beef, chicken, etc.), vegetables, and cheese. The combinations are practically endless and vary wildly between regions.
In the US, casseroles started becoming really popular around the Great Depression because they were a quick, easy, and cheap way to make a dish that could act as an entire meal. It was also a way to combine various leftovers together to make one big dish, which is why it became such a hit with housewives.
I’d also wager that the spread of feminism and women entering the workforce was another driving factor in the popularity of the casserole. Ready-made dishes and convenience meals at the supermarket weren’t as cheap or readily available as they are now (not to mention the stigma of not preparing your family a home-cooked meal).
Since another trait of casseroles is their ability to be made ahead, frozen, and then reheated for dinner, I imagine their convenience for working women was substantial. It’s much easier to make a one-dish meal where all you have to do is throw everything in a dish and bake it instead of having to make a meal with a main and two or three different side dishes.
Whew! The history behind casseroles is more complex than I thought!
This is blowing my mind!
So that is why ‘tuna casserole’ is what I would call ‘tuna mornay’ (yes, right? It is, right?).
I think of a casserole as described above for the UK – an assortment of things, probably involving something meaty but maybe not. Lots of sauce and soupiness and broth. Served over some carbs capable of soaking up the extra sauce. A stew, I guess? But they also come with the association that yes, we cook fancy ones with recipes but what they REALLY are is ‘shit what do we have, chuck it in a pot and sit it on the side of the stove all day while we’re out in the field working, oh crap there are four extra people to feed, ok chuck an extra potato or two and add some water and stretch it out’. Also with the keeping well/freezing ability – so even without refrigeration you can make a bunch ahead when you have a busy week. Like at shearing time, the week before shearing is casserole baking week. And then the next day you eat the leftovers with a different carb and different veggies on the side (if available).
So I can see how that would morph into ‘casserole means anything fitting that criteria’.
I had to google it, but yes! I believe your tuna mornay is pretty much the same as our tuna casserole.
But yes, I think the US version of a casserole definitely evolved from the “shit, we have all these weird ingredients and no time to make supper” kind of thinking. It definitely is a “catch-all” kind of dish with the main criteria being that it gets baked in a casserole dish to deserve the name.
Another reason I think that casseroles get a bad rap in this day and age is because they aren’t exactly the most aesthetically pleasing dish. They can taste amazing, but they aren’t the most Instagram-worthy dishes.
Anyways, food history is fascinating and holy shit at defining what is and isn’t a casserole being waaaaaay more complicated than I thought!
I am a relocated Midwesterner. I will eat cheerfully green bean casserole, if it is made with cream of celery or mushroom soup rather than cream of chicken (because vegetarian). But I’m lacking the gene that results in liking sweet side dishes– I was the weirdo kid in my family lobbying to leave the marshmallows out of the sweet potatoes. (More sweet things for everyone else.)
Oh, see I’m totally opposite. I’m all about the sweet side dishes come Thanksgiving. I could give up pumpkin pie, but you’ll have to pry my mom’s sweet potato casserole with caramelized pecans from my cold, dead, lifeless hands.
My dad likes to make it for Thanksgiving. It’s fine! I always eat a small portion out of a sense of duty, but like most commenters here, I feel like pineapple and cheese do not go together.
I’d imagine it’s like adding marshmallows to sweet potatoes. I much prefer mine baked with melted butter, but I understand needing to bow to tradition for holidays.
You know what’s wonderful on sweet potatoes? Crumbled gingersnaps. Yum. I only made it once, because the extended fam likes it the traditional way with cinnamon redhots and marshmallows. But those gingersnaps were good.
that’s a good idea! not-too-sweet gingersnaps, crumbled on top of sweet potatoes that are maybe a little gingery or cardamom-y…
My ex’s mom made something like this for every holiday meal. Delighted that I no longer have to pretend to enjoy it to avoid hurt feelings. (It is exactly as disgusting as it sounds, plus, weirdly, very soggy).
Confession: That casserole is a staple of special occasion dinners at my fiancé’s mother’s and that side of the family. But I don’t think it has anything to do with Paula Deen for them because their recipe has been around forever and they are all dyed-in-the-wool New Jerseyites.
BUT: I can report that it looks really weird. It sounds really weird. It tastes kind of weird but also kind of amazing. Somehow. But only in small servings once or twice a year. (Their recipe is Ritz crackers instead of breadcrumbs, but the concept is otherwise the same.) But I also like both pineapple and cheddar cheese. But I hate Hawaiian pizza with a passion.
I love canned pineapple. I love cheddar cheese. I cannot make myself eat that.
I’m hyperventilating. Americans: why is Paula Deen.
Before she self-destructed, people referred to her as “The Queen of Southern Cuisine” which she is/was not EVER.
Edna Lewis is the once and future Queen of Southern Cuisine. Make her caramel apple cake, or her GENIUS quick stock, and you will agree.
it’s true! edna lewis and her familiar, scott peacock.
That CA column was great and I have shared it to FB as a reminder to my friends to think about what they say to people as the holidays approach.
Oh MAN that’s a great idea. I am going to do that too. I have one cousin who KNOWS how my mother is, and how our relationship is, but just… periodically forgets. It’s infuriating (this is my dad’s side. My dad is dead and my mother is still invited to family events and it’s awful, frankly). I try to talk about it openly but unemotionally as much as possible, to remind her and also myself that it’s ok that it’s like this, it’s not my fault.
pineapple + cheddar immediately takes me to Hawaiian Haystacks (Mormon culture food) which is pretty good. Rice with toppings of cheese, green onions, crunchy noodles, almonds, pineapple, cubed chicken, whatever else you have lying around, and “gravy” of reconstituted cream of chicken soup. It’s comfort food and could probably be made into a casserole.
After reading the pineapple casserole recipe, **shudder**
Hawaiian Haystacks is a total comfort food for me. So many memories of eating it in the cultural hall before the Christmas program. <3
Mormon food cultures are so interesting. My husband was raised in the church, and some of his extended family still is, and I’ve inherited some super cookbooks. Can I ask – have you every had candle stick salad? He remembers it from being a kid, and it is in some of the older books.
I’ve not had it, but I’ve heard of it, and seen pictures. Do you have a copy of the original Lion House cookbook? It’s probably my favorite Mormon culture cookbook, and has some great recipes.
My mom’s pineapple casserole (made with a similar ingredient list) is fucking delicious and pairs amazingly with baked ham.
Justice for casseroles! Just because you’ve never tried before, doesn’t mean it’s not good!
My Southern-rooted self will die on this hill. *plants flag*
Awww, Christmas trip feels. So many feels. I do love the internet for making me feel not alone in this, because in real life, I live in an area where not only are families “normal,” but no one seems to move away and the generations see each other constantly. Like, constantly! Thanksgiving on my street is tough because so many houses have so many cars parked in front of them and meanwhile, it’s just lonesome old us.
