Sunday, May 31, 2009
Try Cooking For Once
Growing your own fruits and veggies is great, and I commend Mrs. Obama for encouraging America to do so. But cooking your own meal is also crucial to eating healthy. And I don't mean heating some water and making instant soup. I mean making a meal entirely from scratch, where you cut your vegetables (which you picked up yourself) and choose your seasonings and use your pots and pans and stove and oven to create a meal that you were intimately involved in from start to finish and so can see what is or isn't healthy about it.
I was brought up in a household where I was expected to cook entire meals, both for myself and my family, since I was in 9th grade. I started simple, with spagghetti and sauce, and worked my way up to stir-fry with a dozen different vegetables and seasonings. As a result, I feel deprived when I have to go long periods of time without cooking, and I don't like not knowing what's in my meal.
Unfortunately, it seems like I may be in the minority with this exerience. According to a New York Times Op-Ed article, "research by the NPD Group showed that Americans ate takeout meals an average of 125 times a year in 2008, up from 72 a year in 1983. And a recent U.C.L.A. study of 32 working families found that the subjects viewed cooking from scratch as a kind of rarefied hobby...[and] according to a 2008 NPD study, of all supper entrees “cooked” at home, just 58 percent were prepared with raw ingredients".
These statistics are appalling. Cooking is a hobby now? Not for me or my family, it isn't. Besides being healthy, cooking is a way to spend quality time with family, chatting is a neutral zone while working together to create a delicious and healthy meal for yourself. Some of my fondest memories are of me and my parents and siblings working together to create a dinner, listening to Garrison Keillor's A Prarie Home Companion. Laughing together, talking about the day, making plans together for the week: that's what cooking means to me.
So come on Mrs. Obama. You've got the bully pulpit here - and the press already loves you and yours - so use this opportunity and show people how to love to cook. And since "cooking isn't one of [your] huge things", maybe you could work with your White House Chefs (who must love to cook) to show the American People how to make simple, healthy meals.
Maybe this metaphor is more appropriate for your basketball-playing husband, but the ball's in your court now.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The Church: Pro-(Embryonic)-Life, Screw Everyone Else
"Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, kicking, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them."
The girls had just as bad a time. They were "treated as slaves, laboring up to 7 hours a day... were routinely sexually abused, often by more than one person at a time."
If the Church were truly "pro-life", it would take care of life after it left the womb. Instead, all it cares about is protecting the fetus's life. Afterwards, screw it, just more fodder for the priest-abuse machine. The children's shelters won't even release the names of those involved, because the criminals of the religious order are more important than those they are charged with caring for.
How can the Church possibly claim the right to tell us how to live our lives and what is moral when its own members don't live by the morals they preach? Maybe this is why the youth of today are so disillusioned with organized religion. (see post below) It's all just a bunch of bullshit.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Palin: She Really Does Suck
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Abstinence and the Media: Mixed Messages
Monday, May 11, 2009
Who Needs Religion? Not The Youth.
Frankly, I'm not surprised at all. Who needs religion now, when all we see of it is hypocrisy and mixed messages? Each religion preaches tolerance in its respective holy books, but yet the Middle East is a breeding ground of hatred and warfare. At home, Obama had to fight rumors that he was a "secret Muslim", as if being a Muslim was a disqualification for the Presidency. A politician, who was Muslim, had to fight to be able to swear into office on the Koran instead of the bible. Religion preaches that we must help our neighbors and those worse off than us, but yet the wealthiest countries barely pay more than a lip service of aid to struggling nations. Don't get me started on the priest sex abuse scandals - who wants to be part of a religion that has that history in its culture? We are a nation that prides itself on religious tolerance, but yet we must swear in on a bible, and swear allegiance to the flag of a nation "under God".
So if the youth of America don't like organized religion, what do we like? Tara Stiles of The Huffington Post posits that there may be an upswing of interest in a more spiritual path, through yoga and meditiation. That seems to make a lot of sense, especially since for someone disillusioned by the large establishment of religion, spirituality through yoga and meditation can be achieved by yourself or in a small group.
Personally, and here again you can completely disagree with me, I am glad to see this change. In my opinion, the major organized religions are way too powerful and hold way too much sway over peoples' lives. This is a great change, a great way for people to take back control over their lives.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
write or remain silent: Barack Obama
Is John McCain desperate: SNL
Big rating on SNL: Sarah Palin
John McCain: 7 more states
Sarah Palin: Votes in Alaska
Voters concern
Sunday, December 14, 2008
College Professors Are Losing Out
- A writer who taught for more than twenty years at a private Southern California college was paid so little, he had to work the graveyard shift at airport gift shops.
- Another professor made a 4 hour commute to teach a class for 27 years, but was only paid $3,000 a semester. Now, he's lost his job because the school could hire someone for less, in this terrible economy.