Stomachs on legs are proud to present

This paper explores the everyday politics and lived experiences of young people who identify as fat, obese or overweight. Situated within the emerging interdisciplinary fields of fat studies, critical weight studies and critical geographies of body size, this paper gives voice to young people who are often marginalised and frequently stigmatised. I draw attention to the embodied relationalities and intersectionalities evident with the young people's narratives of body size as well as the structures of constraint that operate to reinforce the marginalisation they feel. I conclude by outlining the challenges that exist in transforming the everyday politics of fat.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00962.x/abstract

Pork products are big in Germany - all the way from iconic pork-snout-gelatine-infused gummy bears (and mango monkeys), to 'knackig' (snappable) wieners preserved in glass jars, down to the rendered fat infused with roasted onion that is lovingly smeared on good fresh bread.

For our part, we have found frequent use lately for pork fat in a range of Mexican recipes (e.g. mixed with black beans to spread on crispy tostadas) or in our home-made sichuan hotpots.

This brand is non-organic, so we shouldn't buy it, ...but who can resist the cute piggy image on the package?



Pictorial evidence of our last pigfat-kissed Tostada feast: fried corn tortillas topped with crispy tofu, avocado, coriander, beans, parmesan, and raw bok choi chopped &dressed with light creme fraiche whipped with two tablespoons of green habanero hot sauce. To avoid a big mess, consume in dainty unpiggylike nibbles.

Women who own their home weigh 12 pounds more on average than women who rent. A study at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School compared 600 women and found that along with weighing more, homeowners were also "carrying around more aggravation, making less time for leisure, and were less likely to spend time with friends. Grace Wong Bucchianeri, an assistant professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, conducted the study and says that female homeowners "consistently report a higher level of pain — or what you might call negative feelings — connected to their home, and that's after controlling for all kinds of demographic characteristics, their financial situation, how many children they have and so on." She believes that homeowners spend more time working on their home instead of leisure activities like exercising. The study is currently under review for publication in the Journal of Urban Economics.

Link

I suppose that is some comfort for Hock and I who are looking to buy in the only country in the world where real estate is still going up. Perhaps we will spend a little longer paying rent to the fat cats.

The Chip Group a partnership between local industry groups and the New Zealand Heart Foundation focused on improving the nutritional profile of chips or chups.

Judging from their website* and giveaways they have received some serious funding.

*Note awesome chip wallpaper.

If you do decide to join up like me you will be privy to some pretty spectacular videos covering topics such as optimum "chip size", "oil temperature", "basket drainage" and of course "salt"

After watching seven amusing clips which cover topics such as THUCK cut CHUPS are BUTTAR for your HELF and that you should not use SKUNNY CHUPS. I aced the tests (sorry modules) and received my certificate for which I am very proud.

The Chip Group recommends printing your certificate off and showing your work mates. Which is exactly what I did but Chalong my sous chef burnt it on an open flame. Where is the respect.

The Chip Group is now busily sending my two nieces in Auckland (I used their address as I thought it would be asking a tad much to send the goodie bag to Bangkok)

1 bottle of Kiwi Style Tomato Sauce (6 muthafucken liters!!!)
1 bottle of Kiwi Style Tartar Sauce (Also 6 ltrs!!! BURP)
1 Jar Kiwi Style Deep Frying Baking Powder (2 kg!)
1 jar of Kiwi style Chicken Salt Seasoning (2.5 kg!!!!!!!!)
1 apron and t-shirt (hopefully size XXXL as the girls little Hello Kitty t-shirts will not fit them after eating 12 liters of heavily processed condiments)

It was not a complete waste of 30 minutes. I learnt that 2.5 thousand tons of fat is equal 632 elephants. WTF? Actually this is the total amount of fat that they wish to remove each year from the NZ populations diet by cooking a better chip which is not a bad idea if you have ever seen Maytels dads tummy.

Anyway the password for my membership was horsefat which the website never once referred to which is a shame really as it is a nice middle ground, bridging the worlds of high and low saturated fats and producing a pretty good chip.

Anyway...Ella and Liv enjoy the 2 kg of Kiwi Style Deep Frying Baking Powder.

So when you go to Shake Shack and stand in line for 30 mins to an hour and finally order your order hamburger, shroom burger, and frozen custard.... and before the staff hand you over the vibrating electronic device that "shakes" when your order is ready....ummmm.......you might want to try doing a little shake yourself a la Homer Simpson. If for instance, you wiggle yourself and your fat continues to wobble say five to ten seconds after you've stopped exerting yourself......well you might want to rethink your lunch choice, just saying...you know...for your health and vitality.



