"All your life you are told the things you cannot do...
"All your life they will say you're not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you're the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this.
"THEY WILL TELL YOU NO, a thousand times no, until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly.
So, yesterday was a beautiful day; that crystal clear blue sky with a crisp Winter air, but I eventually became a little depressed and then unfortunately, bitchy. So, I went to bed early. As usual, Christmas had just gone too fast for my liking.
I want to share with you a Christmas family tradition that my Mother started some time back, just in the event that you either do the same, or maybe would like to adopt it for your own. Because, it's always fun. Even if at first some of us don't feel like partaking, by the end we're always glad we did. (And just for the record, this can be done with 1 or more people, including animal companions - carry them - unless they're horses or cows, then just drag them along. This can be done at any point over the Christmas season, beginning with Thanksgiving. The more opportunities, the better...)
When Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" comes on (with my Father at the stereo's helm), my entire family (that would be at least 21 of us, give or take a few) get up, hold hands and proceed to do a conga-line through the entire house. But, we hold hands, not shoulders like a traditional conga-line. It's just easier that way and the line can move faster and cover more ground. Although, we just about bounce my parents' china cabinet over and have actually broken things before, so be forewarned.
Once the lead gets tired of leading, they dramatically turn their head the other direction, which notifies everyone behind them to turn around and start dancing in the opposite direction. The line can (and should) change direction multiple times. We dance for the duration of the song. AND we sing along with Jose at the top of our lungs and hoop and holler as well. It's as though we're possessed by Puerto Ricans/Mexicans for 3 minutes and 5 seconds. Although, I'm sure we're not as graceful and authentic as the real thing. But, we're close.
I had told Will of the family tradition long before he met everyone, but I'm not sure he was prepared for the actual event, in all its glory, to take place. When Will first came into the family and was introduced to everyone (a little overwhelming being that Will comes from a rather small, quiet family and I come from a Greek/Irish heritage that lives out loud...), we were visiting from California for Christmas.
Unfortunately enough, he was literally on the can dropping the kids off at the pool when Dad fired up the song. My oldest brother proceeded to pound on the door (this was upstairs, because the conga-line had travelled up the stairs before eventually heading back down again) every time they passed the bathroom. He kept knocking on the door yelling for Will to come out. In fact, EVERYONE was yelling for poor Will to get off the toilet and join the conga line. I think they were relishing that they had a new inductee. I was in another bathroom and knew that even though I was in a towel, just having gotten out of the shower, I had to partake. So, I danced in my towel.
And Will, being the great sport that he is, cleaned up as soon as he could and came rushing out, grabbing the last hand and danced his way down the stairs. I can only imagine he thought, "What the hell are they doing?? And what have I gotten myself into?? I can't even take a crap without these people being a part of it..."
The version of "Feliz Navidad" always must be the following version of Jose Feliciano's. Thus, the goofy video-clip. (I have NO idea who the two people are that briefly show up in the video.) I found other, more recent versions, but they're just not the same.
If you're even entertaining the thought of adopting this into your own family, I strongly encourage it. Add hats or wigs for that extra bit of icing if you'd like. All I can tell you is that it's always fun. And like conversing around a dinner table, respectfully, yet also poking fun at one another. Like laughing hard and smiling as big as you can, as often as you can, there is no substitute for dancing. And Christmas, like LIFE in general, just goes too fast not to.
FELIZ NAVIDAD, BISHES! BAILAR! BAILAR! MAS RAPIDO!!
And please feel free to add Koalas, especially if you want your eyes scratched out.
Ahh... the 80's. We could probably just sum up that decade with the excess of hair. And maybe brooches. Okay, and maybe cinched, pegged jeans.
As much as Will and I love George Michael, the scene where he's wearing the fur-lined hat and a face full of make-up is just awesome. Like a big ole dramatic snow queen.
So again... LOVE the song and his airy voice. But, the comments take it.
mamzelledalton wrote, "Merry Christmas from... a Canadian in France? Happy holidays, world! :)"
And eurovsamerik, "Merry X-mas from Lithuania ;]"
Kevintjez (no relation) wrote, "Merry christmas from the Netherlands :)"
hristinaish, "Merry Christmas from Bulgaria!!! :)"
And there were more, from Poland, Finland and Holland, Hong Kong and Taiwan and Singapore. They were from Hungary, Slovakia and Austria. From Greece and ChongQing, Spain and Qatar. And from Norway and Romania, Iceland and Ireland.
In fact, there were 14,657 more comments and counting.
They were from everywhere...
