What's in Mystery Meat, anyway?

Cooking for myself is a recent development.  As a child, your parents do all the providing.  Whether that comes in the form of a home cooked meal or a paper sack, they are responsible for what you consume.  Mostly.  You gradually gain more independence in your food choices, get lunch money instead of packed lunches.  School food is an entirely different blog post.  Let's not go there.

In college, if you go, you have the most freedom yet.  From what seems like a wide selection of food, your choices seem endless.  Cereal OR eggs and bacon for breakfast?  Both?  Wowza!  Being serious for a moment, it all malarkey.  Frankly a farce.  The food in big shiny serving containers, made in mass quantities to feed hungry college kids is not much better from Mystery Meat Monday of the third grade.  You don't know what's in it, not really, it just looks like you do. Those mashed potatoes might be the genuine article.  Or they might be only a step higher than shredded sawdust.  You'll never know.  After all, there'll be so much salt and butter added it's sure to taste alright.

I'm sorry; is my soapbox blocking traffic?

The sad fact is, people go to college to learn and walk away (hopefully) with a diploma and the freshman fifteen.  Plus some more if they're really unfortunate.  Something is wrong here.  Part of it is probably poor choices.  But another part is that we don't know where our food comes from or how it's made anymore.  We don't read labels, or question what chemicals are put in our food.  It's served to us and we are clueless about where it came from and sometimes even how it's made.

Now I'm not saying we should all be on hyper vigilance, or that these things need to be abolished.  But we didn't become one of the fattest nations by eating organically.  What I'm saying, if I'm saying anything, is that we need to start thinking about it, at least.

I'm no longer in the dormitories.  I live in an apartment off campus, with a fully functioning kitchen.  I cook for myself every night, to varying degrees of fanciness. Some nights I make lasagna or chili or some other multiple serving dish and freeze the extras, for many lunches and dinners to come.  Other times, I just boil some whole wheat pasta and sprinkle it with mozzarella and bacon.

Hey, I never claimed to be perfect.

I almost never eat out anymore.  For money reasons, sure, but primarily for health reasons.  Yesterday for lunch, I acted out of character and went to Steak and Shake with a friend who had quite a hankering for a nice greasy burger.  I might disagree with his desire to act on it, but I don't condemn.  I treated him, actually.  During our meal, I made an off hand comment about how even I like to eat fast food occasionally.  He stared at me and fumbled for verbal footing.

"Steak and Shake is not fast food," he said finally, his tone indignant.

Moments later, our food arrived.  The waitress apologized for our long ten minute wait.  As I looked at the chili I had ordered, a meal that I'd had absolutely zero hand in preparing, cooking and serving, I knew my friend was not alone in his vehemence.  Much of America, of the world, very much agreed.  This is not fast food.  It's life as we know it.

What's in a name?

I'm horrible at making up titles.  Some posts will probably have titles longer than the content, because I think that sort of thing is hilarious.

I never said this would be a sophisticated blog.

So when I started this thing, like, three days ago, all I knew was what I wanted to write about and I hadn't even contemplated what I would call the darn thing.  At first I came up with "Fit for fat".  I was pretty proud of that one until I found out the url had already been taken.  Bummer.  The rest of them were pathetic, feeble attempts at being witty, amusing, cute, and a bunch of other adjectives I can't remember.  That's how dumb they probably were.

I settled on "The Scale Goddess" because some days I feel like I've been inducted into a crazy cult... I should probably clarify that.  Look at this way.  Every morning, I pay my respects to an object.  The feedback that object gives me defines my day.  If it's positive, I'm happy, confident, strutting around, shaking that thang.  If it's negative, I'm destitute, bereft, melancholy, a grumpy Gus, not happy.  I think of all the things I could do to fix the object's opinion of me.  And when I get home, against all reason, I strip naked and weigh myself again. Oh, I didn't mention that I weigh myself in the buff?  Because I totally do.  This object is the scale, and I go to it everyday, sometimes multiple times a day... naked.  Change the scale to the moon or some other cosmic force and I'm a stereotypical Wiccan.

If this sound completely crazy, that's because it is.  Not that Wiccan's are crazy.  I love Wiccans.  Gee Dee it,  rewind.  What I'm trying to say is, as weird as all religion is to me, I will be the first to admit that this behavior is weirder.

As I said the other day, I'm better at outwardly responding to the scale.  I don't binge.  That's a huge  accomplishment for me.  But I absolutely let it affect me in almost every other way.  This isn't good.  In many ways, getting out of this crazy cult is almost more important than losing the rest of the weight.  I think writing about it will be therapeutic for me.  Even if it is the equivalent of talking to an empty room.  Crazy if you do, crazy if you don't.

And that's why the blog is called The Scale Goddess!