BTW, the idea that they might include someone not in their family is a foreign idea. I once brought two families, who I had been neighborly with, pecan pies I had made the week before Thanksgiving and freaked them the hell out. They thought I was angling for an invitation, I guess. It was a disaster. We have plans this year with friends, also btw, just…not on our street. In some ways, though, Thanksgiving is easier than Christmas because people invite non-familiy friends over for Thanksgiving, but not Christmas. Anyway, thanks for the link.
Whaaaat! I’ve been the recipient of some lovely Thanksgivings by both friends and mere acquaintances who were really gracious and welcoming about having me join them, so I’m so indignant on your behalf that you didn’t get the same treatment. 🙁
Thank you! The pies were delicious. I make a mean pecan pie.
I once went to Christmas at a friend’s place and brought a pie along with as a gift and her entire family was SCANDALIZED for some reason that I still have yet to figure out. Maybe they hate apples? Is there a secret pie-hating organization? (I asked ahead of time what to bring and my friend suggested a pie, so I’m sure there weren’t any allergies or pie-related traumatic experiences that this brought up.)
The moral of both of these stories is: life is too short to deal with people who are offended by delicious pie.
Whaaaaat? We had only been dating for about four months at the time, but I spent Thanksgiving 2013 with my boyfriend’s family as work obligations made it impossible for me to travel home that year, and his family loved the pie I made them, even though I dropped it in the parking lot of my apartment building. (My pie plate broke but the pie itself was still intact and I was able to transfer it from the shards of the pie plate onto an aluminum pizza pan thing which I had to use one hand to hold steady in the passenger seat of my car for the entire drive to their house.)
That said, I am ridiculously intrigued as to why your friend’s family was scandalized by pie. This is a mystery that will haunt me forever.
That is an extremely impressive feat of dexterity and I am in awe of your pie-transfer skills and your dedication to the dessert. I hope you told his family that story – I feel like I couldn’t NOT eat a pie that had gone through so much nonsense to arrive on my table.
It also haunts me forever among the list of other things I will never know. What is the meaning of life? Does Atlantis exist? Why did my friend’s family get really upset about a pie that one time? I lost contact with my friend, but her explanation was “they’re just kind of like that, shrug,” so I will never know the truth. MYSTERIES ABOUND.
That makes zero sense (says the girl who is already lined up to make vegan gravy, Yorkshire pudding, and several varieties of cookies for bf’s family gathering).
how is pie scandalizing????? that is so weird.
Like, HOW were they scandalized? What did they say? Was your friend as mystified as you were? I need more information because the idea of being mad at someone for bringing over a pie just does not compute. The worst person in the world could bring me a pie and I would be delighted with them for at least that one evening.
Alright, all you super-sleuths responding in this thread, here is the pie story. Solve the mystery for me! (No but really, I would like to know if I committed a horrible social faux pas that nobody wanted to tell me about, because I can’t for the life of me figure out what caused this.)
I should preface this with: my family is dysfunctional and I did not want to spend Christmas with them, so my friend invited me to her house. I’m not sure if that’s related to why they were upset but I figure I should mention it just in case?
What happened: basically, I arrived and told them I brought a pie and they game me the sort of speechlessly shocked/offended side-eye that is usually reserved for when you see a grown adult picking their nose at a fancy restaurant. My friend’s mother wordlessly put the pie on the dessert table with the others (including another pie that someone else had brought). Nobody said thank you or and the pie went unmentioned throughout dinner. When dessert time happened, that poor apple pie was like kryptonite – everyone edged around it and nobody touched it. (I was the only one who took a piece of my own pie because I’m that person who hates to see an untouched dish at a communal thing because it means somebody baked it and nobody ate it and it makes me feel bad to see uneaten food.) I continued to get the weird scandalized stare from 12 other people (minus my friend) as I ate the pie on my plate. It felt really weird.
Later, I asked my friend why her family was so weird about me bringing a pie. She was confused because she hadn’t noticed anything odd, shrugged and said they were just like that, and changed the subject.
My friend hadn’t had any of my baking before, and we didn’t have any mutual friends at the time, so if I am notorious for making terrible pie, she wouldn’t have known about it and couldn’t have warned her family. It also didn’t look like it had been sat on, or something. So, perhaps it was a terrible pie, but nobody would have had any reason to assume that. And, again, she had suggested I bring a pie, so presumably the entire group wasn’t allergic to any common pie ingredients.
Perhaps it is as MilesofMountain and Hotbuttonissue suggested below and they found it rude that I brought something? Or maybe dearly-departed great-grandma’s apple pie was famous around town and I inadvertently brought up some grief? Or maybe they’d all seen that Spongebob Squarepants episode about the pie with the bomb in it?
I have NO IDEA. Help.
(Also this is by far the longest comment I’ve posted on the Toast and it’s about pie, wow.)
This is completely bananas and I hope someone has a theory that might enlighten us all.
Woah, that is really weird and REALLY rude of them.
Maybe someone choked to death on a bite of apple pie and every single person knew about it but you? Hmm. Your friend would’ve maybe mentioned that when asked. I have no more ideas! I live in a pretty provincial/isolated culturally part of New Jersey and have put the weirdness down to that. It’s made me biased against all New Jersey-ans, until they prove otherwise, which isn’t really fair, but eh, not too worried about it, tbh.
Also, you describe the scene so perfectly. The side eye! I especially love that you had a piece of your own goddamned forlorn pie. That poor pie. It shouldn’t have been put in the middle of this. Those apples (and sugar and flour, etc) gave their *lives* for that pie. It’s a holiday tragedy, if you ask me.
Haha, thank you! It could only have been a holiday tragedy if the pie went entirely uneaten, but my stomach was pretty happy about it for the next week. Crisis averted, holiday spirit lives on, etc. The meaning of Christmas is pie all for me!
I’m writing this from a computer in New Jersey but I don’t actually live here so feel free to continue your unfair bias in peace. New Jersey IS weird, but it’s also got some beautiful beaches so that’s okay by me.
Some families do get weird about people bringing things to a meal – like, the host is supposed to provide everything, it’s not some common-person POTLUCK forgodsaks. BUT if your friend said to bring a pie, and someone else brought a pie and everyone ate that pie, then I can only assume someone had previously suggested you have typhoid, or were recently released from jail after poisoning a lot of people. Or possibly the Sponge Bob bomb theory.
IT IS MYSTIFYING!
Also my family will take in lots of strays for any holiday. We’ll even make you a Christmas stocking. And we will for sure eat your pie.
ETA: I’m pretty sure you should have Starlee Kine investigate this for her Mystery Show podcast. Then we can all get some answers!
My personal theory: They’re all insane, and you should hang out with us instead and we’ll all eat delicious pie.
An excellent plan!
I have heard whispers on the internet (so it must be true) that some people find it rude to bring food to a dinner that isn’t explicitly a potluck, I think because they feel it implies that they’re not going to provide enough/good enough food? That seems bizarre to me since more pie is never a bad thing and in my social circle it’s always considered the polite thing to ask if there’s anything you can bring if you’re going to someone’s house for dinner.
