Stop the insanity, people!

I don’t mean to pick on poor Nigella but she has gone too far this time.  I always look forward to reading the New York Times on Wednesdays as that is when their Dining & Wine section is published. I also love reading R.W. Apple as only he could describe sauerkraut (choucrout in french) in such as way as to entice me to jump into a Peugeot and head to Alsace (Across the Rhine, Sauerkraut Is Even Sweeter). However today this pantheon of journalism has let me down.

In her column, For January, Tasty Dollops of Penance, Ms. Lawson first implies that she’s gained a few pounds over the holidays. Ok everyone, a collective “aaaaawwwwww” for the size 4 Ms. Lawson.  I’d like to know where those few pounds went, other than to her breasts!  I hate when skinny people write about taking off a few of those unwanted pounds.  Lose 20 then talk to me! Lose 20 pounds a few different times after gaining it all back and then some, then talk to me. It makes me want to wrestle them to the ground, pin their arms and legs, and force feed them a jar of nutella.  Nigella continues on with the audacity to suggest that a “riteous and pure way” (more on that below) to lose those unwanted pounds is by joyously consuming a brown rice and seaweed salad as the perfect post holiday respite. 

Brown rice and seaweed salad?!?!?!  Are you kidding me? I could weigh 800 pounds and i still wouldn't eat a brown rice and seaweed salad. I’d rather wear a size 16 and eat a trough of fettucini drowning in Cambozola sauce with proscuitto and peas than eat that crap. Anyone with me out there? I know I am a “culinary professional” (which, as I’ve mentioned before, means nothing more than that I am grossly underpaid and know now what 'simmer' means) and that I am obligated to relish and embrace all food with abandon but this is just absurd. 

She actually describes the above mentioned salad as “setting the scene for a more virtuous-feeling new year.”  Virtuous?!?!?!  If I want to feel virtuous I go to church, I call my grandmother, I stop saying nastly little 4-letter words…I do not eat seaweed!  Nor am I very virtuous, but that's another story...  Even the little seaweed (nori) pieces in my miso soup make me gag. I can eat sushi rolls for days but not nasty slimy little floaty pieces in my soup and certainly not in a brown rice salad! That to me is the epitome of diet/punishment food and we know what a winning track record that has...not to mention the subsequently necessary therapy sessions…

She persists: “Brown rice just seems righteous and pure, and I somehow believe that eating it makes me a better person.” Thank you Nigella for makes us all feel a little bit smarter than we did a few minutes ago.

Stop the insanity, people!  Please!

Comments

[Ivonne]

Hi,

I'm just reading these posts now for the first time and I love them! I couldn't agree with you more about the leek soup. I mean yes leeks are good. But how can you subsist for an entire weekend on boiled leeks and the resulting broth? Blech!

By the way ... I like your fettucini trough idea!

[al]

Actually the brown rice and seaweed salad was DELICIOUS! I agree with you on everything else!