Drawstring Produce Bags
What I’ve been making: re-useable drawstring produce bags made with french seams.
Menstrual Cups are Not Awful
I’ve completed cycle #1 using a Moon Cup menstrual cup and it was not awful!!
If you don’t already know, menstrual cups are reusable menstrual products most commonly made of silicon that sit inside the vaginal cavity and collects menstrual fluid. Unlike tampons or pads, the silicon does not absorb menstrual fluid or regularly occurring vaginal fluid (which is a good thing). They need changing less frequently than tampons or pads. Changing involves removal, emptying, and re-insertion during the day. Once daily, they need to be washed with soap an water. When used correctly, you don’t feel the menstrual cup.
Why use menstrual cups?
For your health. Tampons absorb moisture from your vaginal walls and your menstrual fluid indiscriminately. Menstrual cups made of silicone don’t absorb your regular vaginal fluids. There is no risk of TSS (toxic shock syndrome) as there is with tampons.
For your wallet. Disposable menstrual products cost about $48 a year ($4 a month). A menstrual cup costs between $20-$50 and lasts from 5-10 years.
For your convenience. Tampons retain 6-9ml of liquid. Menstrual cups retain between 10-29(!) ml of liquid, requiring less frequent attendance. Also filed under convenience, emptying and renewing a menstrual cup is a self contained process. You won’t need to bring additional products with you going out, or going to the restroom. I can see this being especially beneficial when traveling.
To use fewer resources. Being disposable in nature, pads and tampons (along with their packaging) are produced, shipped, consumed, and disposed of very quickly; requiring renewal in, well, a monthly period. Comparatively, menstrual cups involve much less energy expenditure in all those fields. One product and package is made, shipped, consumed, and disposed of in a 5-10 year period.
If you’re thinking of purchasing a menstrual cup, the heavily trafficked message board, menstrualcups.org, is a resource that I found invaluable. There are lots of product comparisons, instructions on how to guage your size, answers to questions about use (with sports, IUDs, children, allergies . . .), as well as troubleshooting use.
Sizing across brands is far from standard so I found this cross-brand sizing chart very helpful. The chart organizes cups by volume and by size in mm. I chose not to buy the most well marketed brand in the US, the Diva Cup, because their size small is longer in length than many other brands large sized cups, and is at the upward limit in diameter of small sized cups. The Keeper brand Moon Cup was the least expensive for my size.
For purchase in Austin, I checked out Wheatsville Co-op’s personal hygiene aisle and found that they were carrying the Diva Cup, the Keeper Cup (latex), and the Moon Cup as of last Thursday (04/22/10).
The cons of menstrual cups are, in my opinion, few. The learning curve for use is a bit steep but mostly awkward. Secondly, using menstrual cups gives you a much better understanding of what vaginal fluid looks and feels like in it’s unabsorbed state. This knowledge may not make you happy. My reactions moved from ew, to wow, to disinterestedness pretty quickly, though I guess it would be best if I could continually be wowed by the stuff.
Wishing you a big wow from a new menstrual cup convert.
Man’s Last Stand and Woman’s Last Stand; Dodge Charger Commercial and It’s Parody
Thanks to the unfailingly stimulating Sociological Images for bringing this parody of the Dodge Charger commercial “Man’s Last Stand” to my eyes and ears!
First, here’s “Man’s Last Stand”.
And the retort, “Woman’s Last Stand”.
As a parody, I think “Women’s Last Stand” is a complete success. What’s even more great is that interspersed with the statements of things women do for the men, are statements of more serious grievances that women can have. Since the dialogue goes by pretty quickly, I’ve pulled them out. After, I’ll also look at why I think these are more forceful statements about oppression of a gender than what the Dodge commercial tries to express for men, which may indicate the lack of oppression that the male gender can claim themselves victim to.
“I will make 75 cents for every dollar you make doing the same job.”
“I will assert myself and get called a bitch.”
“I will catch you staring at my breasts but pretend not to notice.”
“I will put my career on hold to raise your children.”
“I will elect male politicians who will make decisions about my body.”
To make a point about it’s bite, I’m disregarding the parts of both monologues that are iterations of “I will do something for you”. Those are examples of compromise/conformity that people of both genders take part in for their personal gain. They aren’t really complaints of injustice, but rather, unpleasant things that one chooses to do for desirable ends. In these cases, the speaker wouldn’t prefer the alternative that is available to them (like not sitting through a two hour meeting and endangering one’s job or refusing to humor a partner’s movie tastes and spending that time apart).
