What WOULD Bekki Eat?

Well, I'll start with what I wouldn't eat. I wouldn't eat margarine. Or tofu. Or lowered-fat anything. Olestra is right out. Hydrolyzed, isolated, evaporated, enriched, or chocolate flavored "phood" won't pass these lips.
What will I eat? Real food. Made-at-home food. Food that my great-great-grandmother could have made, if she had the money and the time. And if she hadn't been so busy trick-riding in a most unladylike way.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Coupon Rant 2.0.1

How do Cheerios make you feel? General Mills wants to know. Their ad, beside their coupon in this Sunday's paper, is the word "Smile" with the "i" dotted with a Cheerio. How cute. Then they ask you to "share what Cheerios means to you" on Facebook.

Yes, really.

Do you need to grab a tissue while you recount the many happy childhood moments you spent with an O-shaped cereal? Perhaps you spent some cute minutes with a toddler who was happily gumming them, while learning to get the contents of his fists to his mouth. Maybe you shared a bowl with a child before they went to school. Maybe it was what you poured yourself every Saturday morning before you sat down to watch cartoons, letting your parents sleep in. But I can assure you that the contents of the bowl were not the source of the warm fuzzies.

If you've read my blog before, you might recall that I think food and feelings ought to be separate. Don't get me wrong, I love food. I love tastes, textures, combinations, and trying new things. But I know that food does not equal love. It is not a refuge, a security blanket, a big bowlful of happiness, a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day... and it's very important that it stay that way. We, as a nation, are getting fatter every year BECAUSE food = love for so many of us.

So, f*ck you, General Mills. Do you want to know what Cheerios mean to me? Nothing. A box full of extruded, damaged, phytate-laden, allergenic, inflammation with sprayed-on artificial vitamins and minerals. It is less nutritious than the box it comes in. There are no feelings in a box of Cheerios. There is no meaning beyond the implication that whoever eats the product cares more for convenience than they do for their health.

Then I flipped the page and saw an ad for a new Ensure product. Proudly proclaiming it's greatness due to the fact that it has:
zero fat.
3 times more protein than juice (er... that's not a feat, really, since juice generally has NO protein.)
21 vitamins and minerals.
That your body will completely ignore.
Because not only are they artificial, but that zero fat content makes them even more rejected by your body.
Gah.

Also in this batch of coupons was a high-powered cleaner bragging about it's ability to remove grease. Because we all have that problem, don't we? Grease spatters on our stovetops (or walls and floors, if you're really having fun in the kitchen.) The stuff dries into gluey, sticky, hard-as-resin spots. I've been there. I've scrubbed with a wire brush after soaking in hot soapy water, to no avail. And then I learned something very, very important. To quote John Edwards, it doesn't have to be that way. Do you know WHY something that was once slippery and fluid transforms into super glue? Because it's damaged. Vegetable oils are not heat stable. And yet we cook with them. Cooking = heat, right? We are cooking with, and then ingesting, damaged, chemically-altered, rancid oil-turned-glue. That's not good, folks.
I've noticed an amazing thing, since switching to saturated, healthy fats (coconut oil, lard, butter, tallow)... everything is really easy to clean. I don't need nonstick cookware. I don't need wire brushes or bottles full of grease-eating chemicals. My fat spatters don't transform into glue. It's just that easy.

And finally, today's WTF Award goes to a product in the ad for our local grocery store. The focus of the ad this week was "back to college," just like it always is this time of year. All the "essential" items for young adults, off on their own for the first time. Apparently our young adults are in no way ready to be off on their own, if the ad is any example. Right there on page two, at the top of page two was an egg scrambler. Next to a happy little display plate, to show us the sort of incredible feats of kitchen magic that we could produce if only we had our very own egg scrambler- a plate with eggs and bacon and some other goodness. Ta-da! Problem solved! Have you ever woken up hungry, but didn't want to drive to McKing for breakfast? What a conundrum! How will you eat? You have eggs... you have a pan to cook them in (or, probably, know how to nuke them)... but how to get the eggs... scrambled?  It's like some sort of Julia Child witchcraft. Damn you, Rachel Ray, for not having a show on this topic!!! But wait, here we have our very own egg scrambler. It looks like a mini chopper, of the kind that survive about 4 onions or 3 ice cubes. Eggs, being so much softer, will probably extend it's lifespan. Thank the gods. We can now launch our young people into the world, knowing they are fully prepared to feed themselves at least once a day.

Or else they could stir the eggs with a fucking fork.


This rant's for you, Chris. Cheers and happy birthday!

About Me

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Tejas, United States
I am many things... all at the same time. (No wonder I don't get much done!) I am a wife to a retired infantryman, mother of 3, stocker (and stalker) of the fridge, passionate fan of food, nutrition, ecology, coffee, wine, and college football. I love all things witchy and piratey. I often cook with booze. I feed stray cats. I don't believe in sunscreen. I don't like shoes and really hate socks. And I currently can't eat any gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, coconut(!?), or sodium metabisulfite (aw, shucks, no chemical snackies.) Sometimes even citric acid gets me. But only sometimes.