And being the sap that I am, it got me. How we're all on this beautiful blue marble hanging out there together. All siblings, not really that far removed, with this gorgeous mother. And of course, without her, there would be no gift of life. We would be nothing. There would be no ground beneath our feet, no air for breath, no water for thirst, no trees for shelter and warmth, and no friends or family or loving animal companions to hug for comfort. There would be no humor for laughter and no music to dance to. There would be nothing. As far as nothing could be.
I know you know all of this... I can only speak for myself when I say that sometimes I just forget how truly, truly profound it all is. So, speaking of gifts...
We're all in this package together. Everyday of the year, every year of our lives... So, Happy Today, my brothers and sisters from all over the globe. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy Today.
Okay, so I'm becoming exasperated... I know that I told you I wasn't going to bitch about what we're doing to our food ("at least until next time" - See? I left myself an out.), but I couldn't stand that you might not know about this. So, without further adieu:
reaching for tomatoes, but they shouldn't be in cans. Ugh.
1. Canned Tomatoes
The expert: Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A
The problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Unfortunately, acidity (a prominent characteristic of tomatoes) causes BPA to leach into your food. Studies show that the BPA in most people's body exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. "You can get 50 mcg of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that's a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young," says vom Saal. "I won't go near canned tomatoes."
The solution: Choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Bionaturae and Coluccio. You can also get several types in Tetra Pak boxes, like Trader Joe's and Pomi.
And yes, we should be reaching for salmon as well, just not
down on the farm. Those crazy bishes DON'T LIVE ON FARMS, Y'ALL.
2. Farmed Salmon
The expert: David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany and publisher of a major study in the journal Science on contamination in fish.
The problem: Nature didn't intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT. According to Carpenter, the most contaminated fish come from Northern Europe, which can be found on American menus. "You can only safely eat one of these salmon dinners every 5 months without increasing your risk of cancer," says Carpenter, whose 2004 fish contamination study got broad media attention. "It's that bad." Preliminary science has also linked DDT to diabetes and obesity, but some nutritionists believe the benefits of omega-3s outweigh the risks. There is also concern about the high level of antibiotics and pesticides used to treat these fish. When you eat farmed salmon, you get dosed with the same drugs and chemicals.
The solution: Switch to wild-caught Alaska salmon. If the package says fresh Atlantic, it's farmed. There are no commercial fisheries left for wild Atlantic salmon.
Like a healthy salmon, it doesn't come easy.
Sometimes, we've got to work against the current, but hey, aren't we worth it?
I know I am...
And I don't need L'Oreal to be telling me that shit. Dang.... I KNOW I be hot.
(Please forgive me for the recycled photo. I no longer have a beard. And I haven't worn that little get-up for at least two weeks.)
And without further adieu, here is the last bish session on food for yieu and yieu and yieu. (At least until next time. And come on, I seldom cover such dark material without a little bit of fun, right? RIGHT?? OUI OR NON?? Oui... I hope.)
Growing fast food: Cattle fed on corn eventually become sick and die. Via a transcript from Fresh Air on NPR with Terry Gross
GROSS: "Let’s get back to the cow’s stomach."
Mr. POLLAN: "Yeah."
GROSS: "So the cow now is eating corn instead of eating grass. Its stomach is made for digesting grass and turning it into protein. How does the cow’s digestive system handle corn?"
Mr. POLLAN: "Well, very poorly. It’ll go kablooey if it’s not done very gradually. And I talked to people who said that most cows, most beef cattle getting a heavy diet of corn–and again, they can tolerate some of it, but when you crank it up to 70, 80, 90 percent grain, their stomachs go haywire. They suffer from a range of different phenomenon, one of which is bloat.
"You know, the rumen, this organ, is always producing copious amounts of gas, and these are expelled during rumination, you know, when the animal kind of chews its cud. It regurgitates this bolus of grass and in the process releases all this greenhouse gas, essentially methane and things because when you’re digesting grass much gas is produced. But when they’re eating corn, this layer of slime forms over the mass in the rumen, and it doesn’t allow the gas to escape. So what happens is the rumen begins to expand like a balloon until it’s pressing up against the lungs of the animal. And if nothing is done to release the pressure of that gas, the animal suffocates. It can’t breathe anymore. So what do they do? Well, if it gets to that point, they force a hose down the esophagus of the animal, and that releases the gas, and they very quickly put them back on hay for a little while.
"So that’s one of the things that can go wrong. Well, perhaps the most dramatic. But a whole other range of problems are created because the corn acidifies the rumen. The rumen has basically a neutral pH when it’s healthy and getting grass, and that’s very significant for a lot of reasons. But you feed it corn and it gets a lot more acidic. And the rumen can’t deal with acids, and what happens is the acids gradually eat away at the wall of the rumen, creating little lesions or ulcers through which bacteria can pass. And the bacteria get into the bloodstream and travel down to the liver, which collects all such impurities, and infects the liver. And that is why more than 13 percent of the animals slaughtered in this country are found to have abscessed livers that have to be thrown away and is a sign of disease.
