Democrats don’t want to take your guns–we’ve already got our own.

I’m not really sure how I feel about gun ownership, but hot damn do I love a good slogan.

Over on culinate, Cole Danehower writes about terminology. In his words ““Foodie” is incomplete and belittling. “Gourmet” implies haughtiness, while “epicure” connotes hedonism”.  I agree that we’ve got a labeling problem for our movement. “Food activist” doesn’t get the whole point, and “food appreciator and social justice worker” is a bit bulky on the tongue. I’ll sometimes say “gastronome,” but it sounds a bit snob also; and while I really love to refer to myself as a “new hedonist,” the term bears a lot of explaining (although explanation is good, but in its place). I’m interested to see what people say in their comments to the article. What do our words say about us, and what do we call ourselves?

Small parts of a whole

Hello there, I’m back, minus one bout of finals and plus one new, amazing, gorgeous (rental) house.

I want to talk about sustainable food and how to do it cheaply. Emily’s on my case about finally writing a guide to cheap, sustainable, tasty shopping, and hopefully she’ll hassle me enough to actually get it done. In the meantime, though, I wanted to talk about baby steps.

I’ve made it my personal mission to make the SOLE food movement more accessible to everyone, particularly those who, like me, are in tough financial straights. In my opinion, one of the biggest problems that makes “foodie” equatable with “snob” is that we’re purists. I, for example, spent 20 minutes in front of a display of conventional peppers yesterday, pondering whether or not I could buy them and still feel ok about myself. I bought three, and I still feel guilty. My girlfriend’s been cooking them, since I still have tiny pings of conscience every time I go to chop one up.

That said, my point is actually that you don’t need to be me. The fact that conventional produce sends me into a quarter-life crisis doesn’t make me one whit better than someone who can buy them without a second thought. In a perfect world, we’d all be able to spend unlimited time and/or money making all of our food perfectly SOLE, but it’s not a perfect world, and not everyone has the privilege to eat “perfectly”. I’m poor and I still have privilege, in that I qualify for and have food stamps, and that in the summers I don’t work full-time, so I can invest time in growing and preserving a lot of food for the winter. But we can all do our best. Buying organic when you can afford it might be doing your best, and doing research to find out where your organic dollars are better spent could be doing your best, also. Going to the farmers market once a week in the summer and shopping for deals is a huge step too. Today Emily and I found organic, locally-grown strawberries on sale for $15 a flat, and we’ll be making them into jam that we’ll use through the fall and winter. Even if that’s the only action we took, that would be several jars of jam closer to an ideal food system.

So do what you can, be informed, be creative. Shop for sales, and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re a bad person for buying the conventional peppers, especially if that’s the only option you have. But don’t be content to buy them without another thought. We poor people have a right to quality food, but the support system isn’t perfect yet, so go out and do your best.

It’s 1:47 a.m. and I am so hyped up on caffeine. I’m coming out of finals, I have a thesis chapter due very, very soon, and all I’ve really spent any brain energy on tonight was obsessing about how much I like Kanye West’s girlfriend’s fashion choices.

That’s totally unproductive, so I’ve moved on to daydreaming about recipes, and I just realized that garlic scapes happen soon. And when they come, I will be sharing such an excellent scape pesto recipe. I’ve been dreaming about it for the entire year.

On parenting woes

It is statistically probable that some day I will be a parent and so, I worry. Over PBRs and happy hour nachos the other night (I’m nearly there already, see?), we talked about “helicopter parents”, the ones who can’t let go of their children even when they’ve become legal adults and left for college, who make us create not just a College Freshmen Orientation, but a Parent of a College Freshmen Orientation. Don’t like one teeny tiny detail of their life? Bitch about it endlessly, get it fixed, even if your child doesn’t want you to, so that at the tender age of thirty-five, they will still be unable to wash their own laundry or call their own electric company.

Ayelet Waldman, I think, has the answer. Love your children. Just don’t love them too much. In her concept, they are the moons, the spouse is the sun. And yes! That is what parents are there for! To raise children and to set them free into their own lives; to be enough of an independent adult to let your kids become independent adults. In a perfect world, your spouse will be the one you’re desperately in love with.

How simple, how perfect. I have a goal for my future.

I hate you, New York Times

Stay the fuck out of my city.

I vote we take Seattle’s tactic. We can be as hip, frugal, and well-fed as you’d like, but we’re certainly not going to speak to you until you’ve been living here for at least four years. Enjoy your frugal dinners alone, New Yorkers.

I want one. I need one.

Both the onesie and (someone else’s) baby to put it on.

George Orwell, I love you

Six rules for non-pretentious, engaging writing, from George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”. Useful. So useful.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never  use  a  foreign  phrase,  a  scientific  word,  or  a  jargon  word  if  you  can  think  of  an  everyday  English
equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

“I’m poor, and I eat well”

My punk of a girlfriend and I were having a conversation about why the food movement (whatever it is you want to call it. I prefer “the huge fucking social revolution”, but then, that’s just me) is seen as so extremely snobby. Among many other useful topics, she said that I’m the only poor foodie she’s ever met. Or, as I pointed out, the only poor foodie she’s ever known that she’s met. Cultural capital counts for a lot, and chances are that if you’re the type to run around crowing about pecorino fresca, people probably aren’t going to think that you’re hard-hit for money. Given that I was raised poor and, as a college student, am currently poor, she says I should start a new movement: “I’m poor, and I eat responsibly!” The gist of it being, just let people know that they have the ability to do it on a strict budget, that local/organic/seasonal is often a more economic choice, and that not everyone is insensitively calling them bad people for eating the way they do without giving them another option. Not everyone wants to spend all their disposable income on raw, unhomogonized milk; but it sure as hell is useful information that lots of produce at the farmers market is cheaper than what you can buy at the Safeway.

All before noon

I woke up to this headline: Iowa Court Voids Gay Marriage Ban. It was a unanimous decision by their Supreme Court: “We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law. If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded”. Damn straight.

…and it looks like Vermont is headed there, too.
Holy shit, two great things before breakfast.