Entries from April 2008 ↓

Oh, how I love Indian food. I love having three million jars of spice cluttering up the kitchen cupboards. I really do! There are ways of preparing the spices differently, but I find if you’re using regular spices from the supermarket, doing them as follows turns out no differently to roasting the spices separately. If, on the other hand, you can get really really good spices from an Indian or specialist market, then it’s worth the extra step.

Delicious dal

(serves 6)
2 cups red lentils
2-3 tablespoons ghee (clarified butter) or canola or peanut oil (need a high-temp oil)
1 medium brown onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon sliced fresh ginger (optional)
3 small red chilis (or to taste), finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste

Spices – you can improvise with these. Just start with base amounts (about half of what’s listed) and go by the smell and taste. Add some extra chili powder if you like things hot. I am a heretic and haven’t actually learned what spice mixes make up which specific dishes. Yet.
2 teaspoons turmeric powder
1 teaspoon coriander seed (ground)
1/2 teaspoon whole coriander seed
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 teaspoon fenugreek
5-8 cardamom pods
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp clove powder (I never add this because it reminds me of the dentist’s office)
1 tsp mustard seeds
3 bay leaves
1/4 tsp nutmeg is often used too, but I don’t like it so I leave it out.

Alternately, use a high-quality curry paste (korma or generic style usually works).

1. Rinse the lentils and leave them soaking while you prepare everything else.
2. Heat the oil or ghee in a big pot or wok.
3. Add in the spices and fry them for a few seconds until the seeds start to pop and crackle.
4. Add the chili, onion, garlic, and ginger and fry on med-high until the onion is transparent.
5. Drain the lentils and add to the pot, stirring to coat with spices.
6. Add 6 cups water, bring to the boil and simmer until the lentils are soft. The consistency varies according to the taste of the chef, really. I prefer mine like a chunky thick pea soup, others prefer it more of a mush- ie, the lentils have completely disintegrated.

Serve with naan or chapati or basmati rice. Rice hint: always rinse basmati rice throughly, and throw a bay leaf or two in with the rice while it’s cooking. And some saffron or turmeric for golden rice. And for the love of Benji, buy a rice cooker. You don’t need a fancy one, the $15 bargain shop ones are fine and you get rice! Cooked by itself! I could never get rice on the stovetop just right but with the cooker it’s perfect every time.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said one idea put forward in a submission was an annual national fitness test where citizens would receive a financial incentive if they pass. Source

I know the Australia 2020 summit was basically a brainstorming exercise and is as to actual policy as grape chewing gum is to wine, but jeez. The fact that people think these things are a good idea continues to confound me. Will people with a disability or chronic illness get a pass or will they be expected to adhere to a fitness standard? After all, there’s that paralympian dude with one leg who can ski real fast, that means that all disabled people could do it if they just put their minds to it! FFS. Think, people, think! You can bet your left nelly that there’s no thought of a HAES style individual fitness level there. I’d get penalised in that kind of test for not being able to run so fast, but I can bench press a metric fuckton and impress yoga teachers with my sideways flexibility. I knew a young woman at college who could run 100m in 12 seconds but couldn’t touch her toes. She failed one of those general fitness tests, yep. The kind of thinking that leads a person to believe that something like that is a good idea that could be implemented nationwide may be well-intentioned, but it’s very narrow, ableist, classist, and, well, silly.

Lauredhel at Hoyden about Town posted some thoughts on stuff that seemed notably absent from the summit. I commented on something found in the quick summary report:

“Have health policy focused on prevention – across not just health, but across Government and the whole community, with “zero tolerance” of unhealthy actions”.

Who gets to decide what’s healthy and unhealthy? What would be the consequences of disobeying zero tolerance policies?

Seriously, WTF.

Surprisingly, the summary report doesn’t mention obesity, but it does mention things like a ‘fat tax’ on junk food, and making office buildings open up their stairwells so people can walk more, and incorporating 30 minutes of activity into every sedentary job. Bear in mind that these are nowhere near being actual policy proposals, really they’re just brainstorming, but I’m a bit disheartened (but sadly not surprised) at the lack of critical and lateral thinking going on.

