Usually for your weekend reading I post something of interest from around the web. This week I enjoyed reading the HuffPo listing of the 10 most polarizing foods–foods that people either love or hate–but some of your responses to this weeks’ earlier posts made me think you might enjoy this one, originally posted in August, on using God as backup for enforcing white middle-class standards of beauty and grooming. Recently I read back through just a bit of Disciplines of... Read more
My husband says I forgot to point out that not only did Ruth pursue Boaz, pretty much proposing marriage to him, but she also went and lay down next to Boaz at night. When he was sleeping. After he’d been drinking. How’s that for some ‘Biblical’ Passion & Purity!? {And yes. I totally love and adore my scholarly husband for pointing that out.} Anyway, OK. Brief recap from part one– Things I learned from evangelical culture: Be Pure. And so... Read more
Disclaimers: 1. This title is, of course, hyperbole. 2. My parents didn’t teach or embody patriarchal attitudes. {Not blaming you, mom! Not blaming you, dad!} 3. I might have to add more disclaimers later. Criticizing fairy tales for being relentlessly patriarchal is well-trod ground, I know. It’s been nearly 20 years since Ani DiFranco first sang: i am not a pretty girl that’s not what i do i ain’t no damsel in distress and i don’t need to be rescued... Read more
So, Paula Deen, the TV cook, restaurateur, and cookbook author, has Type II diabetes. And, apparently, she’s known about it for quite some time. There’s speculation that she’s kept her diagnosis quiet to protect her lucrative career as Queen of Southern Cooking. Of course, now that it’s out in the open, she’s announced that she’s teaming with NovoNordisk to promote a new diabetes drug. In a USA Today interview, Deen noted that she was sad, because she thought she’d have... Read more
I’m not really a fan of beer, but I think that has more to do with the beer I’ve tasted, not with me. Two times I’ve tasted beer that I liked: once, at Zum Schwarzen Bären in Göttingen, Germany, when I tasted a house-brewed dunkelbier, and once at a pub in Philadelphia following the funeral of our dear friend Sam, when I had a Chimay Rouge. I suspect my taste for beer is somewhat underdeveloped. So a couple of weeks ago–when... Read more
We’ll be having a birthday cake today, to celebrate the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I have a dream” Because, yes, we’ll watch the I Have a Dream speech; yes, we’ll sing “We Shall Overcome”; we’ve read the picture books and talked about the civil rights movement. But to truly mark a day as special–to show a 3 year old and a 6 year old that Dr. King’s birthday is worth remembering in a big way–you... Read more
Here it is, your Saturday Eating Reading! …from Elizabeth Bernstein at the Wall Street Journal comes this look at what happens when Ms. Adventurous Eater marries Mr. Bland-and-Boring… “Sharing meals is one of the most enjoyable things couples do together, a regularly scheduled time to relax, have an intimate conversation and recharge the relationship. But when one person is an adventurous eater and the other has simpler tastes, meal times are often divisive.” So when a foodie and a non-foodie... Read more
from my most recent post at the Christianity Today women’s blog… “In a recent opinion piece for the Washington Post, Emily Matchar, who writes regularly on the phenomenon frequently called the ‘new domesticity,’ wonders whether the resurgence of interest in canning, knitting, and generally DIY-spirited homekeeping is not, in fact, regressive–a ‘step back’ for women. Homekeeping, and all the domestic arts, are a minefield in our culture, often thought of–and treated as–degrading and menial work. The more creative domestic arts–sewing... Read more
So the Palm Beach gazillionaire John Castle apparently broke his waiter’s finger for bringing the bill to the table (as, reportedly, his wife requested) instead of charging it to the account. Ouch. Treating restaurant servers kindly is very, very big in my book. Once upon a time three times, I was a restaurant server, and there are plenty of people in my life who have done that very same work. It’s harder work than you might imagine it would be,... Read more
One of my favorite things about blogging is the free books. I’m not much of a book-buyer–being that my library system is well-stocked, efficient, and user-friendly–but sometimes it is nice to have one’s Very Own Copy of a book. And last week I received two lovely books for my perusal (and possible review) in the mail, one of which was this: Fanae Aaron is an art director, not a chef, but when it came time to feed her son, she... Read more
Rachel Marie Stone
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