Vegetarian Diabetes

I hate the way people talk about diabetes.  

Josh and I were watching Hulu last week, and the commercial said (in their doom voice)-- Have you been diagnosed with a LIFE THREATENING ILLNESS??  And on the screen, they flashed the words- Cancer, Stroke, and Diabetes.

One of these things is not like the other.

Look, diabetes is serious, and I'm not trying to say otherwise.  But it is not fucking cancer!  Or a stroke.  Jeebums Christ, what the hells??

I don't have diabetes.  But I probably will.  My mother has it.  My grandfather had it.  Guess what?  DIABETES IS FUCKING GENETIC.  I got me some diabetes genes.  I also have pretty shit eyesight, but no one is shaming me for that.  

Did you know that they don't even know that being fat makes you be a type 2 diabetic?  They know that people gain weight before they develop insulin resistance, but they DO NOT know that the weight gain causes the insulin problems.  It may be that developing problems with insulin CAUSES the weight gain.

And even besides that, there is currently NO WAY to turn a fat person into a thin person permanently.   Not a single one.  The science on this is very clear.  You might as well tell me that if I want to live forever, I should spontaneously grow wings out of my back.  I can't fucking do that, dude.  It's not a thing, so why are you even saying that to me?

I bet you also did not know-- gaining and losing weight over and over again is very bad for you.  And hey, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but that shit has actually been proven.

So here's the thing-- can we please stop treating diabetes like Food AIDS?  Can we stop treating people with diabetes like bigoted homophobes treat people with HIV, like this disease is a thing they brought on themselves through their own actions, so they deserve to be shunned and shamed.  That these people are diseased and disgusting and should just go die, because they're bad, and if they could just control themselves, they wouldn't be sick, so fuck them.

(Please note-- I don't feel that way about people with HIV or any STD.  I don't think anyone should be treated that way.)

I had HPV, which is sexually transmitted.  Because I'm a grown-ass woman who likes sex, and HPV is so so common.  And there are fuckers who are trying to prevent kids from getting the HPV vaccine because they think if you are a dirty slut, you deserve to get cervical cancer and die.

Just stop and think about how messed up that is.  We don't really take that idea seriously in the mainstream.  But we DO think that fat people deserve diabetes.  Here's another shocking newsflash- not every fat person is going to get diabetes.  And there are thin people with diabetes.

And don't tell me I'm costing you money in health care.  Go fuuuuuuuck yourself.  Health care is a human right that should be open and available to every single person regardless of ANYTHING about them.  Are we really having serious discussions in this country about who deserves health care?  Fucking really?  Can we be better people than this please?

If an athlete breaks his leg during his training, does he deserve health care?  He didn't have to train.  People don't have to climb mountains or jump out of planes.  So they caused their own injuries, right?

No.  Fucking no.  I don't accept that way of thinking.  And can we please be real?  No one gives a shit about how many injuries athletes get because we think they're hot, so it's fine.  Fat people are generally considered gross, so the culture punishes them.

And now I have a message for the vegetarians and vegans--  Cut this shit out.  Stop using diabetes as a prop in your arguments against meat eating.  You are contributing to almost unbearable bullying and cultural pressure already placed on fat people.  

Here's the thing, vegans.  I agree with you.  I'm a strict vegetarian, almost vegan myself.  There are compelling political and environmental reasons to stop eating meat.  Super compelling.  I went vegetarian, even though I kind of wanted to be able to still eat meat. We are torturing animals on a mass scale and making the planet uninhabitable for humans, and I couldn't just ignore that.

Being vegetarian or vegan doesn't automatically mean you won't get diabetes.  And yeah, a veggie diet can help with controlling diabetes, but it is not a magical spell I can use to make sure I won't get it.  That is not a thing.

Because when vegan/veg people talk about health, and then I go veg and then I start getting slightly squiffy blood sugar tests back, I feel like shit.  I feel like a failure.  I don't even want to admit to people that this is happening, because that means I am a Bad Person.

I keep hearing the construction: Meat = Diabetes = Death.  Guys, this is a bad argument.  For one thing, not everyone who eats meat is going to get diabetes, so that's not helpful.  For another thing, it makes those of us who do stop eating meat and still have blood sugar issues feel like shit.  AND.  It's not like going veg means you are going to live forever.

Please let me repeat that.  All the vegans and vegetarians will die one day.  All the thin people will die one day.  All of the marathoners and juice cleansers and everyone low carbing-- you are all going to die eventually.

I am SICK TO FUCKING DEATH of the people who want to tell me I'm going to die of diabetes.  Or just of being fat.  Mutherfucker, YOU ARE GOING TO DIE TOO.  SO FUCK OFF.  