Fat tax on junk food. Who gets to classify what food is junk? Low-carb diet fans would probably rate pasta as undesirable, low-fat diet fans would rate cheesy broccoli as a no. Personally I rate every item of Weight Watchers branded food as junk, but hey. More likely the ‘fat tax’ would be about hiking up prices on fast food franchise items. I really don’t like the idea, despite being a supposedly tax-’em!-lovin’ lefty. So $1 or whatever is added to the price of a Big Mac – but I can still buy a huge cheese, egg, cream and bacon laden carbonara from the Italian stand next to the McD’s in the food court, at its regular price? Will yaki gyoza (deep-fried meat dumplings) from the sushi place escape the tax while battered chicken strips from KFC get the hike? I could go to the market and buy Wagyu beef mince, olive oil, fancy rolls, fancier cheese,  pricey organic salad and make a burger that’s more fat and salt laden than any commercial burger. It just smacks of snobbery: a certain kind of interfering middle-class person who is aghast at what those poor people/children/etc eat and must set them on the path of righteousness.

Making office buildings open up their stairwells so people will walk more. I’ve got news for whoever thought of this one: they’re closed so that you can more safely escape in a fire or emergency, you twit, not because of some insidious corporate plan to hide the fact that manual escalation is in fact possible.

30 minutes of exercise required for every sedentary job. Well, it’s nice to encourage fun physical activity, but you know, I’m not confident this will actually do so. If you already go to the gym for a standard 30-60 minutes, as many of office workers tend to, can you get a note from the manager excusing you? Can I show a statutory declaration saying I don’t have a car, I already get plenty of walking time in, thanks? How on earth is this going to work? North Korean style where a severe person in a tracksuit shouts instructions via megaphone? The only way I can see it having a chance is that it’s not compulsory to attend, but it is compulsory for employers to allow you 30 minutes in addition to lunch/breaks, to go for a walk or whatever. 30 minutes isn’t actually that long if you have to include time at the start and end to get changed and have a shower (coworkers who come back from the gym without showering are gross). How many office buildings even have showers? For the love of Benji, people, use your noodle!

I suspect fat-haters would call my criticisms proof that fat people hate exercise and such. Far from it. I rather enjoy it myself, but I definitely do not want to see anyone penalised or further ostracised for not participating in athletic or sporting culture. Hell, offer free yoga classes and dancing and swimming, give free fruit to kids at school and subsidise fruit and vegetables all you want, but for fuck’s sake, don’t make it about weight. Don’t make it a social imperative to meet some arbitrary standard of fitness or health. Don’t doom peopel to dysfunctional relationships with their bodies. Moving and eating should be happy activities, and genuine health comes from that – on an individual level.

I have discovered quinoa! and lo, it is tasty. A few people it mentioned in the comments of my last post, so here’s the last thing I made with it, which was pretty tasty, reheated well, and you could probably modify it infinitely. And after that, a tasty beanburger recipe.

Quinoa and chickpea pilaf-biryani-couscousy-thing

I’m no longer eating meat. It didn’t feel right for several reasons. What really kicked it off was finally, after more than a few setbacks, and just sort of coasting along for a while, was getting my mind and body to co-operate long enough for me to actually hear what was really going on. And what was being said was MEAT. DO NOT WANT. I will still be eating some cheese and eggs; there’s some pretty good no-animal-rennet cheeses sold at my local hippie shops, and I can get free-range eggs from happy chooks via a woman at work who lives on a small farm. I don’t want to rely on eggs and dairy for protein, however, so Ive been experimenting with all kind of interesting grains. I also don’t want to rely on tofu and other soy products made into pretendy meat, though in contexts such as, say, Thai bean curd green curry it’s fine and in fact very delicious.

So far I haven’t had any annoying comments from anyone who knows. What is annoying is pottering about the internet looking at various veg and vegan resources, and then you see veg*nism being promoted as a ‘cure’ or preventative for obesity, which is rather tiresome. Incredibly tiresome and irksome, in fact.

