Call it like it is

By Andrea Holland

It aggravates me when people use certain words to describe the taste of their food.  “It has a buttery texture,” many often say.  When was the last time these people ate a stick of butter?  Or, when they dismissively say things like, “Oh, tofu tastes like chicken.” Nope.  Tofu tastes like tofu; chicken tastes like chicken. And besides, tofus don’t have wings or feathers; they’re skinless and drink a lot of water to keep their skins silky.  Everyone knows that.  And I’m sorry, but wines and peas don’t have a “nutty flavor.”  Only nuts taste like nuts.

I should point out that I have a very developed food palate.  I’m down to grub – and typically do – anything from a rare alligator andouille sausage to carrot cake.  It slays me a bit when people drone on and on trying to compare the taste of one thing to something completely unrelated.  It also bores me when people rave about the freshness of food.  They’ll come from the latest restaurant singing the praises of the menu.  “Everything was so fresh and bright,” they scream.  What the hell does that mean?  Was the last salad they paid for not fresh?  Was it obviously old or rancid?  If so, why the hell did they pay for it – much less eat it?

Now there’s even a magazine for these people; it’s called “Clean Eating”.  As opposed to what…dirty eating?  There is something to be said for getting back to the realities of the tastes and origins of our food.  Apples don’t always grow perfectly round and red; baby carrots aren’t really baby carrots (they’re actually shaved and tumbled bits from the reject pile) and yes – cheese is a big pile of delicious mold!  It’s perfectly okay to admit that you like tuna from the can or that you’ll only eat romaine lettuce, not radicchio.

Let’s all start being honest about our food.  Let’s leave the taste sales speeches to the marketing gods at Nabisco and the executive chefs across the world.  Let’s love our food for exactly what it is.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a piping hot bowl of shells and crème de frommage to enjoy.  Bon appétit.

Va-Va Vegetable!

By Norma Holland

Fitness is a journey and on that journey I’m discovering a few things about myself.  Fact:  I like to get freaky with my vegetables.
Now, before you go hootin’ and hollerin’ that I do bad things to my produce, read on.  The truth is plain vegetables are boring. A plate of lettuce holds about as much interest to me as Michael Buble.  It needs a little somethin’ somethin’ to catch my interest.  Throw a little feta on it, toss in some dried cranberries and NOW you have my attention. This is why I think people who walk around munching on carrot sticks and pea pods are fakers.  Produce posers!  There’s no way in hell celery is going to make me salivate.  Now, put some peanut butter on that mess and you’ve got one sexy stalk!  Same goes for squash and zucchini.  Slap a little finishing butter on a plate of those suckers and I will shout out, “Mmmm! Show me what you’re workin’ with!”  Yes, sometimes veggies need to be in pasties and a thong (or for me, a uniform, lawd ha’ mercy!) before fickle eaters will take notice of them.   That’s just the way it is….
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“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
-Walt Whitman

Aging

By Allison Roberts

So I have arthritis in my neck. My left knee, elbow, and right hip, ache. I can’t see close-up anymore (trying to pluck my eyebrows has become highly perilous, as I have accidentally torn off bits of skin, mistaking it for little hairs.)  Plus, I notice a slight drooping in my cheeks; as if the skin along my jaw line is scooting down to party with my neck. Aging sort of sucks. However, there are some benefits to aging too.

First of all, you start to care much less about what people think, you say what you feel, you do less of what you don’t want to do, and when someone pisses you off, you tell them….very clearly and usually with some semblance of tact. After all, you have years of experience getting mad.

Here’s what else I notice about aging:

1.)   Noise is highly disturbing. I hate noise. It has become unpleasant to go hear a band play out because although I may want to support them, and enjoy their music—truly—their sound person has lost his damn mind and it takes Hercules-like effort for me not to kill him. “IS THERE SOME UNKNOWN REASON WHY THE MUSIC HAS TO BE SO LOUD IN A BAR THAT IS ABOUT THE SIZE OF A BATHROOM?!!!!” I have been known to scream at him. “COULD WE JUST TURN THE BASS DOWN ENOUGH SO THAT THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX OF MY BRAIN STOPS SLAMMING AGAINST THE INSIDE OF MY SKULL?”

2.)   A few random white hairs in my eyebrows. (And other places that will go unmentioned).  Recently, I found a white hair sort of poking its head out from a spot on my chin. WTF? I am not a hairy person by nature so this is completely discouraging. Pretty soon I’ll have old man ears—white hairs sprouting out from my lobes, for God’s sake.

3.)   Though I have never had much tolerance for alcohol, I am now hardly able to finish one glass of wine without falling asleep standing up, peeing non-stop, needing to eat immediately, or getting a headache within minutes of consumption.

4.)   Not being able to work-out as strenuously as I once could. I am not happy about this at all. My knee, elbow, hip and neck (aforementioned above) give me a lot of grief. I am still able to exercise, and am in decent shape, but I am starting to have to restructure my thinking around exercise and it’s making me unreasonably angry.

5.)   Staying up past ten or eleven PM is not very likely to occur, unless there is a DAMN good reason.

6.)   Patience. Although I would never win a prize for most patient person on earth, I am both more patient and less so as I age. I’ll explain: I have gained patience for people’s journeys…in other words, who am I to know where they are or what they have to learn….but I am less patient with people’s disconnectedness to one another, lack of effort to work on themselves and their issues (if it takes therapy, cutting out the drinking, a year of meditation, going to a “primal room” and yelling till you throw up, drumming in a rain forest while wearing a loin cloth—whatever—just do it for crying out loud. No one’s gonna fix you but you), people’s strong sense of entitlement (I should have what I want just because I want it), and meanness. I am just not up for mean people. They suck.

7.)   Foot cramps. WTF is this about? Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I will sit bolt upright in bed and scream. I then have to throw the covers off and race around the room in order to get rid of the spasm in my arch, or the bazaar excruciatingly painful wrestling match between my toes, which go into rigid little warriors and lock up with one another in a tangled mess.

8.)   Heartburn.

9.)   The split-personality-worry-psychosis. I have always been a worrier, but as I age, I find that I think too much about what I’m doing with my life and why I have no money. And then because I’m older, I don’t give a shit. So it becomes confusing.

10.)   Weird stuff with my thumb nails. They just don’t look right. They have all these weird ridges, and sort of look “curvy and bent,” like they have nail-scoliosis.

11.)   Insomnia. Women of certain ages just don’t sleep anymore unless we drug ourselves blind, or are knocked unconscious by an hour massage, a hot bath, a glass of wine, a baby sitter, a raise in pay, AND indescribably great sex. And really, how often do all of these incidences occur simultaneously (or at all?). Then when we do sleep, we have really weird dreams about people standing in our bedrooms, looking at us. I have no idea what they want, but it’s getting old.

So as I see it, there are some good aspects to aging, and some bad. In reality, we are all getting older, and there ain’t a damn thing we can do about it. So, from my humble early-osteoporosis-laden opinion, the best we can do is to live our lives boldly, with intention, have fun, laugh a lot, love hard, and be completely 100% who we are (unless of course we’re really messed up, then we should try to fix that.) I have to go pee now.