I’ve heard the same thing, but thought it only applied to main dishes? Like if you’re invited over for Thanksgiving and show up with your own turkey and just eat that, then obviously that’s super rude. But surely bringing a dessert is more along the lines of bringing a bottle of wine to a party?
I didn’t know this was a thing! I’m going to assume this is the reason unless someone comes up with a better one, because I’m really stumped and this seems rational. I’d be thrilled if someone showed up with unexpected dessert at my house but I can see how that could be construed as offensive.
I know, I don’t get it either, but I had a similar experience where I offered to bring pie to a big family dinner for my boyfriend’s family, since I love and am good at baking and their desserts are usually just a grocery store pie so I thought it might be appreciated. I got a pretty firm “NO” from his mom and a request for me to bring salad instead. So if it’s not that, maybe there really is something inherently offensive about bringing pie?
Whoa, that is ungraciousAF. (Sometimes people take it as a judgement on their cooking if you bring something you cooked to a dinner party?)
Both my family and my fiance’s family have very strict expectations about who brings which types of dishes to holidays. If I were to bring a pie to either of my family gatherings, they would also be SCANDALIZED and it would be major drama. I mean, we’re Minnesotan, so no one would *say anything* openly about it but the vibe would be very treacherous.
We bring the salad. We will bring the salad until we die. I’m not kidding.
I’m not saying it makes any sense. The other day I saw a cauliflower gratin that looked good and suggested maybe we could make that instead of salad for Thanksgiving this year. My fiance said “no, that would upset [aunt’s name]” and then started singing “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof at me.
One time my aunt assigned what we would all bring to christmas dinner. She assigned my mother and I to bring a lasagna together – we live a long way apart and barely speak and my mother has never made a lasagna in her life. Meanwhile my other aunt, who used to run a vegetarian takeaway place specialising in lasagna, got assigned salad. The only salad she’s ever made is a basic ‘lettuce and tomato’ green salad. We swapped. My aunt was SO MAD. She also didn’t assign anyone to bring any vego stuff because her vegetarian daughter was overseas so I guess that meant the four other vegetarians in the family had suddenly stopped existing?
I shouldn’t be mean, she is very kindly accommodating my gluten intolerance, although I am nervous because I am 90% sure she doesn’t really get it… last year I caused an outrage by asking to read the back of the bought meringue package to check for sneaky gluten (one was fine and one wasn’t). Meanwhile we’ve all been told to bring a salad. I am… apprehensive.
You can bring me all the pies you want and I will appreciate them. People who are offended by pie are not to be trusted.
You know, at first I was like, who gets mad about pie?! But then I remembered back when I used to have a specific vegetarian/gluten free feast AFTER the actual holiday (so it wouldn’t infringe on the meat eating wheat lovers day), my mother-in-law would always bring a too-sweet store-bought chocolate cream pie made with gelatin and a wheat crust, no matter that I’d already told her that I was making 4 perfectly delicious pies that fit with everyone’s food restrictions. No one ever ate any, and she refused to take it home with her, so it would sit in my fridge and melt until we threw it away. So I GUESS I can see how a pie can be loaded with significance, but I don’t see how you could’ve achieved that level of passive aggression with people you don’t even know! So, so odd.
That is awful and rude! I’m always confused by people who insist on bringing gifts that are entirely inappropriate (such as food they know someone can’t eat) and then insist that said gift be appreciated. You should want to give a gift because you know it’ll make someone happy! That poor unloved pie, existing for no purpose except to melt in a passive aggressive manner!
I grew up near a college town, and my mom worked for the university. Since it’s a huge state school with a bunch of international students–and since most dorms closed over the holidays–we almost always had near-strangers invited to Thanksgiving and sometimes Christmas.
One time in particular, we took a Chinese grad student named Fang along to our massive family Thanksgiving in Kansas City. I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. We traveled by camper from Illinois, and nearly all my mom’s 9 brothers and sisters made it that year, along with their assorted children. Unfortunately, it was also the Year of the Great Food Poisoning. When you have roughly 60 stricken people, and 3 or 4 available bathrooms, it’s a truly ghastly sight.
Fang had started out as very shy and reserved, but after that, she was a member of the family. She was eventually able to get the rest of her family out of China (my mom and dad wrote endless letters to congresspeople) and we are still dear friends. Fang’s eldest daughter and I get together for brunch regularly. (So far no food poisoning has resulted.)
Excellent story. This would make a great children’s book, I think! Especially if you include the food poisoning! Nothing draws a kid in like diarrhea and vomit.
Ha! That’s a great idea.
“Suddenly, Auntie Karen felt a rumbling in her tummy. ‘Dad?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Did you check the temperature of this turkey before carving it?’
‘Oh no,’ said Uncle John softly.
And the rumblings grew.”
Doing some last-minute election research today, found out that one of the people running for Register of Wills in my county says it’s against her beliefs to sign same-sex marriage licenses. Noooope.
Also one of the people running for our township’s constable position is married to a dude who, while he was constable in the naughties, messed up so badly he was forced to resign and sign a document stating he’d never ever run for constable in our county again (it was that or face legal action). He signed this, then ran for constable again a few years later. And won. WTF.
Hahaha! I think I got a good idea what county you live in!
At my polling place, they had free baklava.
What?! My polling place is in a high school and is staffed by some very grumpy ladies who will not even give you a sticker unless you specifically ask for one, let alone a snack.
But it is literally one block from my apartment and right next to the subway I take to work so I guess I can’t complain.
Thanks neurotic chihuahua for posting the election reminder last week! I read some of the candidate responses out loud to my coworkers so hopefully they all remembered too.
Yeah they had donuts and coffee too, but I think this baklava is homemade.
I guess that’s what you get when you go to a polling place in a private school run by Armenian nuns?
lol, it’s not like there’s that many different counties in the Philly area! I envy you your baklava.
I am a big fan of D. Bruce Hanes, though (the incumbent registrar of wills); I remember him from when I got my marriage certificate, and I was really happy that he was the one who just started issuing same-sex marriage licenses before the official legalization came though.
I saw an article about that! He definitely seems like someone I’d want to support.
Also, I liked that the other person running for Registrar was all, “I don’t see why my moral opposition to fulfilling the duties of this office should be an issue during this campaign.”
Lady. It’s not a legislative position. It’s not an executive position. Literally the only requirement for “Registrar of Wills” is “Ability to perform all of the duties of the office.”
My polling place did not have an Election Day bake sale this year. I am disappointed. Lutheran church ladies, you dropped the ball! I would totally have bought stuff!
Local politics can be such a tire fire. In Michigan, we have two disgraced former legislators (both married, who were caught having an affair with each other, who covered it up and fired the staff who blew the whistle), one who resigned and one who was expelled from office, who are both running for their old seats today. And I would not rule out the possibility of either one or both winning.
Wait, the guy who started gay rumors about himself so that people wouldn’t believe the adultery gossip? He might get his seat back?