Anyway, coming up next shall be another delicious recipe of the week, probably featuring some beany goodness.

Here’s an interview with Gina Kolata (mp3, 23mb, 25 minutes long) from Kelly Brownell of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Brownell and the Center are by no means fat positive, but thankfully he just sits back and lets Kolata do most of the talking – which is mostly about the topics in Rethinking Thin, and a bit more on how studies are funded and the bias that produces.

At the end they both mention a bit about how perhaps public health policies should focus more on obesity prevention rather than trying to get everyone to lose weight. I’ve got a big fat tip for that: get rid of the commercial weight loss industry and educate people on how deliberate weight loss attempts will probably just make you fatter. Also, make Health at Every Size the public health policy and abandon the goddamn BMI fetish.

If you hurry you can still get a submission in for the Australia 2020 summit. The deadline is 5 pm, Wednesday 9 April, and you can submit one online – maximum 500 words, no minimum.

You can view the document outlining long-term health strategy discussion points, and of course obesity is right in there, being blamed for causing chronic disease and such. No distinction is made between risk factors and risks.

Interestingly, the chart they include to show obesity and overweight prevalence shows a rise of only a few percentage points per category between 1995 and 2005, hardly a hand-wringing crisis if you ask me.

They ask the question

Why are healthy lifestyle messages regarding exercise, diet, smoking and alcohol abuse not being heeded more?

and my submission will be pointing out that fat people getting abused on the street and laughed at in the gym and so on would be but one of may reasons fat people may not exercise, and maybe thin people don’t exercise much because they’re getting the message that thin always = healthy. Also that the diet industry isn’t actually helping anyone gain health. That health at every size, not focusing on the BMI or number on the scale, is a much more realistic model for individual and public health. And so on, however much I can pack into 500 words yet remain focused on Fat People Are People Too, You Nincompoops.

If you’re an Australian citizen or permanent resident, I strongly encourage you to write. It’s short notice, but every bit helps.

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town has tipped us off to the excellent book Australian Feminism: a companion on sale for just $20 at Clouston and Hall. Also at the ever-fabulous C&H are three books on fat rights and fat womens’ experiences:

• Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression edited by Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco, $9.95
• Fat Girl: A true story by Judith Moore, $7.95
• The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life by Wendy Shankar, $12.95

They also have the updated double edition of Fat is a Feminist Issue 1 and 2 by Susie Orbach for $9.95, which is not quite size-acceptance – it’s mostly about compulsive overeating and Orbach’s method of overcoming it – but it does have some worthwhile observations in it.

I was in the store today and they have a pretty good range of feminist books – including one on women in the Renaissance, which I might also pick up later as I spent my book budget for this week on Australian Feminsim and Bodies Out of Bounds. If you’re in Australia, the postage is pretty cheap: buy now!

I love to cook. For posterity/vanity, I’ve started collecting all my recipes together, and thought I’d share some of my favourites around.

Ok, two recipes to start with. It’s getting pretty cold where I live, and I know many Fatosphere readers in the northern hemisphere are still getting icy blasts galore, so here’s some delicious warmers.

Lentil, bean and vegetable soup – sort of French style, sort of Italian. Continental?

Ingredients

• Beef stock (I use vegetarian beef-style stock). Fresh is nice but pre-prepared or powdered is fine. You’ll probably end up needing at least 5 litres (10.5 pints).
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1-5 cloves garlic, miced – depends on how much you like garlic
• Fresh or dried oregano, basil and thyme
• olive oil
• 2 cups chopped celery
• 1 cup dried lentils (no need to pre-soak)
• 1 cup borlotti/pinto beans (pre-soaked)
• 1/2 cup quinoa or pearl barley (the barley will need pre-soaking), or rice or tiny pasta
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 1 large potato, chopped
• a good double handful of shredded red or white cabbage
• good red wine, if you like it

In a large stockpot, heat the oil, then add the garlic and celery. Sautee for a minute or two (don’t let the garlic burn), then stir in the tomato paste, herbs and optional red wine. (Add a small amount of herbs and wine to start, then taste and add as you cook.)