And here's another fucking newsflash-- you can live for a long ass time with diabetes.  It's not like being hit by a bus.  It's not great, but you can deal with it.  It's not a death sentence.  LIFE is a death sentence.

CUT THAT SHIT OUT.

This week in stuff I'm doing...

I won't be doing a proper update this week.  My parents are in town.

They won't be doing Christmas with us because my Dad works in Afghanistan (contractor) and he doesn't get Christmas off this year.

So we're doing it now.

Back to normal next week!  I'm adding some photos to pretty this up.

Dick joke art

The weird meat ads I keep finding are so bizarre. 

Josh suggested that I might not want to make this piece when I was describing it to him.  And I can see his point.  Will people take me seriously as an artist when they see me making dick jokes?

I decided not to care.  This makes me laugh.  Part of my brain is essentially a ten year old and I can't help laughing at wieners.  Just the word is hilarious.

Title- And a secret decoder ring

But I also thought about it for awhile, and I decided that it was ok, since I think there's a larger point to be made about advertising and our current capitalist culture.

Which is basically that we've decided that things are only worth what people are willing to pay for them, and the only legitimate consumers are men.  So therefore all marketing is to and about boners.  Even marketing to women is about how we can better attract and serve the almighty boner. 

So therefore Wieners Everywhere is a pretty basic statement of what ALL advertising is about.  Which is why this the title is "And a secret decoder ring".  Because the message about penises is the not very well kept secret behind all of advertising.  

And all that seems to matter in our mainstream culture is what can be sold and advertised.  

(The part about the sack of raisin sauce is just because it makes me laugh.)

Fat activism on the radio!

Would you like to hear me talk about my fat activism art on New Zealand radio? 

HELLS YEAH YOU WOULD! 

I was interviewed by the very awesome Kat Pause for her show Friend of Marilyn.  It's available on iTunes!  You should subscribe to it.   I'm on the 9/25/13 episode.  

I still haven't been able to bring myself to listen to it.  I feel weirdly awkward about listening to someone interview me.   

YOU should listen to it tho.  My friends said I did fine.  :D

Vegan "Chicken" and Dumplings

Clarity first-- I'm not a vegan.  I'm a vegetarian.  I try to eat very little dairy, but I have a cheese problem.

I'm always on the lookout for good vegan recipes because I want to eat vegan for most of our meals.  And once you've cut out the meat and dumped most of the dairy, it's not that hard to make the vegan substitutes.

Plus, I just find vegan cooking fascinating in a way I don't find other ways of cooking.  It feels like solving a puzzle when the substitutions work. 

I was having trouble with vegetarian/vegan  'chicken' and dumplings.  This is a problem because I start to crave creamy dumpling-y goodness as soon as the weather turns cold.  I've been experimenting with different recipes I found on the internet, and this last time, it turned out really well.

I think I've cracked it. 

So I'm going to give you the recipe.  Please bear in mind-- I'm basically an old timey grandma Southern cook.  I don't really measure stuff.  I just keep adding stuff and tasting until it seems right to me.

Also, if I forget what I did, I'll have this blog post to refer to later. 

I used seitan for the chicken substitute.  I think it might work with tempeh if you're avoiding gluten, but I'm not sure about the texture.  I get my seitan from my farm share with Greensgrow Farms  but there's a recipe for it on Post Punk Kitchen.  Every time I've made an Isa Chandra recipe, it works beautifully.

Ok, so shred the seitan and let it sit in a marinade of veggie broth, garlic, and siracha.   Always use salt and pepper.  Leave it for a couple of hours.

Good chicken and dumplings takes time.  Almost all Southern food takes time, but it makes huge pots of food that are delicious and usually cheap as hell to make. 

More veggie broth in a big pot.  Add the seitan and the marinade. Add chopped mushrooms.  If you have the dried shitaake , soak those suckers and use them, cause the flavor is boss.  (I don't use the soaking liquid in anything.  I toss it cause it can be a bit overwhelming in flavor.)

Cut up an onion, add.  Add a ton of garlic.  If you think, man.  Maybe that's too much garlic-- then it's probably enough.  Cut up some carrots if you have them.  Add a couple of bay leaves and some chili powder if you like it spicy.

Never skip the onion and the garlic.

So just turn that to low and let it bubble up for an hour of two.  Taste taste taste!  If it's bland, add more spices.  Chuck in some oregano if you want.  Parsley and basil are good too.  Sprinkle it in, don't go crazy.  Stir stir stir.

Add miso!  It seems like miso is the key to getting good flavor in these dishes that I would normally make by slow cooking animal bones for a long time.