While we can try quantify and then compare the amount of compromise that each gender obliges themselves to do, I don’t think it’s going to be very enlightening when trying to identifying actual injustices suffered (the aforementioned bite). Instead, lets look at what’s said about what women or men do in situations where they don’t have a great alternative; where they lack agency. These are what I call justified complaints.
“I will make 75 cents for every dollar you make doing the same job.”
In great part, this is due to the fact that women, more commonly than men, leave the workplace to raise children. Employers are less interested in investing their resources in training unreliable employees so they’re encouraged to spend less on compensation for women. This fact also encourages them to avoid hiring women in positions that are more integral to a company or are on the fast track for promotion which are often the higher paying ones. There’s no easy direction to point my finger in for finding the cause of this. Nature and nurture are both guilty to some degree, and it’s difficult to determine who started what.
“I will assert myself and get called a bitch.”
I may revisit this topic later.
“I will catch you staring at my breasts but pretend not to notice.”
While the response of pretending not to notice certainly has its alternatives; from flashing, to a groin punch, to full body veiling, the status of female bodies as objects of a male gaze is in my opinion somewhat fundamental to human behavior (nature!) and is unlikely to disappear. Additionally, the case being that women don’t have control over other the behavior of other peoples eyes, women may perpetually be unable to affect their status as passive objects for consumption by the active gaze.
“I will put my career on hold to raise your children.”
This happens for several reasons. Women may take themselves out of the workplace by their own accord if they have beliefs about their “natural” role as parent or homemaker in virtue of their gender. Self selective reasons, aside, it makes good economic sense to have the partner with higher income stay in the workplace. And because of the perceived unreliability of women in the workplace and things like perceived competence based on evidence and perceived competence based on nothing (sexism), it’s more likely that the higher wage will belong to the man. As a result, for many women, there may be few reasonable alternatives to leaving the workforce to be caretakers. (The same imbalance exists for selection as caretaker for the elderly as well as for children.)
“I will elect male politicians who will make decisions about my body.”
This certainly isn’t an unchanging fact of life that women have no say in. There are no explicit laws prohibiting women for becoming elected officials. Whatever the reasons, it’s currently the case that the proportion of gender in elected officials in the U.S. today is unlike the proportion in the electorate. Whether this is for better or worse, I don’t claim to know. It is the case that women often don’t have the power to elect politicians that share their gender though they do often have a choice of candidates that reflect their ideas. For some people, it is enough that your representative agrees in ideology; ideas about welfare spending, war, taxes, etc. For others, having representatives who agree in certain embodied experiences: gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation; is also necessary to their fitness as representatives. For a very good back and forth on this, I’ll refer you to the philosophy bites podcast on political representation, with Anne Phillips of the London School of Economics.
I wouldn’t like to vilify Dodge video entirely and glorify “Woman’s Last Stand” video in its entirety.
The importance I found in comparing the two videos lies in the difference between the seriousness of their complaints. Some statements in “Woman’s Last Stand” complain about a power structure that doesn’t favor them and that they don’t have a say in (justified grievances), whereas, “Man’s Last Stand” complains entirely about unpleasant things that men would rather not do, but choose to do ultimately for their own gain (whines).
The question that occurs to me when I compare these videos is: what justified grievances can men claim themselves victim to, that they are victim to in virtue of being men? Men have less power than governments and corporations; and more agency than convicts and minors. But do they exist in oppressive situations where women are privileged? In other words, if Dodge were trying to make a video where men air actual complaints about the unpleasant things they do and can’t help but do because they’re men, what would those complaints be?
So far, I can think of:
“I will register with Selective Services at the age of 18 and be eligible for the draft.”
I welcome your additions!
Low-Fat Chai Spice Granola with Pumpkin Seeds
Yes! I modified my basic low fat granola to incorporate many of spices found in chai and also added pumpkin seeds to imitate store bought Nature’s Path Pumpkin Flax Plus granola.
Modified from this recipe. I substituted applesauce for some of the oil and honey of the original recipe which reduces the fat content a lot. I think it tastes better with applesauce as well, as when it’s made with full oil, the dry granola can smell like oil. Flaxmeal and Wheat Germ provide lots of fiber, but add to the fat content of this granola. I’ve also added crisp rice into the mix for a lower fat, snackier granola.
Nutrition facts here where one serving is 1/4 cup.