I'm not being mean, just honest, really.

If your wobbles are minor to non-existent, if say you are a Japanese tourist, go for it. Get the lot, guzzle down a shake burger, fries and custard. Why not try a shake shack shake too while your at it. I'm sure the shakes are great.

If however, your not quite hideously obese but could stand to loose a few squishy bits, as in my case, and if you promise to atone big time, then my advice is skip the fries, (they're just fried potatoes you know, you can live without them) order a 'shroom burger and share a small tub of frozen custard. Hock's shake burger is just a burger in my view, but the 'shroom burger was crispy mushroomy, cheesy and good. The frozen custard was dense and delicious. Follow with brisk walks all over NYC.

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Sometimes when I mentioned to people that I'm married to the chef, I often go through a similar discussion. People tell me how lucky I am and then I tell them yes, but I am but also a tad overweight. They chuckle and often say something to smooth over the awkwardness of having to agree with me by reiterating how lucky I am.

But I do believe they are right. A few extra kilos above my ideal (ok ten more but still within the healthy BMI range, thank god) is really a scant trade off for all the benefits.

Pros of being married to a chef
- access to great produce at wholesale prices
- being courted with delicious meals
- instant acceptance of your beloved by family and friends and increased social invitations
- knowing you'll never go hungry (even as a poor student in Auckland, Melbourne and whilst doing my PhD research in Cambodia, I've always had the privilege of five star dining, Hock would bring home wonderful cheese, great wines etc. In addition, suppliers, who were often friends would give us a lot of great food for free)
- Being with a like-minded and food adventurous person (a big pro for me, I don't care much for fussy eaters)

The other advantage of being married to a chef in my view is getting to live with a person who possesses, as many chef's do, those uniquely appreciable personality traits that chefing so often breeds: masculine stoicism mixed with artistic gentility and a deep appreciation of hygiene. This may sound like a tissue paper promotion but really the same qualities that you are looking for in a box of kleenex are, when you think about it what most people are looking for in their partner, strong yet gentle and very clean. This holds generally true so long as you haven't managed to acquire a love affair with a menial kitchen grunt, or outrageous egotist who yells all the time. There are however some other potential cons.

Cons
- Pudginess (you get fat together, weight loss efforts prove useless)
- Most holidays will revolve around food (again a possible pro, but sometimes annoying to always have to cross town to eat lunch)
- Unsociable working hours (your chef, should you chose to marry one will be working most evenings, weekends, public holidays and special days such as Xmas)
- Maybe better at articulating feelings through food and not words (offers of chocolate cake should be regarded as expressions of love, not further effort to make you fat, I have learned. Say thank you, understand what it means but don't eat it)
- May take particular delight in crass kitchen humour and body art (chefs seem to like hurting themselves, what's a tatoo when you have spent the last ten years burning your arms, have no feeling left in the finger you've repeatedly chopped the top off and have actually come to slightly enjoy the cool burning whip of a cold tea towel across your thigh, ass or other fleshy bodily part)

Those are the main pros and cons as I see them. And for me the pros far outweigh the cons, literally and figuratively. It may have been a different story if he had insisted on making me a wedding dress of cream puffs.

So we ate breakfast 3 times on Saturday. No actually make that 4.

Awoke at 4 am.....ahhhh jet lag and lay in bed until I decided to eat some granola I had bought from the store downstairs....organic too, with hemp seeds.....oooooooo, yes so very fuckin' UES, apparently, to which I added organic vanilla soy milk. Yes I admit it, for all my rantings I'm just as much of a namby pamby organic loving girly blouse as everyone else who writes a food blog.

Organic granola aside, we felt the need for a more "balanced" diet, so we headed downtown to Bleecker St and headed directly to Russ and Daughters for their famed bagel and lox.








The place was bustlin with people collecting the necessary ingredients for brunch. I had to overcome my meek kiwi/ asian tendencies and bustle and push.....



we got mini bagels with capers and onions......it was in my view the most perfect bagel



The minis left room for us to head to Katz's right next door. We had no idea that the two Institutions were so close together. Hock thought I wouldn't be interested in eating a pastrami sandwich straight after a bagel....he of little faith.



We ordered a classic pastrami on rye to share, a kinish and two coffees (the lovely watery filter coffee, call me a philistine but I love American style coffee)........The sandwich came with more exquisite pickles. I had forgotten how good a good pickle can be and their pickles are great. In fact New York really has to be pickle capital of the world.