I also added Korean bean paste because I have it.  And at a certain point, I tend to just start chucking things in the pot.  I think, yeah, this will probably be fine, while Josh is sometimes skeptical.   Which is justified, because it doesn't always work.

The fling things in a pot and boogie away method is NOT recommended if you're poor.  I didn't do this when I was in a position that losing an entire attempted dinner would have been a disaster and meant I might not have gotten to eat.  But if you can afford to ruin a couple of dinners, then you can learn more about cooking.

If you can't afford that-- stick with what you know will work. 

It's not required, but I suggest turning up the music and dancing and singing while you cook. 

My mom used to make dumplings and then roll them out with a rolling pin and cut them into squares.  People.  I don't have the time or patience for that. 

Here is how you make lazy-ass dumplings--  Flour in a bowl.  I'm guessing about 2 cups, but honestly, I just dump in enough to make a small mound.  Don't stress it too hard.  This isn't baking and you can't really fuck up drop dumplings.   Add either water or the non-dairy milk of your choice.  I use almond.  (Make sure it's not the vanilla flavored kind you use on your cereal. Don't have sad derp moments like me.)

Add the liquid slowly and mix with a fork.  You can add some nutritional yeast at this point, which I like to do for some added richness.  Salt and pepper.  Maybe some siracha or chili powder sprinkles depending on your tolerance for heat.  

The dumpling mix should stick together by itself.  Keep adding liquid until it gets pasty. If it's too liquidy, add more flour.  Then you drop small forkfuls of the dumpling mix into the pot. 

The problem with 'chicken' and dumplings for me is that the stupid bottom of the pot always burns and it used to piss me off so bad.   My solution is to put the pot inside another, slightly bigger pan.  Also, turn the heat way down at this point. You're cooking the dumplings slowly and mixing all the flavors slowly.  

The more time you have to do this, the better.  It generally take me the better part of a day to make this.  But I'm not in the kitchen the whole time.  After the original chopping bits, I'm checking on it and adding stuff.  I give it 30 minute increments usually to check.

 Ok, now you're going to start sprinkling in flour.  Sprinkle, sprinkle, stir.  Break up any lumps you see.  This will make the brothy soupy thing thicken up.   Just a couple of largish spoonfuls.  

Add nutritional yeast!!  The consistency should be like a very thick stew, not like soup!    

Stir stir stir.  Keep tasting! 

The last step is where you add a can of coconut cream.  Make sure it's not the kind meant for pina coladas with a whole bunch of sugar in it.  I know you can make your own cream out of cashews, and that would work too.  But I haven't tried to do it.  I suspect our blender might not be good enough for that.  Also, I have the coconut cream on hand, so I'm just going to use that where I would have used a can of condensed milk before.  You could use just a non-dairy milk too, but the thicker cream is going to be better.  

Stir and let it cook for another half hour.  Serve over rice. 

You can make enough of this to last for days and days, especially if you use the rice to stretch it out. 

I think it was using the nutritional yeast and the miso this time that really gave it the sensation I was looking for, like my mom used to make, except vegan. 

If you have any questions after this rambly mess, I'd be happy to answer them in the comments. 

Found this on my camera

Window selfie!

I love this. 

Spooky fat lady!

And we did!

I enjoyed Halloween this year.  My costume was-- Fat Woman Who Isn't Ashamed of Her Body. 

It's not much of a costume, because that's me pretty much all the time.  But I did wear a ridiculously short skirt and blue eyeshadow.  Honestly, minus the clip-in, barrette devil horns, this is an outfit I'd feel pretty comfortable wearing any time.

Maybe not to work.  I usually won't wear a T shirt to my day job. 

 (Bought the shirt here, if you're interested.)

This charming cat

Man, this last few months has been really hard.  I said a little about it in a prior post.

But I wanted to talk about things that have been making me happy lately.  Cause I'm tired of being a mopey fuck.

First of all, I've been listening to the Best of the Smiths on repeat pretty constantly.  I listened to the Cure when I was younger, but never the Smiths.  There seemed to be this divide there, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  Which is silly, of course, like most of my not very well thought out positions on music from when I was younger.   

Of course, NOW my positions on music are unassailable.   (Future me, stop laughing at this!)  

What has actually happened is that I have so much real shit going on in my life that I don't need to make up reasons to fight with people.  If you don't like some music I like, that is fine with me.  Let's both agree to not give a shit. 