Michigan, there’s assuming all politicians are liars, and then there’s rewarding it. :/
The very one. Appalling.
The very same. He’s actually running in my home county (where I’m no longer a resident, so I sadly can’t go out and vote against him today), but watching the discussion on facebook when all that business first came out was definitely interesting!
I’ve come to the conclusion that I should stop worrying about the presidential race and focus my energies on state and local politics, because a) a lot of very important stuff happens there that too few people pay attention to, and so your vote really can make a difference and b) everyone involved is FUCKING NUTS so it actually makes a pretty good spectator sport.
Exactly! I’m having a blast.
On a serious note, the conclusion of my master’s thesis was essentially that national politics (in this case, specifically around environmental legislation) is so fucked that cities & other small political units are our best shot for making a real difference. Plus also worrying about the presidential race when the election is still more than a year out just seems like a recipe for exhaustion.
Some of our only good candidates in every other arena are good but then they are also adamantly pro-life and talk a LOT about their church life and I’m like eeeeeeeeeeeeehn. 🙁
One of the mayoral candidates in my town is a professional competitive eater! I found this out in one of those local paper articles where they send a list of interview questions to candidates, the candidates answer them, and the paper basically prints the answers. So the first question was, “What is your profession?” or something, and his answer was “Competitive eater.” No further explanation. I have so many questions! Not the least of which was, did no one at this paper want to call the guy up to ask a follow up question about this?
I love this so much.
That Captain Awkward article! I really needed that this morning, thank you for posting.
Also, a HUGE thank you to the Toastie who suggested I read the Captain Awkward archives regarding family trauma in an OT a few weeks ago! I forget who it was but you’re all great anyway so I’ll just thank EVERYONE.
If anyone tries to tell you what sort of holiday you “ought” to be having then they aren’t well-meaning anymore. I genuinely like spending time with my family which is why I think people shouldn’t go to holidays with people just because they’re related/you’ve known them for so long. You deserve a loving, affirming holiday season!
I saw Willie recently at a weekend long concert that he was closing. By the time he hit the stage, it was 40 degrees out and my friends were clearly staying just to humor me. I came down with a cold immediately afterwards, that stuck around for two weeks. I regret nothing.
Also, I submit this to the Willie-centric playlist: Gary Allan’s “What Would Willie Do?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYfxj3HzvP0
I stood out in the rain at an outdoor concert to see Willie Nelson play years ago! I even wore a red bandanna and braids to it, I was so excited.
My only regret is that I’ve only seen him in concert once! *WILLIE SOLIDARITY*
Marco, congrats and all the best!
(And then I read the cops article and the FL mental health article and sadness)
Focusing on Marco instead. Congrats and all the best!
Are there any Ohio Toasties who can give their thoughts on 3? I’m voting after work today and I’m still torn on how to vote. For those not in Ohio, issue 3 is a marijuana legalization ballot measure. Normally, I am strongly in favor of legalizing marijuana, but issue 3 is just so poorly written. Here’s a longer write up http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9146471/ohio-marijua…
I’m leaning voting no, but am not sure still.
I am not from Ohio, but I read about this as well:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/mar…
and that definitely sounds like the kind of thing that I’d vote no over — it’s complete regulatory capture by a legally-sanctioned oligarchy; something like that would be virtually impossible to undo once it was in place, and it also seems to undercut all of the potential tax gains that (for instance) Colorado saw after their legalization.
I wasn’t even really considering the tax stuff, so yeah, voting no.
Legalization will come up again, soon enough.
I am also leaning toward “no” because of the whole monopoly aspect–only 10 designated growing sites? You can have a small plant to recreationally grow but it has to be from one of those sites (as I understand it, anyway, someone correct me if I’m wrong!) I read another article (and for the life of me I can’t remember where) that pointed out that it doesn’t really change the legal reality of what people have been doing already. Small-time dealers (for example, the people who have gone to prison for it–minorities and/or those in low-income neighborhoods) would be forced to buy from a certain site or forced out of “business”, which seemed…fishy to me. And let’s be real, I don’t trust those 10 exclusive growing sites to be particularly hospitable to minority/low-income dealers.
Also, it would go directly into our state Constitution, which seemed frankly like overkill, haha.
You and I are on the same page, I’m now leaning no even more.
The part about being directly written into the state Constitution is why ballot measures are something I generally think is bad, but for marijuana legalization, it is likely a necessary bad to get anywhere, since while 50+% of the residents of many states support legalization, elected officials won’t touch it with a 50 ft. pole. I would definitely have voted for Washington or Colorado’s bills, even though it is overkill.
Ahhh, I didn’t even think about elected officials being skittish about it/ballot measures being necessary. That definitely makes sense, although obviously my other issues with 3 still stand.
I was just in Ohio over the weekend visiting friends and family. Nearly everyone I spoke to was opposed to 3. Generally, my feelings about it (as someone who is no longer a resident, but who is very interested in the issue) are that because of its enshrinement of wealthy political contributors as the sole licensed growers, as well as some of the finer points of what it would (and wouldn’t) allow for individuals, 3 is neither the proposal Ohio needs nor deserves, and as a constitutional amendment, would be quite difficult to improve or replace.
I always like Ballotpedia for information on initiatives. Here’s their page about 3: http://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Marijuana_Legalizatio…
Aclu says vote yes, because it may be another decade before we can get it to vallot again, and because 2 is specifically worded to make getting things like 3 to ballot again more difficult
Interesting. I’ve heard and read that there are ballot measures being considered for 2016, interesting that the ACLU isn’t confident of that going anywhere.
I’m very pro-legalization, but I voted no on 3. I think the other commenters in this thread have made all the points I would make about the measure, from the sketchy monopoly stuff to the tax ramifications. I also voted no on 2, though – despite the warring “Yes on 3, No on 2” vs. “Yes on 2, No on 3” messages, I think it’s reasonable to vote no on both.
2 is a vague and potentially far-reaching amendment, and I don’t think it’s necessary. I agree with the League of Women Voters of Ohio arguments against 2 (nb they also present some arguments for the amendment – I don’t want to misrepresent the League’s position on this):
“1. The constitution should not be amended to interfere with the constitutional initiative process and block a measure approved by the voters.
“2. The language is too vague and may unintentionally preclude future policy or tax issues from being brought forward as an initiative.
“3. Issue 2 gives the Ballot Board too much discretion to declare a proposed initiative to be a monopoly and force it to jump through two hurdles instead of one.”
Wait – the study on trans people is from Sweden.
Sweden required sterilisation as a condition to get surgery and have your official sex (what it says on your ID, etc) changed. And I don’t simply mean removal of testicles or ovaries. I mean that you had to totally and completely give up the ability to conceive children. No sperm saved in sperm banks. No egg freezing.
This was no accident. It wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. Because some bureaucrats in the 70’s decided that it would be so confusing if a kid’s mother was their biological father, and vice versa.
When did this horrifying forced sterilisation policy finally get abolished? In 2013. TWO THOUSAND FUCKING THIRTEEN.