Low-Fat Chai Spice Granola with Pumpkin Seeds
2 cups rolled oats
1 tsp salt
1/8 cup wheat germ
1/8 cup flaxmeal (wheat germ and flax meal can substitute each other)
2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp clove
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp ginger powder
pinch of nutmeg
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, chopped
1/8 cup honey
1/8 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
2 tsp vanilla
Directions: Combine dry ingredients in one bowl, wet ingredients in another. Mix dry and wet together with your hands so that all of the oats are coated in the wet ingredients. Spread onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper, allowing for clumps, and bake for ~12 minutes at 320 degrees. Remove from the oven when the underside of the granola begins to brown, and flip the granola over with a spatula. (I can’t manage this very well and end up doing something like a stir fryin-ing motion which seems to still work.) Bake for another 12-15 minutes until golden. I would watch the last five minutes carefully as it can brown and burn pretty quickly. Cool on pan and store in air tight container.
Makes 3 1/2 cups of granola.
Other undies, basic low fat granola recipe, and another near-job.
There is a great sushi place near my home in Austin that I suggest to pretty much anyone that wants to dine with me because of their really generous happy hour prices. It’s owned by the chef, D, and run by him, his wife, a sometimes apprentice, and one or the other of his daughter or son. I took a break from work last week to visit for the first time this year. D and I chat about our new years. He visited friends in Oakland, CA. I was also in the bay area on my incrediventure with N. He saw the fireworks over the Golden Gate Bridge. I napped through it all the way to 2010. I tell him that I recently graduated, and while preparing for more school (auditing courses and studying for the GRE), and that I was really suffering in finding more work that is flexible around those priorities.
“Why don’t you work for me for a few hours during the week until you find another job?” he asks. “Are you free on Tuesday at noon?”
I am, happily.
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Basic low-fat granola
2 cups rolled oats
1 tsp salt
1/8 cup wheat germ
1/8 cup flaxmeal (wheat germ and flax meal can substitute each other)
2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 cup honey
1/8 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
2 tsp vanilla
Directions: Combine dry ingredients in one bowl, wet ingredients in another. Mix dry and wet together with your hands so that all of the oats are coated in the wet ingredients. Spread onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper, allowing for clumps, and bake for ~12 minutes at 320 degrees. Remove from the oven when the underside of the granola begins to brown, and flip the granola over with a spatula. (I can’t manage this very well and end up doing something like a stir fryin-ing motion which seems to still work.) Bake for another 12-15 minutes until golden. I would watch the last five minutes carefully as it can brown and burn pretty quickly. Cool on pan and store in air tight container.
Modified from this recipe.
Nutrition facts here.
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Hip-hugger undies
These were fairly simple to make. I drafted the pattern from existing undies. Finished the edges sans-serger; the same way as the last, and used lingerie elastic around the waist.
Sorry again if these images make you want to buy an ipod. I couldn’t really find a less naughty or less weird way to model them.
The most important things I’ve learned in the kitchen
I have not always used much thought in the kitchen. But in the times that I have, I’ve learned a lot of things . I’ve made a list of them to which I will be adding more either when I learn them, or remember them.
Tips, Tricks, Miscellanea
Mugs are totally bowls with handles. Bring them everywhere where you would like to walk while enjoying cereal.
Check out how your most obsessive compulsive friend loads the dishwasher and put on your learning cap.
Freeze things frozen!
Freeze your cut green onions (in a bottle!) instead of throwing away 9/10 of the bunch.
Freeze pasta sauce.
Freeze tomato paste.
Freeze rice.
Freeze soup stock. Freeze soups.
Freeze sliced cheese.
Freeze bread and bagels when you find them on sale.
Eating teflon is ok. Don’t worry about it so much. (Source)
Eating Healthfully
Different oils have different proportions of fats. The good (monounsaturated, polyunsaturated), the bad (saturated), and the ugly (trans fat). Different oils also have different smoke points, the temperature at which certain fats may change into other fats. Consult smarter people than yourself to find out which are best to use for your purposes. Here is a fat comparison chart and a list of cooking oil smoke points.
Baking:
Use applesauce for oil. Works especially well in bran-y muffins and granola.
Use non-fat yogurt for butter. I’ve had great success with this blueberry muffin recipe.
Use diet soda for eggs in brownies or cake.
Bake on parchment paper rather than on greased pans.
Replace fries with baked potato (or yam or squash) fries, using sprayed oil on your baking sheet.
Get a basket and bike to the grocery store!
Storage
Small pantry? No pantry? Store tupperware in your freezer or refrigerator.
Store everything big or ugly in your oven.
