maggi dawn

size zero

one of the things I have been thinking about over the last week or so is the connection between Lent and giving up food and our cultural obsession with body-consciousness. Lent is completely subverted if it's taken as an opportunity to lose weight for fashion or image reasons. Lent is supposed to simplify and free you from self-obsession and focus you on GOd. But dieting for fashion consciousness focuses you on yourself, not in a healthy way, but in a way that pressurises you to become something you think someone else thinks you should be.

Last week someone said on the Radio that Size Zero was a very strange concept. What Size Zero says, the commentator pointed out, is that the idea of disappearing altogether is something to celebrate. The disappearance of women, the disallowance of them to take up space in the world, is made to seem virtuous by the label Size Zero. It's a sick idea. And anyone who is using Lent to feed the idea that they should be disappearing is certainly not hearing the liberation of the Christian Gospel, which is supposed to save us holistically, body and soul. Emphatically it does not denigrate the body in favour of the soul, although the way some people interpret the gospel you'd be forgiven for thinking so.

Maybe, if you are a person who has got caught up in the obsession with body size and regular dieting and weight control, the smartest thing you could do for Lent is not give up chocolate or cake or dairy or whatever, but give up dieting. 

National Chip Week

National chip week, 12-18 February 2007.

Chips. By which I mean freshly cut up and, quickly fried fingers of potato. Yes, vegetables. Real food. I do not mean the little processed, flat snack crisps that get called chips in the USA. Nor do I mean the tiny and incredibly vile little things they serve up in fast food places, made of powdered and reconstituted potato and about three thousand additives. No, I am talking about real chips. Go on, you know you want to.

I don't have a deep fryer (all that hot fat, too scary...) but here's my recipe for home made chips:

Heat up your oven nice and hot. About 200 - 220 degrees C (400-425 F, or gas regulo 6-7). Now peel some big potatoes suitable for frying or roasting. Maris Piper are rather good. Slice them into big fat fingers (you could also do wedge shapes if you want posh chips) and dunk them swiftly into a pan of boiling water. Drain them and toss in a dry tea towel.

Now toss the chips in sunflower oil until they are coated generously. (Don't use olive oil, it doesn't do too well at high temperatures). Spread out on a baking sheet. Bake till they are golden brown, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. The timing depends on the size of your chips and the heat of the oven, but somewhere between 20-30 minutes is about right. Yum.

And before you start on about them being bad for you, check this out:

A 100g portion of oven chips contains just 4.2g of fat – that’s less than a chocolate digestive at 4.3g fat, a small pot of natural yoghurt at 4.5g fat or a jam doughnut at 10.9g fat.

An average portion of battered cod and chips has fewer calories, at least half the saturated fat and just a tenth of the salt of a cheese and tomato pizza.

Link: Chip Facts & Figures.

Stir-up Sunday

The last Sunday of the Church Year is the Sunday before Advent - this year on 25th November. These days it is known as the feast of Christ the King, although at Robinson, as it's the last Sunday before the undergraduates "go down" we'll be having our Advent Carol service a week early.

The last sunday before Advent is traditionally known as Stir-up Sunday. The name is taken from the Collect for the day in the Book of Common Prayer:

Stir-up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

But the happy coincidence of the Collect with the timing of Christmas preparations has led to a double meaning here, for this is also the Sunday that traditionally is the day for giving the home-made Christmas pudding a final stir.

The pudding was made with thirteen ingredients, to represent Christ and his disciples, and the stirring was supposed to be done from East to West, in memory of the great journey of the Magi. Every member of the family would take a turn at stirring the pudding, before it was sealed up ready for cooking, and while they stirred they made a wish - and, like most wish-making traditions, the wish had to be kept secret if it was to come true.

Into the pudding would also be stirred a few more wish-making features. A coin was stirred in, either a silver sixpence (about the size of a modern-day 5p piece) or a threepenny bit, a ring, and a thimble. On Christmas day each person would hunt through their serving of pudding to see if they had got one of the good l;uck charms - the coin was supposed to bring wealth, the ring foretold a marriage, and the thimble was the sign of a life of good luck.

You see what you miss if you buy a ready made pudding in a plastic pot?

the morning after

time for bed now....

let them eat cake

I've been doing revision sessions with various students all through today. They look so tired and pale, poor darlings. I remember carrying round that pre-exam pallor even now (despite the fact that time is such a healer). My advice for revision? - cut the 11 hour a day programme to 9 or 10, take regular breaks to stretch and breathe, get some fresh air and exercise...

...and eat properly.

(And yes, I know I sound like somebody's mother. But then Mother knows best, doesn't she?)

Drink more beer...

Martin Bobak says there isn't even concrete evidence that the human body can turn alcohol into fat.
Link via Serenasnape.