Meaning that all those unhappy trans people in the Swedish study had been forcibly sterilised by the government as a condition for correcting their gender!
I had no idea. I don’t have words for how horrifying that is
Between 1999-2002, you could apply for compensation if you had been forcibly sterilised. Sweden actually used to sterilise quite a lot of people in the 30’s through 60’s, for sluttiness, intellectual disability and sometimes as a condition for getting an abortion. So, sterilisation as a condition for medical treatment counted as forced sterilisation and made you eligible for compensation (which should set a nice precedent for trans people today). I think the tiny compensation and the surrounding debate cemented sterilisation as something that happened a long time ago, in a different era. Because while this happened, trans people were still being forced to consent to sterilisation. It took another decade until the forced sterilisation of trans people even stopped.
Has the state compensated sterilised trans people in any way? Nope. It has not.
It’s truly shameful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilis…
That gave me chills all over my body. How absolutely horrifying, wtf.
Ugh, Sweden.
Between my (environmental, agriculture) and my mom (Willie) and my brother’s (pot) interests, that WIllie article has IMMENSE crossover appeal.
Fodder for the Thanksgiving Dinner conversation!
I hate bras so much but at least they (usually) don’t stab me. Thank you for the perspective!
I think I will spend all day going back to the HBCU love stories post. I can’t help it, I like sap, dangit!
Also, that Captain Awkward post was brilliant and thoughtful, as always. I come from an eccentric, but pretty functional home, and I have tried in recent years to be much more aware of what I say and how I say things about the holidays. I also try to make sure friends who don’t have good holiday memories/traditions get invited to hang with me, even if they don’t spend time with my whole family. I dunno, I want to make sure people feel as included as they feel comfortable with, and reading posts like that really help me learn to do that more thoughtfully.
TL;DR: if you need a place for the holidays, come stay with the Cubes!
Happy election day! (In some states anyway.) There’s a great overview of what’s on the ballot here if you are interested: http://ballotpedia.org/What%27s_on_the_ballot%3F_…
Thanks–I guiltily realized this morning that I still haven’t decided how to vote for city council, so this is helpful!
Okay, well, if I ever find a genie lamp, one of my wishes is going to be “Spend a day as Willie Nelson.” Not with. As.
As a super well-endowed lady I am here for the idea of a modern sports corset. Support from below instead of half-hanging off my shoulders and causing endless headaches (because at a certain point, correctly-sized or not, the physics of the bra just do not work for the large be-boobed)??? Sign me up.
I just want a corset in general, but can’t afford it.
Do you have any sewing experience? Corsets are a bit finicky to sew, but I have found some pretty good tutorials if you wanted to go that way (and a corset that’s property fitted is actually pretty dang comfortable).
I can just barely manage to sew up a seam to fix holes in my clothing currently. :/
Have you tried the Enell sports bra? She’s not a looker but man, she is a holder. After I fasten myself in, I give it a big tug and there’s usually an inch or so above the band that is under my boobs for support (and the band is v wide). And it has yet to give me achy shoulders, unlike every other highly-touted large-cup sports bra I’ve tried over the last 15 years (when will they figure out racer backs/halters are never a good idea for anything larger than a D).
Oh yeah, I have like five of them. I’m also super short-waisted, and that messes with how things fit in ways I didn’t realize for a long time. It’s just a hassle.
“There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question.”
DAAAAAMN that’s good.
That Willie Nelson quote made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, for some reason
I mean.
It has also led to more than one folk song about the perils of smoking with Nelson, including a Toby Keith ballad with the refrain “I’ll never smoke weed with Willie again” and a new jingle introduced by Jack Johnson at Farm Aid this year whose chorus revolves around the line “Willie got me stoned and took all my money.”
I am DYING.
Anyone have sports bra recs? Most of the ones I have are ancient Champion compression ones from Target (you can pry my uniboob from my cold, dead hands). I found that the straps of the newest version of those bras of dig into the back of my neck, and now I’m at a loss for what to replace them with.
The ones I love are from VS and are what I call double-baggers: individual cups with a nice compression-y uniboob piece over top. I’m a D cup and they work really well for me.
Shock Absorber!!!!!!!!! Specifically the “Ultimate Run” model. I’m a 30G/32FF and they lock that shit right down (the band runs about a size small, however).
Don’t pay $80, either, just stalk them on Amazon until they go on sale.
Ooh, thanks for the tip!
camelcamelcamel.com will automatically stalk them on Amazon for you. Put in the price you’re willing to pay, or just wait for it to tell you when it’s at an all-time-low price.
OOH thank you so much, this is awesome!
Highly recommend these three, in descending order of excellence: http://www.runningwarehouse.com/Moving_Comfort_Wo… http://img.runningwarehouse.com/watermark/rs.php?… http://www.runningwarehouse.com/Moving_Comfort_Wo…
I wear a 28-30 D-DD in regular bras (depending on brand), and the 32DD in the sports bra works well for me (don’t size down–they run small). I’m petite, and what I find frustrating about most sports bras is that the straps are fixed, and thus way too long for me.
I second the recommendation for Moving Comfort sports bras. I bought one the other week when I wanted to buy shoes from an athletic store and needed to buy something else to get free shipping, and it was the best random purchase ever. For reference, I’m about a 32GG in British sizing and also relatively petite.
I also like Moving Comfort – NOTHING moves at all in those suckers.
I adore the Jubralee- I specifically wanted something that flattened well and it fits the bill nicely for me (plus I look like a badass in the black version). I can barely manage to remove the Juno from my body when trying it on, so I was far to afraid to attempt it post workout in case I accidentally got stuck in it forever.
Try checking out Title IX…they have a pretty good selection for most sizes, rated by level of not fucking around.
No, they don’t: they don’t carry a 30 band at all, even in bras that I know come in that size. They also do the “measure underbust, add five inches” thing, which is why they think my band size is unusual. (It’s not.)
Enell is the BEST. http://www.enell.com/shop. Put one of these suckers on, and your boobs will. not. move.
They come in sizes to fit everyone (everyone! I’m a 38G at the moment), and if they don’t have one that’s perfect for you, they’ll make you one. I got mine online, but I have seen them sold at a few high-end running stores.
Buzzfeed had an article a while back where different women with different body types tried on a bunch of sports bras and it was very informative
(unlinked link bc I don’t know how to link) http://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/we-went-on…
My strategy for sports bras is to just to buy one from Target that feels the closest to wearing a straitjacket, and then wear it until it becomes too easy for my chest prisoners to escape.
I love this article already.
Aw, this is really cute and funny. That Lululemon bra, tho — who the hell sizes bras like they’re dresses??
Lululemon, Tata Tamer III, DD – I’m on my second one, and range from a DD-DDD depending on my weight.
I love Moving Comfort’s Fiona bras, and highly recommend them if you’re well endowed. One of the biggest pluses for me is that they fasten in the back like a regular bra so I’m not having to do strange things to compress my shoulders to get it over my head.