Re-use tiny cups from to-go foods in your packed lunch. Perhaps salad dressing, granola for yogurt, nutella for pretzels, hummus for veggies, dipping sauces for fries/nuggets/dumplings, one piece of popcorn for a practical joke.
Reduce Consumption/Waste
Cloth napkins are cute and making them is just about the easiest thing you will ever sew.
Reuseable grocery bags and produce bags. (I made these!)
Bring utensils out into the world. They’re very adventurous.
Understand that their is a hierarchy in the benefit of the three r’s. Recycle (good), re-use (better), reduce (best!).
Your neighbors probably have a clove of garlic, or a lemon, or will refuse your requests nicely if they are as awesome as mine.
Give your neighbors things that you may have made too much of so they may think that you’re awesome too.
Saving Money
Using coupons with seriousness and play the grocery/drug store game. Refer to the huge online presences that makes this sooooo easy for you. Like Hip2Save, Money Saving Mom and north Texas based Saving With Shellie.
Processed foods are rarely worth their regular price. The cost is a sum of the ingredients and preservatives, manufacturing, packaging and marketing. While processing food takes place on huge scale where materials are bought in bulk and labor is automated and can be done efficiently, I think it’s often the case that you finally pay for both the processing and the nutritionally viable part of the product.
Veggie burgers, peach undies, balcony berries
My neighbor S. noticed that Austin has a “Peter Pan effect” on it’s residents. And being newly graduated, barely employed, and without overt ambitions towards a having a full time job, or a car, or shoes that click loudly on hard surfaces, I probably exemplify the effect in more than one way.
Sometimes I feel like I am making good use of my new quantities of free time if I spend them doing money saving things: grocery store hopping, cooking and freezing cooking, clipping coupons, and sewing undies from old and awful clothes. It is probably no coincidence these are also things that I love doing . . .
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Here are some of the products of my “well used” free time.
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Lentil and Walnut Veggie Burgers
Recipe from video via Art for Housewives. I liked the video soon after I clicked on it because the young guest was really quick in her directions and never leveled any measuring utensils– which is not like how I do things, but is a method I admire and fear. Also because she suggested substituting wheat germ for bread crumbs.
I am actively looking for ways to use up the big bag of wheat germ in my fridge. If any one out there has a great recipe, and can read and write, and has found my blog (I realize this is a pretty small group of people), I would really welcome hearing it. I also ask for suggestions that are not wheat germ in yogurt. I like fiber, but I like yogurt too much to spoil it. N. puts several things in his yogurt. Flax meal, wheat germ, and granola with flax. I bet he puts extra flax seed in his yogurt when I’m not around, but tones it down when I am so as not to seem so mad and fiber minded. Regardless, I have tried yogurt with all of these things and wanted to buy the least offensive of the fiber sources: flax meal; but bought wheat germ. So, in short (actually quite long, sorry), I would welcome any subversive uses of wheat germ. (Will also like to hear funny or horrifying uses.)
The burgers came out pretty tasty. A bit crumbly if you don’t make them with an extra egg. And happily, cheap and nutritious! I wrote down her recipe and compensated towards less oil and more even measurements, and a bit of clove and coriander. Later discovered: this recipe makes for awesome vegetarian meatballs!!
Lentil and Walnut Veggie Burgers
2 cups cooked lentils
1/2 cup toasted walnuts
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp mustard powder
6 cloves minced garlic
3/4 cup diced onion
1/2 cup wheat germ
3/8 cup milk
1 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tbsp olive oilMake patties, cook over medium heat stove top, try with every condiment you have. I surprisingly liked it with sweet blue cheese salad dressing despite that it sounds so wrong with these spices, but maybe I’m not a measuring spoon kind of girl either. Very good with tons of mustard, swiss cheese, sprouts on whole grain bread. Also great as vegetarian meatballs with marinara sauce!! I bet it would make a good vegetarian ground beef substitute in pasta sauce as well, but haven’t tried it.
Serves 8.
Nutrition facts here.
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Undies made from a thrifted Lauren Ralph Lauren shirt.
I bought this horrible Lauren Ralph Lauren shirt at a vintage store’s sidewalk sale just for the fabric. (The store was Blue Velvet, for anyone familiar with awesome Austin shops.) It’s a really lovely peach cotton and very soft. The pattern, I drafted from a cute pair of purchased undies. I learned how to finish edges without a serger. I used lingerie elastic for the waistband and thread elastic to make the ruffles around the front. I listened to two very solid episodes of This American Life: 281 My Big Break and 347 Matchmaker.