Keep the pan on medium high, then add the carrot, potato, and cabbage, and stir through.

Add the lentils, beans, quinoa (or whatever you’re using),  and pour on the stock. Stir, bring to the boil, and then leave it to simmer until the lentils are soft. Check it every now and then and stir and top up with more liquid as necessary. Serve by itself or with some kind of delicious bread. 

The soup freezes really well!

And now, the tastiest banana bread I’ve ever made.

Delicious, delicious banana bread-loaf-cake (vegan!)

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bi-carb (baking soda)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup lightly-packed brown sugar
• 5-6 very, very ripe bananas, mashed (I can’t stress enough that these must be very ripe indeed!)
• 1/2 cup canola oil (or other vegetable oil with little flavour)
• 1/2 cup soy milk (or rice/almond/oat milk)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon vanilla essence (yes, a tablespoon)

Pre-heat oven to 175C/350F. Grease and flour a loaf tin or similar. Shallow tins are better than tall. Alternately, make cupcakes.

Stir the soy milk and lemon juice together and set aside. This makes a kind of soy “buttermilk”.

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt together into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar.

Mash the bananas in a medium mixing bowl and stir in the “buttermilk”, oil and vanilla.

Stir the banana mixture into the flour mix, until well-combined.

Pour into the loaf tin, and bake for about 45 minutes (15-20 for cupcakes) or until a skewer insterted into the centre comes out clean. Turn out onto a cooling rack, eat either hot or cold. This also freezes well.

Variations: Add chopped nuts to the micture before baking – walnuts, brazil nuts, hazelnuts and macadamias work well. Or add chopped dark chocolate to the mix. 

Frosting options: It tastes great without frosting, but a lemony cream cheese (using Tofutti or similar if sticking with vegan option) one would work nicely.

It had to happen. Someone’s gone and compared old and new Nigella Lawson photos and turned it into a column about how enjoying eating might make you FAAAAAT.

Lawson’s a wee bit bigger than she was in 2000. This is apparently cause for alarm and allegedly she has engaged a personal trainer to help her lose weight. Because the only reason anyone, ever, could employ a trainer is to lose weight. She’s a busy woman and a celebrity, perhaps she’s feeling run down and thinks some exercise could help, and doesn’t want to do it in public with 325 cameras snapping her every move. Maybe she wants some specific tips on strength training. Maybe something else? Who knows – she’s a woman who’s turned down an OBE and keeps relatively to herself.

Of course, you can’t have an article about someone gaining weight without a snappy quote from a personal trainer who states that while he admires Lawson’s curves, ‘you can put on a kilo a year’ which ‘over 10 years is a lot’. 10kg. 22lbs. Yeah, that’ll turn you into one of those gross fat people for sure! It’s a LOT! Did you know it’s a ‘simple equation’ of calories in/calories out? Have you tried diet and exercise?

Come on, she’s forty eight years old. Which is not that old these days, but people are supposed to put on some weight as they get older, especially women around the age of menopause. Insurance against the conditions you can get as you age and all that. She’s 48, has two kids, and she looks about 32. (Who needs botox or collagen injections when your skin is naturally padded? And not being malnourished from dieting will also help your skin look pretty good. Hmm. Sounds like I’m afeared of wrinkles. I’m not – while I am pretty vain about my skin, I’ve got a few lines here and there and they don’t bother me. Oooh, now I sound defensive.)

The article does end on a positive note, thankfully. Dr Rick Kausman, touted as a ‘weight management expert’ (actually he’s pretty HAES-oriented and teaches intuitive eating as recovery from dieting) says that Lawson is a ‘good role model’ and that it’s ‘not wrong to enjoy food’.

I hate that this is even an issue. That we have to be told it’s OK to like eating. That even a TV chef shouldn’t enjoy eating too much lest they become socially unacceptable. That sub-par journalists get paid to write columns about how gorgeous, intelligent women are possibly actually just ‘fat frumps’ while pretty much everyone on the Fatosphere feed could write something much more interesting and free of insults about one’s body.