I’m a big fan of the Rebound Racer by Moving Comfort. It comes in a huge size range (and it goes by bra size not just S, M, L, XL), is very supportive without underwire, and (a must, for me) is racer back. Too many of the Top Pick sports bras are non-racer back and I have such a hard time keeping the straps up where they’re supposed to be – and I don’t want to be adjusting things at the gym. My one beef is that, because it’s so supportive, it can be a difficult to get on/off (especially when it’s sweaty…). Under Armor has a front-zip racer back sports bra that I keep meaning to try but haven’t gotten around to it yet…
I am a 30E/28F and I swear by Diadora soccer bras (in size M) – however, I also have The Trans Feels and prefer to have my boobs as squooshed as possible while not feeling like I’m wearing a bra. They pull your boobs down and out a little bit so you can show off how strong your pecs are from toting around E-cup boobs all day.
This sounds right up my alley. I dress feminine most of the time, but I don’t like to or want to feel sexy/curvy when I’m at the gym. Disappointingly, these bras seem to be out of stock everywhere I look.
I get mine at Sport Chek, which apparently is Canadian only? They’re always on sale, so maybe they got discontinued :'(
I really like this article about the civilian rescue teams in Iceland. The Icelandic sense of humor on display was what really sold it for me:
Einar got to work screwing an antenna to the roof of the hut. He was perched on the top rung of a ladder while the others stood around giving directions. How many Landsbjörgers does it take to screw in a light bulb? “Eight,” Palli said. “One to screw in the light bulb and seven to stand around hoping he falls so they have something to do.” Einar, on tiptoe, reached up blindly. Palli said, “The ladder is wobbly, so there is always hope.”
What a great article!! Those people are badass. I would pay gobs of money just to read endless accounts of tourist stupidity. But of course, the more serious stuff is amazing too.
Also, little detail there – the whole thing began with the teams of women who were rescuing men from the water!! EVERYBODY PAY ATTENTION TO THAT PLEASE.
Reading about the Geysir rescue was absolutely gripping. I’m shocked it hasn’t been made into a movie yet.
This is excellent.
The ladder is wobbly, so there is always hope.
I need this to become a folk saying.
Add it to the Toast Embroidered Pillow collection!
I just created a tab on the “Toast Connections” google spreadsheet for our archive of craft wisdom, since we all keep forgetting the lines we’ve liked so much.
Brilliant!
THANK YOU
Spreadsheets, textile arts, and pithy sayings: 80% of the Toast’s interests are right here.
You’re not wrong.
Oh man, people are putting lots of stuff on it! This is awesome, and makes me feel Useful and Important.
Knowing what I know about Icelanders (spoiler alert: very little) it may already be one.
That piece by Anna Fitzpatrick was a total gut punch. It came right when I needed it. I wrote a letter to myself. Hopefully it isn’t out of place to post it here…
Sweetheart,
You have not had sex with another person in any way shape or form. But in a few weeks you will finally feel actually ready. You will meet a guy at a party. You will have a good time. You will go home with him. It will all feel right. Then it won’t. He will do things that you don’t really like and are not into, but you will think that it’s your inexperience and that it will get better if you just grit your teeth and get through it. It will not get better. You will send a prayer of thanks to God that he stops when you tell him to stop. You will wish you told him to stop sooner. He will kick you out of his room. You will go home and discover that you are still bleeding. That will go on for a couple of days and the pain will last for a week. You will replay the night in your head so many times you will wonder what it was like to think of other things. You will cry a lot. You will talk to your friends and cry some more. You will be mad at yourself, embarrassed, and unsure how to talk about a traumatic but consensual sexual experience. You will be afraid of sex and feel like puking whenever a song referencing sex comes up on the radio. You will listen to a lot of show tunes instead for a while.
Most importantly, you will start to feel better. Time will pass and you will be less mad at yourself. You will spend a bunch of time with your male friends and remember that men exist who you trust, who are not selfish, and who make you feel good about yourself. You will promise yourself that next time it will be with someone you know and trust.
Sweetie, it is going to be okay.
Gentle hugs to you.
I read the sports bra article the other day and wanted to tweet a few quotes from it but there were just too many good ones.
Can I share a random rant? I was at a dinner party and the guy sitting next to me preemptively pulled the girlfriend card. Now, it’d be one thing if I was flirting with him and he wanted to save me the embarrassment, but I was not (at least in my opinion). Up until he said it–and it was so so blatant–the thought of flirting hadn’t even occurred to me. I was just enjoying myself talking to a group of fun people. I have to say, it really stung. I’d love to be effortless at something, but getting rejected w/out even trying was not what I had in mind. Ok, done feeling sorry for myself. Whew!
So irritating! That has happened to me, and also when I was in law school one of my classmates was convinced I had a crush on him and told all our friends (are we 12? In many ways, law school = junior high), which, I DIDN’T. Clearly it’s useless to be friendly to dudes, they cannot be trusted not to overreact.
Thanks for the validation! I’m glad I’m not the only one.
So frustrated on your behalf! I was once at a dinner party and had what I had thought of at the time as regular conversation with the two people (both men) sitting on either side of me. I later heard from a friend that one of them later described this as my shamelessly flirting with two men at once. It is TEN YEARS LATER and I still send that guy bad vibes when I’m reminded of it.
Yes, I don’t know why it bothered me so much, but it really did!
This just reminded me – once at a work dinner party, I ended up sitting next to a random dude not from my office, and we sort of hit it off and chatted throughout dinner. He mentioned his fiancee at some point and I thought absolutely nothing of it, because I’m married and was wearing a wedding ring. We ended up exchanging emails, though neither of us ever used them.
So I leave the party at the same time as several coworker-friends, all female, and the second we’re in the elevator they go all teenage-girl-flaily at me and want to know all the details. I’m like “…uh, guys, we talked about the city I’m visiting next week and he offered to send me some restaurant recs. Also he’s engaged.” It was the WEIRDEST thing – but at least it wasn’t about me flirting with him; they clearly had decided it was him flirting with me.
Correct response is a perfectly bland “How nice for you.”
Oh, I HATE when guys do that. I’ve never, ever had a guy say that to me when I’ve been actually flirting with him. And I am really not nice when it happens. I make sure he knows that I was not interested, thank you very much, and women are able to have conversations with men without it being related to ~romance~. Mind you, this has happened (thought not recently, thank God) even after I became married and started wearing a wedding ring. Guys like that are totally deluded about their own worth (and about women’s intentions) so if anything, it’s kind of good that they do that because it basically outs them as somebody who’s not worth talking to.
(Also, how hard is it to just casually bring up your partner in conversation if you’re worried that it comes off as flirting? It’s really not that hard to do. “Oh you like Margaret Atwood? So does my girlfriend, although I haven’t read her stuff yet./end rant)
I wonder if men are just bad at it because they haven’t had as much practice pre-emptively defending themselves from jerks who will only take “I’m another man’s property” for an answer. At this point I can definitely tell whether someone’s being icky vs. flirting in a nice regular way, and my mental index of “ways to say I’m not interested without being obnoxious about it” is enormous.