Anyway. Back to the Smiths.  I have been feeling a bit mopey lately.  And I have found the Smiths delightful to listen to while sort of moping my way around life.  This is because I find Morrssey's delivery to be an exact shade of miserable and delightfully catty/witty at the same time.  I think if I had found the Smiths at a younger age, I would have just taken the whole thing seriously.  Now at 35, it feels like he is clearly joking.  Taking the piss, as it were.  (British people, did I do that right?)

"I was looking for a job and then I found a job. And heaven knows I'm miserable now." 

I can't stop giggling at that. 

I always skip William, It Was Really Nothing, because I don't appreciate the fat girl smack talk, and I don't want it interfering with my otherwise delightful good time. 

Girlfriend in a Coma.  I'm listening to it right now.  Amazing.  (Heehee.)  

Look at that face.  SO HANDSOME.

This is Hodge.   I saved him!  Actually, Josh and I saved him together.

I was walking home one day, and he was wandering around on a semi-busy street.  I called to him to try to get him out of the street (there were cars coming), and he came right to me.  

I guess at that point, he decided I was his person, because he followed me home, purring and rubbing against my legs the whole way. 

He was so clearly not a regular feral stray that I couldn't just leave him outside.  I just couldn't have.  Josh agreed.  We tried to see if anyone was missing him, but I didn't think they were.  You could see all his sad kitty bones.

We took him to the vet and got him fixed up.  By fixed up, I mean he lived by himself in a bathroom for over a month while we were getting him dewormed and then fixed.  

So when I look at Hodge, running around, happy and silly with his kitten brain-- it makes me really happy.  I think-- I saved you.  This few months may have been shitty, but I saved you, so it wasn't all bad stuff.  He's a happy, floppy baby who is chewing on everything.  He lets me pick him up and cuddle him.

And now we have four cats, which is pretty ridiculous. 

Another thing that makes me happy is Scandal.  You need to be watching Scandal.  Right now!  It is amazing.  I don't know anyone who is watching Scandal, except for a few people at work, and I NEED YOU TO WATCH SCANDAL.  So we can talk about it. 

It is delightful.  The amount of plot points a normal show would take half a season to go through is about half of one episode of Scandal.  

And Olivia Pope's clothes.  I can't even, you guys.  Her clothes are the reason amazeballs is a word.  (Shut up, spellcheck, it is too a word.) 

I can't decide if I like the Fitz and Olivia romance, but I do want to keep watching it. 

 Also, I am happy to see a black woman as a lead on a show, and married gay characters.  I want more diversity on TV!  More more more!  All body types, all races, all sexual orientations and gender presentations!  I want everyone to be able to see themselves.

Shondra Rimes (the creator) is KILLING IT.   Come on, rest of TV.  Up your game.

Vacation time

I'm on vacation from my day job for about a week.  I asked for a huge chunk of time off at the end of the year, and they were all like-- yeah... no.  B/c of closing out the books and other dumb stuff.

So I said, ok how about I take a week off starting RIGHT NOW. 

And then I did. 

I got a chance to do some collaging today, which I always find incredibly soothing.  There's something about cutting up paper and gluing it back down that speaks to me. 

Let the old dreams die

I've been bouncing from crisis to crisis for what seems like forever now.  As soon as I get one thing squared away, something else whacks me in the face. 

I think what I'm trying to say is-- it's almost November and 2013 has kind of blown. 

I made huge leaps forward in showing my art.  I've actually had shows going for almost the entire year.  (HOLLA!) 

But man, it's hard to feel properly happy about that when everything else seems so out of control.  

Family issues, work stress, FUCKING BEDBUGS, sick cats, family in the hospital, back problems, trying to quit smoking and repeatedly failing (stress!), getting threatened by randos on the internet, fighting with people I care about, uncontrollable panic attacks...  It just never fucking quits. 

I thought our newest cat might have ringworm, and I swear to god, I wanted to just walk around Philly screaming randomly.  Or maybe I could lay down on the floor and make everyone walk around me, with a sign on my back that says "I give up. YOU WIN THIS ROUND, LIFE." 

This is a photo of kid Ali, with the world's worst snowman. 

But Hodge does not have ringworm, just the world's worst case of fleas.  

I am determined to see that as a positive, considering the alternative. 

So I'm sleeping a lot and hatewatching MasterChef, which is pretty awful.  I'm going to eat a ton of ice cream and go see a movie with Josh.  I don't even care that there isn't really anything I want to see right now.  I'll go see the stupid Carrie remake and eat buttered popcorn and the chocolate with the little dots on the top, because I don't give a FUCK. 

I am putting 2013 in my Fuck It Bucket, and I'ma move the fuck on. 

I got tweets!

We can shut Twitter down now.  I'm pretty sure nothing better than this is ever going to happen.  

But just in case they keep it open, you could follow me.