I spend a good fraction of my day thinking about declining education and public safety budgets and rising unemployment levels. Perhaps because of that I can barely find the words to respond to this piece from the Atlantic
No, it’s my other daughter, Sophie, that I am worried about. Sophie is the one who inherited the foodie gene. She has just left to attend university in London and the calls have already started. "Do you realize how much fleur de sel costs?!" "Where I am supposed to find fresh mozzarella?"While other mothers are baking brownies and chocolate chip cookies to fill care packages, I’m looking up the regulations for shipping guanciale.
I worry about Sophie getting enough to eat simply because she refuses to make do. Like me, Sophie has low blood sugar, so when she gets hungry she goes slightly mad. Does she grab the nearest pretzel/apple/bag of potato chips to bring her hormones back to normal? No. She would rather suffer till she makes it to the farmers’ market to pick up a week’s worth of perfect plums.
Maybe Adam can help.
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
Wednesday ~ October 13th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Rebecca Burlingame
Maybe we should just have magazine articles with real conversations from the “other side”, to keep a balanced perspective. An article might go like this, “and as the dinner party progressed, someone glanced at the expiration date on the bottle of salad dressing and exclaimed that it went out of date four months ago. Then the table burst out in laughter as a friend replied, ‘haven’t you ever heard of charcoal?’” For the uninitiated, charcoal wards off food poisoning.
Wednesday ~ October 13th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Rebecca Burlingame
A glass of scotch and I forget to explain myself. The out of date dressing comes from the local food bank or “Bent N Dent” store.
Thursday ~ October 14th, 2010 at 12:37 am
TequilaKid
The Italian term “guanciale” means “pillow”. I hope your daughter doesn’t eat pillows, which are notoriously indigestible.
Thursday ~ October 14th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Sister Y
For hundreds of years, guanciale and other preserved pork products were essential to the survival of the peasantry. Same goes for olive oil, fresh veggies, etc. Food production has changed so much that now the peasant food is the luxury food, and what used to be luxury (sugar, processed grains) are cheap. So, in the US, obesity is much more heavily associated with food insecurity than being underweight. In America, it’s probably healthier to refuse to eat food unless it’s really good, like Sophie.
Thursday ~ October 14th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
IVV
In general, I’d agree, but sometimes health is better served by staving off the short-term hypoglycemic shock than the long term metabolic syndrome, at least for a day or two.
Friday ~ October 15th, 2010 at 10:26 am
jazzbumpa
Maybe Sophie should hook up with one of Mankiw’s kids.
Cheers!
JzB