I think that’s definitely the case at least some of the time. They haven’t had the years of socialization on how to turn somebody down without actually turning them down, or all the training on picking up social cues and body language the same way women are.
Of course, I think in a lot of cases it comes from lack of female friends and exposure to other men with female friends. If you can’t understand that sort of relationship because it’s not something you’ve really seen outside of pop culture (where often it is shows and precursor to romance) then it’s probably harder to understand that a woman is just being friendly. It’s also probably harder to understand how to properly react when you think a woman is flirting with you but you’re not interested if you don’t interact with women that you aren’t related to/pursuing romantically.
And to be fair to him, he did bring it up in a casual manner similar to what you describe. What made it obnoxious was that it was so unnecessary. I think you’re definitely on to something though about some guys just not being used to having women be friendly towards them unless they are flirting.
That is so crappy! I had a guy do that to me, when I first came out as poly and I was chatting with this guy, and was like “also I am NOT interested in anything” and I was like, dude, what in the even?!
I think that for many men, the only time they are friendly towards women is when they are flirting, so they cannot imagine a situation in which a woman who has no romantic or sexual interest in them would willingly engage in friendly conversation.
This is so true and soooo depressing.
This. I had multiple conversations while engaged where I would casually drop the fact that I was engaged or just gesture with my left hand, and the guy would just stop talking to me. I couldn’t get it at all. I started referring to the ring as a douche-o-meter for its ability to suss out douchebags.
I ended up preemptively memtioning I was married in my next job, which led to one adorable non-native male grad student going very sincerely, “I love how much Stirrings loves her husband, she mentions him so much, she must be really happy!”
Any Nathan For You fans here? Summit Ice jackets and apparel are selling incredibly well and helps with Holocaust education in Canada. Using comedy to do good.
http://www.avclub.com/article/recent-nathan-you-s…
As a member of the tribe, I laugh/winced through the segment, but I think this was really menschy for him to do!
A coworker recommended this to me last week, but I haven’t watched yet!
TOASTIES. Ex-significant other thread.
(But first off – congratulations on the beautiful redesign. Sorry I’m late!)
Arrrgh Toasties I had an amazing few months long-distance with a great man who then moved back to his home country just as I moved back to mine (both these moves were intercontinental, had he stayed put, we would have only had a 2 hour flight between us). Then I cut off all contact to Heal but today I Skyped him after both a nightmare and Hawt Sex Dream involving him, after 2 months contact free,, and actually, it was meh. I’m wondering if no contact is actually counter-intuitive for me. I had him up on a pedestal, and today, he was just the scared 20 something we all are who’s still dealing with repatriation. Not a Wonder Man with a Dream Job and A Beautiful, Accomplished Girlfriend I Can Never Be while I enter my 3rd month at my mother’s house and unemployment.
That was kind of reassuring. Gave me a lil more peace to move forward with my life. If our paths cross, so be it, but at least I’m not playing what if anymore.
How do you deal with break ups, distance and moving on?
I hate to admit it, but the absolute best breakup advice I ever got, I got from an NFL humor site that I used to read. One of the guys writing there did a weekly fantasy football + sex/romance advice column and he got enough “I just broke up and am mopey, what do I do?” questions that he wrote up his standard advice for it, which has got me through a few breakups. His plan went:
1. Break contact entirely. Unfriend/unfollow/delete their number/delete the text message thread, break every single link. Pretend the other person died suddenly. (This one is probably less iron-clad than the others, but it worked wonders for me.)
2. Mourn (continuing the “as though someone died” theme). he gave you one full month to wallow, and he suggested really, really wallowing to get it out of the system; drink too much, whine to your friends, cry if/when you need to, stay inside and be miserable, and then end it. Kinda like sitting shiva, except for a month.
3. Improve yourself. Hit the gym, join a running club, take a class, volunteer, read, whatever makes you a better person. Forget about other people for a little while, make yourself a better version of you, and it’ll help you get over the breakup and improve your chances of meeting someone else just through exposure (although the goal should just be to be better, that’s just a happy coincidence).
Not the greatest source, perhaps, but the suggestions helped me when I needed them.
Thank you so much, Protocoach! Advice sometimes comes from the unlikeliest of sources. Everything you’ve mentioned here sounds great – I’ve got stuck in the ‘what if’ part, and being more proactive about ‘doing me’ will do the trick, I hope. Many thanks!
Cheesy break up songs! Luckily pop radio seems to always have at least one in heavy rotation, but Since U Been Gone is a great timeless one. Shakira has a great break up song.. I think “Don’t Bother” is the title? Anyway, something that can be yelled along with more than sung is usually the ticket for me.
Thank you so much! Break up songs are the best. Especially the ones that have a bit of disdain and/or righteous indignation, as in Shakira. Thank you!
Congrats Tech Goth Marco, and also, your Halloween costumes are SO GREAT.
omgosh thank you and THANK YOU!
I loved that Rebecca Solnit essay so much…it put into words a lot of suspicions I’ve had about “happiness culture”–that it’s very inward-looking and prioritizes private “happiness” above all else. For me all that is hopelessly tangled up with depression (and silly “fixes” for it), and also that “happiness” seems to look an awful lot like complacency. An unhappy life can still be meaningful!
Super agreed. I understand why it’s important to challenge the whole notion that artists have to be unhappy to make great art, but some people are unhappy and do great art. Or just sort of generally live meaningful lives. I’m also suspicious of the whole happiness project, because it also seems to rely on a lot of leisure time to work, which just isn’t always possible.
I’m glad you made this comment–I had thought from the excerpt that it would be an essay primarily about how people treat women authors, and I wasn’t eager to read about that today. So this comment made me go back and read the essay, and it was delightful and such a relief to hear someone expressing all those things so well.
Relief is exactly the right word.
congratulations and all the best to marco!
Toasties, OT, but I need internet hugs. I don’t comment a lot, but I think I talked a little about moving back to the US from Australia. My kind ex has been keeping my cats until we found a place that would allow them. Once that happened, I let the pet movers know. The cats were supposed to get here today, but after a lot of frantic calls and emails I’ve learned they were refused boarding in Sydney because the movers fucked up. They should get here tomorrow, it’ll be okay, but I’m a wreck worried about them. I’d love kitten pics of you’ve got some.
Oh, yeti, that is a mess. I can imagine the stress and frustration, and anger that you weren’t notified and had to figure it all out on your own.
They’re going to be so happy to be back with you. Bonkers, probably, because the trip won’t have been fun, but they’ll be fine once they’ve torn up a moving box or two and shed all of their winter coat all over you.
((Hugs))
The older cat made the trip to Australia (the younger is an Aussie), so I’m especially worried about his mental health. He’s anxious anyway and I just hope he’s not too scared – what if he has kitty ptsd from last time and quarantine? My poor babies. Thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it a lot.