"But this low-level sickness, acidosis or even subacute acidosis, as they call it, afflicts many, many–probably the majority–of feedlot calves, and it leaves them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases. Their immune systems are compromised. So they get this, you know, horrifying list of feedlot diseases. You know, we have these diseases of civilization, you know, heart disease and such things. Well, they have their own diseases of civilization: feedlot polio, abscessed livers, rumenitis, all these kinds of things that cows in nature simply don’t get."
GROSS: "Is this where the antibiotics come in?"
Mr. POLLAN: "Yeah. The only way you can keep a cow alive getting this much corn would be with antibiotics. And they get large quantities of antibiotics with their feed every day. They get rumensin, which is technically an ionophore. It’s a kind of antibiotic that helps with the bloat and the acidosis. And then they get tylosin, which is in the erythromycin family. And that antibiotic cuts down on the incidence of liver disease, and without that, they would all have liver disease probably.
"So, you know, when people debate antibiotics in livestock, which is a very, you know, important issue, and it’s before the Congress right now, they make this easy distinction between feeding animals antibiotics to promote growth, which is done in the chicken industry and the pig industry, and then feeding them when they’re sick, which even the public health advocates against using antibiotics in livestock say, ‘Of course it’s fine. You must treat sick animals.’ But where do you put the beef calf who is clearly getting these antibiotics to cure him? On the other hand, he wouldn’t be sick if we weren’t feeding him what we feed him? So it kind of confounds the usual distinction. If you took away these antibiotics, everything would have to change."
GROSS: "Michael Pollan’s article on the beef industry was published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. His book, “The Botany of Desire,” will be published in paperback next month. We’ll talk more about the beef industry in the second half of the show. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR."
(Announcements)
GROSS: "Coming up, the consequences of feeding cattle antibiotics and hormones. We continue our conversation with Michael Pollan about the modern industrial steak."
(Soundbite of music)
GROSS: "This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross, back with Michael Pollan. We’re talking about how cattle are raised and fed in today’s industrialized beef industry. Michael Pollan’s article, This Steer’s Life, was the cover story of last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. He usually writes about gardening and organic food. His book “The Botany of Desire: A Plants-Eye View of the World” will be published in paperback next month. When we left off, we were talking about why cattle are fed antibiotics along with their corn feed. Well, the corn wreaks havoc on the cow’s digestive system. The digestive problems are addressed with antibiotics.
"Now what about the effects of the antibiotics on we humans that eat the cow meat? Is there still antibiotic residue in the meat?"
Mr. POLLAN: "Yes, they have found recently that there are antibiotic residues. But the larger problem–and this is one of the key connections between their health and our health, which I believe you simply can’t separate–is that simply by putting this huge quantity of these antibiotic chemicals into the environment–you know, more than half of the antibiotics made in this country go to feed livestock–you are creating resistant bugs, resistant bacteria. This is how evolution works. If you put a poison in the environment, to a population, it will evolve to withstand that poison. And that is happening. And that can be proven. It happens downstream of feedlots in the water that’s getting away. It happens in the manure of the animals.
"In their digestive tract, right now, they are selecting for strains of bacteria that can withstand erythromycin, that can withstand penicillin, and those bacteria, having been created through this process, are now everywhere. And there is a connection between the antibiotics that steer number 534 is getting, and all his pen mates, and the fact that when my son has an ear infection, I have a hell of time finding an antibiotic now that will work. The reason that our antibiotics are failing is in part because we are squandering them on all these animals."
REALLY not so much. (BBBRRRRTTTTTTTT... There goes the waitress... WOULD SOMEBODY HELP HER PLEASE?? Thanks.)
And this,
REALLY NOT SO MUCH EITHER, DAMN IT. (I'm pretty sure he exploded two minutes after this pic was taken.)
In a time gone by, many ordered what seemed to be more civilized dishes, such as "Pheasant Under Glass", which origins are quite shaky. One report says, "Breast of pheasant is served under glass to hold in the cognac flavor that makes this dish so distinctive." While another says that it refers to not really "glass", but rather a glaze... Or rather a "glace", that is was pheasant en gelée, or covered with a savory gelatin... Who knows?
But now, I see something different in our midst,
Guinea pig under pizza.
Where, we're actually
the guinea pigs... And I'm not sure the pizza's even really pizza.
With our livestock eating all this crap, I wouldn't be surprised if our chickens,
