Flavors 518

Now, I realize despite Pinterest 's total addictive quality to a certain type of woman that not everyone knows what it is. The Brooklyn Museum Shop is on there, and when I tried explaining to our shop manager what the site could do and why she should get on there too, it didn't go very well. "Strangers can discover a cake I made last July and 300 people read the post in one afternoon!" Now that is power. But I read on Jezebel yesterday that not all the Pinterest power is being used for good. This is not surprising since I saw pro-anorexia videos on YouTube years ago. Maybe Instagram is next . What is interesting is all the backlash on the site itself. Here are some good ones . And a story on Business Insider . Another story on Jezebel . A selection of some of the pins . And finally, Huffington Post . More of the anti-pins here . My favorite was this one: Now, you can't police the internet. I wrote about pressures to lose weight while I was planning my...

Just for fun I'd like to talk about some foods that sound gross to me. So I am out here dogsitting in Massachusetts, and my coworker cooks almost exclusively with mixes. As a person who cooks from scratch frequently with actual ingredients,  I didn't even know half of these mixes existed. Call me crazy - but I didn't know you could have a box of dry ingredients that makes a dish of scalloped potatoes if you just add water! How, exactly does that work? She has tons and tons of slow cooker mixes, but I am not going to judge those because they just seem like packets of seasonings. I shouldn't make fun. Her doctor is always telling her to eat healthier, and we are always trying to come up with healthy foods that she may like. But she really seems to be the type of person who judges whether foods are good or not based on what is not in them (spices, vinegar, anything mushy), than what they contain (healthy ingredients with actual nutrients). When I was over here on my...

I have the above postcard hanging up next to my desk at work. It makes me think about regional foods. Do they mean anything in terms of the sense of identity people have relating to a specific place? What does it say about places if they don't really have their own regionally specific foods? I've lived in three places - Detroit, NYC, and Albany - and when I think about the foods that might be associated with those places I wonder what it means. The funny thing about regional foods is if you grow up in that place you assume everyone in the world knows about those things. It becomes a bonding thing or a short hand for relating to someone who is also from there (like sports teams). If you grew up in Michigan, you couldn't possibly know that if you went to Florida and ordered Mackinac Island fudge ice cream they would look at you like you were crazy. As featured above pasties are big in MI. I saw something similar when I was in Scotland, so I wonder if it was Scottish im...

Today I would like to talk about "Brideorexia" as discussed in this article . According to this book "the way we marry is who we are". And I would like to think as a society we are better than expecting young women who are getting married to completely change themselves in many ways in order to make a commitment of love and unity, and to celebrate the merging of two families. This book makes the argument that modern brides freaking out about losing large amounts of weight is related to the much older traditions of bridal fasting (which can be found in several different religions and cultures), and cleansing , including the Jewish mikveh .  A woman simply has to change her facebook status to "engaged" to get only ads related to losing weight for a year. I am so used to these ads, that once when Scott was logged into facebook I noticed that he had no ads for losing weight, and I was shocked. I am told it is worse when you change your status to "marr...