The bread and milk diaries – or, a snow day in the South.

Posted on January 5, 2014 by betsybeadhead | 1 Comment

Northerners make fun of Southerners when we freak out about snow forecasts. When there is a forecast of one to three inches of snow, Southerners lose their minds. Everything except essential services stops. Schools close. People go to the grocery store for bread and milk, even if they don’t like bread and milk. It is a big deal.

One to three inches of snow is business as usual for people in the North. They think we are overreacting. Until they move here.

Snow in the South isn’t just snow. There is almost always a base layer of ice. I don’t care how good you are at driving on snow; nobody is good at driving on ice.

Even if there isn’t ice to start with, there soon will be. After people have driven on the snow it has gotten packed down. Then the sun shines on it and melts it, and then the temperature drops below freezing again and the whole thing is one big skating rink.

Southerners are of the mindset that it is just better to stay home. Who doesn’t like a random day off?

We have snowplows and de-icing trucks, but they aren’t really much good. There aren’t enough of them and the drivers don’t get enough practice using them to be of much use.

Now, there are certainly bosses who expect you to come in. However, they won’t pay for the damage to your car that will occur when you crash on aforementioned icy roads while trying to drive in.

Just like trying to decide if a prepared food is compatible with your allergies, best be safe and give it a miss.

Forbidden food

Posted on October 31, 2013 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I was at a buffet recently and a Somali Muslim man was asking the staff what foods have pork in them. It started when he was looking at some marinated chicken and it was a little hard to tell what the meat was. The labels aren’t always right at that restaurant either, so it is better to ask. He finally was able to get a cook to come out and tell him what to avoid. Even going vegetarian isn’t safe if you can’t eat pork. This is the South. Vegetables are just a vehicle for pork here.

I was thinking about how hard it is for him to figure out what is OK for him to eat. There is a language barrier to deal with. There is the fact that he is in an area that isn’t always hip to other cultures. I wonder if he has the same problem I have when I’m trying to get something that doesn’t have peppers in it. I’m allergic to peppers, but no matter how I ask, I still get food with peppers in it. I’ve decided it is just flat out ignorance or indifference. The waiter just doesn’t know what is in all the dishes, or just doesn’t care. He doesn’t think to ask the chef because he doesn’t understand how serious the situation is. Nothing ruins a nice evening out like getting really sick.

If you are asking for religious reasons, do you feel the same way I do, or differently? I’m sad and frustrated when I keep getting served food with peppers even though I was assured it is pepper-free. Sometimes I pick out the offending bits. Sometimes I can’t pick the bits out because they are too small and I have to send the dish back. Sometimes I am just so tired of it all that I send it back anyway to show I’m not kidding.

There are no forbidden foods in mainline Christianity. You can eat anything you want, and many do, to the point that they get to meet their Maker sooner than they planned. So if you are in a predominately Christian area and you ask for no pork or no shellfish, and you get it anyway, do you take it personally? Do you see it as religious discrimination? Do you think they are attacking your faith?

If waiters are insensitive enough to serve something to someone that will make them sick or kill them, they are insensitive enough to serve something to someone that is religiously forbidden. It won’t kill you if you eat pork or shellfish. God won’t strike you down if you accidentally eat a forbidden food. It is the intentional consumption that is the problem. In an ideal world, waiters and chefs would take every food concern seriously. Until then, we have to either assume they are just clueless or we have to eat at home all the time.

Southern fried pride

Posted on June 15, 2013 by betsybeadhead | 3 Comments

More meat, less vegetables – that’s the Southern way. More obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, that is also the Southern way. It is as if we make it a cultural thing to be fat. It is as if we are proud of how out of shape we are.

We are proud of our fried food and our fatback and our meat-centric meals. We have made our stunningly unhealthy food an essential part of our culture. To drop the food is to deny our Southernness. It is time to redefine what it means to be Southern, because right now it means that we are killing ourselves.

There is a certain amount of shaming that occurs for those who take care of themselves. I’ve been told “you suck” for my efforts to get in shape – like this is a game of musical chairs and I got the last one. Just because I’ve decided to get healthy doesn’t mean that others can’t. There is room for us all.

This isn’t the only time I’ve gotten attitude for getting healthy. I wonder how many people decide to quit because of this social shaming. The weird part is when people say “Oh, you’re still skinny.” Of course I am. I’m still exercising and eating well. I want to say “Oh, you’re still fat.” But that isn’t nice.

It isn’t easy to get healthy. There are a lot of adjustments. There is a lot I’ve given up. I don’t have anywhere near the time I used to have to read. I don’t like exercising, but I like how I feel afterwards. I’m not a fan of having to think before everything I eat as to whether it is healthy or not, but I like how my clothes fit and how clear headed I am.

This isn’t a whim. This is a lifestyle change. I decided I wanted to live a long healthy life. I decided to be intentional about my health. I quit a lot of bad things and started doing a lot of good things. Plus, I don’t have any children, so nobody is going to be around to take care of me when I get older. So I have to do it myself.

In the South, we don’t have any idea what “normal” looks like. We see someone who weighs 200 pounds and we think he is just fat. No – that is obese. Then we see someone who is 300 pounds, but because she is larger than us, we think we are fine.

Nope. We are all out of shape.

We’ve come to think of “exercise” as a dirty word. We see it as a punishment. We see it like physical therapy – it is something you do for a little while, under doctor’s orders, and then you can quit.

How have we gotten so far off the path?

We act like eating whatever we want is our cultural right. We’ve clawed our way to the top of the food chain and we are going to prove it by taking ourselves to our graves.

We act like being lazy is a good thing. We act like we’ve proven we are number one by the fact that we can sit around all day. We don’t have to work all day long, finding or harvesting our food. We don’t have to walk three miles with a bucket on our heads to bring water back. We don’t have to walk four miles one way with no shoes to go to school.

Maybe it would be a good idea if we did these things.

Then maybe we wouldn’t take them for granted.

I’ve noticed that parents from foreign countries consistently get educational books for their children. They work really hard with them to get them to work hard on their education. Meanwhile, American parents let their kids get whatever they want. They get comic books and cartoons.

Consequently, the ESL kids consistently do better than the American kids. Children who were born into an English-speaking family consistently read and think at a lower level than children who are born into other families. It is because of the parents. The foreign parents don’t let the kids pick what they are going to read. These parents expect their kids to work hard and they don’t take “I don’t want to” for an answer.

I wonder how much of our Southern Fried Pride comes from habit? I knew a guy who was at least 500 pounds. His skin was grey, he was so unhealthy. He said that everybody in his family was as large as he was. I have a strong suspicion it has more to do with what is in their recipe books than what is in their genes.

Our pride is killing us.