I also got a unique compliment from one of the staff members who told me I was "lookin good baby" and that he "liked a little sauce with his white bread". I've never quite thought of my sexual appeal in sandwich terms but I guess if you work at Katz this is, in fact, how you may view a lot of things.

So, yaadaa yaadaa yaadaa.....we thought we were full and we were until we stumbled across Cafe Habana at about 11.30 and decided while we were there we should also eat the corn there, because the last time I was in New York, the corn was a revelation to me.




So we ate a piece of corn. Corn still good. Check.



And then we walked miles and miles, and we continue to walk miles and miles for atonement.

I'm realistic that I probably won't loose any weight while I'm here, I'm hopeful that with the walking I won't gain any either. But my legs ache and my belly feels like it is going to explode. In short, I'm transforming into my nemisis....a frog.

This recipe is vegetarian but is so lush and yummy it doesn't feel like your missing out on anything. Do I sound like Nigella? I have been somewhat of a domestic goddess of late in an attempt to save our pennies before our impending trip to the states and japan





Basically make polenta as per directions and when cooked stir in lots of parmesan and butter and then blob out in a baking tray or spring form cake pan lined with baking paper. On top place cooked spinach, or zucchini or any vege you like along with sliced red onion and crumble goats cheese all over it (or gorgonzola or any yummy creamy cheese you like) then beat 4 to 6 eggs with some milk or cream and pour over the whole big yummy mess and bake in a pre-heated oven until firmish- about 40 mins.

Serve with tomato ragout, home made or bought and crusty bread.

American obesity has doubled since 1980.
The Times published a table from the Agriculture department comparing food consumption in 1970 and now-ish.
The foods with the biggest increase in consumption are spinach, garlic, cream cheese and corn sweeteners. Spinach, garlic and corn sweeteners, one can think of obvious reasons why they might've increased.

But cream cheese? Maybe the 350% increase in production can be accounted for as a new baking ingredient (cakes etc). Maybe it used to be more of an 'East coast thing' whereas now it's frequently used in place of butter. Any Americans who can remember the early '70s care to comment?

Maybe there's a new trend in sweet spinach garlic chicken cream cheese pies.

"In 1970, the average American ate about 16.4 pounds of food a week, or 2.3 pounds daily. By 2006, the average intake grew by an additional 1.8 pounds a week. (...)An extra half pound of fat weekly - mostly from oils and shortening. That doesn't count the fat in the extra quarter pound of meat Americans now eat every seven days. Those fats were somewhat offset by a steep drop in dairy consumption, the only major food group to have a decline, primarily in milk drinking. (But we do love our cheese. More and more of it.)"

Once a month my Thai-Chinese family meets for Sunday dinner, each time one of the five brothers in my father's family will host.

This month was my Dad's turn....which meant a selection of all his fatty favourite Chinese foods. We went to a Chinese Restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 24, just down from Imoya (Potato Club) and I guessed just about every course of the usual suspects

First up, selection of starters including smoked duck, chilled jellyfish, drunken chicken, and yam cake


Second was a bit of a surprise. It's usually shark fin soup but due to my abstention over previous meals (I love shark fin soup but figured I should try to practice what I preach in terms of sustainable seafood) he ordered fish maw soup (fish stomach). I have no idea whether the stomachs where harvested sustainably


Third, fresh prawns with dipping sauces


Fourth Peking Duck


Fifth, shitake mushrooms with black hair seaweed


Sixth, deep fried prawns (I sat this course out and handed my prawn over to my 20 year old cousin)


Teo Chew style Goose Feet noodles


I had the noodles, but Hock ate the feet. I've never been a fan of feet. I don't really see the point, but Hock loves them. I'm not a big chicken cartilage fan either, whereas Hock eats grilled parson's nose off street meat vendors


Cantonese style steamed fish


9th course was kaw tom, or rice soup with vegetables and mined duck meat

10th was dessert...which was predictably the black sesame dumpling in ginger soup

The meal was long and at times yummy, I've definitely had better versions of this meal at other Chinese restaurants

It took 3 hours, during which I sat and eavesdropped on my cousin's conversations in Thai "next week something something is happening, Monday afternoon something something, hair something something" and so on....I really must get back to learning Thai

The other night after arriving home from the gracious hospitality of Austin Bush and his Lad Prao tour of Crokmai Thai Laos, ant egg and bamboo soup, followed by an excursion to Parking Toys for a bottle of Johnny and the charming entertainment of a Thai 1990s indie electro-rock cover band who play their own down beat version of "I see you baby, shakin that ass" whilst all seated, Thai style.....



Hock and I went to bed drunk and he tortured me with videos of one of NYC's most famous pizza joints.