Oh! I’m so sorry but I’m glad it seems like they will get to you safely, even if a bit late. Poor kitties!
Oh, so many hugs for you.
I’m sorry! This is my roommate’s cat, who also had a delayed arrival due to living situations not allowing cats. He seems to have settled in alright:
What a cute nose and paws! Thank you.
Oh politeyeti, I feel a little anxious over your kitties, too. They’ll be OK, though. They have each other, so they don’t feel alone. I have decided to imagine every human they encounter. As I picture each one, I imagine they are the kind of people who are gentle and care about cats. Toasthugs.
Thank you. I’m sure they’re all lovely people, but our coordinator made a pretty big mistake: they were meant to fly in the same carrier, but the airline says no. How can you have this be your job and not know if they’ll take a carrier with two cats? I wanted them together if possible because they’re pair bonded and it would be less stressful. Hubbub.
I suspect the pet movers knew all along the cats would have to be separated, but they told you what you wanted to hear. I have succeeded in requiring my pets be kept immediately next to each other. Even in separate crates, they can hear, smell, or see each other and that’s some comfort.
Argh, so sorry. I’d be losing my mind, good job being able to type and stuff. (((((((hug))))))))))
I don’t want to hijack the break-up advice thread in progress, so I’m just going to mention this here: Halle Berry’s exes David Justice and Eric Benet are talking trash about her on Twitter.
Grumpy old hens.
Love the Rebecca Solnit piece, it sounds a lot like conversations I have with a couple of my friends who have realized that serious romantic relationships (of the sort that lead to cohabitation and marriage) and kids aren’t for us. Those desires feel foreign enough to me some days that I have to remind myself it’s a totally normal thing that other people want and sometimes enjoy. But man, do I like having the space and free time that comes with being single and childless and can’t imaging it any other way.
I was printing out the New Yorker story about the Icelandic rescue team for later, and noticed that it prints out with an intrusive overlay on it, over the text, that says “Need to stop reading? We’ll send you a reminder. [Enter email address]” Does anyone know a way around whatever code they’re using that does that?
It also prints with a header that says “Save paper and follow @newyorker on Twitter”, which, I don’t see how that saves paper exactly, but whatever.
Can you send it to something like instapaper or readability and then print it from there?
That Anna Fitzpatrick article is good and well said and honest. At the same time there’s a part of me that can’t help but feel… Like, it’s a lot easier to think that virginity and lack of sexual experience and loneliness are OK and not something you should feel lesser because of once those things no longer apply to you.
I don’t know, I’m sorry, I hope that’s not terribly rude, but it’s frankly still pretty hard for me not to feel that way. And it feels like the perspective is always retrospective.
YES. It’s not rude.
It seems like often on articles about virginity there will be a group of commenters who seem almost angry about the author’s lack-of-sex distress – sort of like “UGH guys, it’s just SEX, it’s so not a big deal. I’ve forgotten more one-night-stands than I can remember and it’s honestly such a burden.”
Yeah I mean. I’m 30. I used to be 20 and would see bunches of things where people were like “oh don’t worry thats totes not even a thing, I didn’t lose mine until 24”
Then I used to be 24 and getting out of college and I saw a few things that were like “naw, I mean virginities just like a social construct anyway, don’t stress it, I didn’t lose mine until I was 26”
Then I used to be 28. Weird thing though… 26 was pretty much the upper limit there. No one seems to be talking about how they were perfectly happy losing their virginity at 30, or about how when the chips are down no one actually thinks it’s weird to be a virgin at 30 outside of TV show banter.
Yeah, I’m a 33 year-old virgin. I’ve never even kissed anyone, or been on a date. I’m not religious. I’m not asexual or aromantic. I just spent my teens as a closeted lesbian in a small town and the majority of my 20s as essentially a mentally ill hermit.
There comes a point where you just shut up about it, try to deflect around all conversations about sex. You basically just give up and try to accept that it will probably never happen and if it ever does, having to bring up the whole “I am a middle-aged virgin” thing is going to be the most awkward part of it. Coming to terms with the fact that that’s simply a life stage that, at this point, you’re likely never going to actually reach is… not easy.
And makes you pretty bitter, honestly.
So I know this is both pretty late and off topic, but I just bombed a job interview, very badly. There was a lot of incoherent babbling. Luckily it was a phone interview, so they couldn’t see the faces I made after each ridiculously bad answer. Happy gifs (puppies and/or Hamilton) would be much appreciated.
On topic, that Virginia Woolf piece is SO good. It reminds me a bit of the line in Crimson Peak where Charlie Hunnam’s mean mom says Edith is “our very own Jane Austen. She died a spinster,” and Edith replies “I’d rather be our own Mary Shelley. She died a widow.” I hate that no matter how accomplished a woman is, we keep going back to discussing her family life.
Here’s a puppy nap!
Awwwww!!!!!!!
I don’t have a gif of this one yet, but here’s my TinyDog playing with a tiny octopus fingerpuppet https://twitter.com/sarah_jwh/status/659162665915…
Holy crap, TinyDog is so so cute!!!!
So many lovely things today! That HBCU list is going to make me cry, I just know it.
But mostly, YAY MARCO! So happy for you.
“…even if I am now more a cultural stoner than a practicing one”
Wonderful. This is how I shall describe myself from now on.
Congrats Marco!
Marco, I want to throw this out there: have you been tested to see if you have the BRCA1/2 mutation? If you are positive, insurance may then partially cover mastectomy as a breast cancer preventative.
My OB partners with GeneDX and my insurance company. The blood test cost me $100 out of pocket.
Thanks for the idea! Based on what I have gleaned from extensive research and talking to people, most reductions require the taking and leaving of particular tissue amounts which end up not being good for a lot of trans people. So either too much is tissue is taken, as in the case of a breast cancer preventative masectomy, meaning you need more surgeries to build up to a not-concave chest OR if you try the breast reduction route, which might also be covered, it’s often a whole ordeal to get a doctor who actually consents to do a chest reconstruction and not a reduction. It’s gross patriarchy but there are certain limitations about how much tissue must be taken and left, and insurance will actually deny coverages after a surgery because not enough tissue was removed or too much was or whatever. I’d be super curious to hear from any trans people who have successfully used that approach though. Thanks again!
ah, I hadn’t considered that complete removal cosmetically isn’t the intended result of top surgery, which in retrospect makes complete sense <facepalm> I only had the BRCA test for actual cancer reasons (my mom is a survivor). Anyway, I hope your surgery and recovery go smoothly!
An excellent plan!
Haha, thank you! It could only have been a holiday tragedy if the pie went entirely uneaten, but my stomach was pretty happy about it for the next week. Crisis averted, holiday spirit lives on, etc. The meaning of Christmas is pie all for me!
I'm writing this from a computer in New Jersey but I don't actually live here so feel free to continue your unfair bias in peace. New Jersey IS weird, but it's also got some beautiful beaches so that's okay by me.