It was hell. You know when you're quite drunk and longing for the greasiness that ant egg and bamboo soup doesn't quite fulfill....and there's nothing in the fridge and you just need cheesy bread and all he did was tell me stories of this old Scilian man who makes pizza one by one, very slowly as if he was making you a pizza especially for you in his home. No matter how busy he never speeds up. He just makes pizza, 7 days a week at exactly the same pace. Then he showed me this video and for days I couldn't stop thinking about the perfect pizza.



So the following weekend Hock made pizza, at home, just for me. First a simple margherita, and the second porcini mushroom and marscapone. The recipe from Heston Blumenthal's "In Search of Perfection" didn't quite meet Hock's idea of perfection, but it did mine.




It's not quite New York, but it was a good pizza


Pizza in a mundane setting

Speaking of ducks, we of course had to have an Empress Garden Peking Duck back in AK. I've been around the world (well Asia anyway) and I've never found a better duck meal, despite once being told by a Chinese concierge in Beijing that "duck meal is duck meal" when we enquired where to get the best duck in Beijing. How wrong she was.

In my books, Empress Garden still cooks up the best duck meal I've ever had, despite being a million miles away from Beijing. There are several notable qualities that I especially like about the Empress Garden duck. First is that they cut the skin and a little of the moist and tender flesh for the peking rolls. Most places around Asia, including Beijing, cut only the crispy skin, but having a small slither of duck meat accompany the skin into the pancake and down your gullet is much more satisfying.

In addition, the following duck creations made from the left over flesh and bones are excellent, so good that they definitely compete with the first succulent pancake offering. Although there are several options for the two other duck dishes that follow from the pancakes, we always order the sang choi bao option (duck mince with crispy iceberg lettuce leaves) and the salt and pepper fried bones. The salt and pepper fried bones are one of life's true pleasures. I'm not shitting you. Think crispy kentucky fried duck with asian flavours but yummier and you're on the right track.

After a good "hour" of fishing off the rocks of Huia situated in the now not so polluted Manukau Harbour we called it quits and went and ordered way too many fried things: fish and chips and fried oysters and fried scallops and fried potato cakes (unfortunately no french fry hotdog mashups ) from the 120 year old Huia store. The wait was long and the fry up was mediocre or as my sister-in-law put it "It wouldn't be NZ if it wasn't slightly disappointing". Its one of the most annoying paradoxes of NZ that no matter how close to the ocean you are, or how many fishing boats you see dotted in the harbour you can only ever seem to get seafood covered in batter and deep fried.





A flock of ducks hang out near the Huia Fish and Chips store and seem to make a comfortable living from being fed left over fried things. I am sure that the ducks also have plump little foie like livers and would be much tastier than your average wild duck, but because they are so domesticated by their daily chip feed and it is illiegal in NZ to shoot a "sitting duck", I guess they sit in the same category as the NZ wood pigeon.



As far as fried fish goes, we faired much better on Auckland's other harbour the Waitemata , we ordered from the Fish Pot Cafe a "light snack" of Tarakihi and fried pacific oysters which I personally don't care for but these were simply delicious, just barely cooked but with a very crispy batter yum!







Oh, and instead of fat ducks and westies there were cute little naked asian babies swimming in Trevor Moss Davis Memorial Fountain.

...says this article in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Volume 107, Issue 12, December 2007, Pages 2125-2129

Abstract

Long-haul truckers are confined, by parking regulations and other constraints, to dining at truck-stop restaurants. Objectives were to (a) compare truckers’ anthropometrics with recommended guidelines; and (b) assess eating/exercise habits, importance of healthful food choices, and attitudes about restaurants’ provision of healthful options. Hypotheses were: (a) overweight/obese drivers will place less importance on healthful food choices than will drivers of optimal weight; (b) importance of healthful food choices and attitudes about their provision will be positively correlated. Questionnaires included Food Choices Index, Nutrition Attitude Survey, and demographic information; bioelectrical impedance assessed weight, body fat, and body mass index. Subjects (n=92) were truckers at a Midwestern truck-stop restaurant; 79 were overweight, 52 were obese. Mean rating of importance of healthful choices was above average. There was no difference in importance of healthful food choices for overweight/obese and optimal weight drivers, t(89)=−1.312; P=0.19. Drivers placing more importance on healthful food choices had more positive attitudes about restaurants’ provision of such options, r(90)=0.74, P<0.001. Overall, drivers indicated they would choose healthful foods if available and appetizing. Registered dietitian-directed wellness programs that include education, support, and cooperation of truck-stop restaurants are critical to reduce obesity and risk of disease in this population.