Why isn't it a guy thing?

I live in a small, somewhat isolated, right wing kind of town in northern Canada. Organic food has always been hard to come by here, but recently it has been easier to find in common outlets. It’s still expensive.
The goal of eating more organic food is sort of tied to my weight loss goal: more organic means less junk food, means less fat and sugar and empty calories, means weight loss. But I was also motivated by a more general wish to be healthy and by the fact that Christine has food allergies which are less pronounced when we eat organic.
I’ve never been secretive about eating organic food, and I find (and this links back to the conservative northern town thing) that women and men react quite differently when I mention organic food. With women it’s usually curiosity: what got you into that?, where do you buy it?, does it taste ok? With men the reaction is usually a sneer or a derisive comment. Often they confusedly think that organic means vegetarian, and that I live on a diet of tofu and kale.
The media report a lot on women and food and eating disorders. Men have food hang ups too. The big eater syndrome, the large chunk of red meat addiction. It’s interesting that the media (and society too) more readily treat under eating as a disorder than over eating. Men are too often insecure about their “manhood,” whatever that means. And equate big eating with masculinity. And also equate carelessness about food with manliness. Organic eating is usually not “big eating” and it’s not carelessness. You have to go out of your way to pursue it. And that’s not a guy thing, yet.

See more progress on: eat more organic foods

Technorati Tags: culture, food and drink, health

Lagavulin

This is the best, and most expensive, of the four classic malts sampled to date. The Lagavulin is an Islay Scotch. The bottle I chose was aged 16 yrs. and priced at $93. It’s dark with an odour of butterscotch and saltwater. The taste has at least three levels. First, there is an herbal, medicinal quality that gives way to the peaty, smoky character that is the signature of Islay Scotch. At the end is a remarkably smooth butterscotch/caramel wave. This is by far the smoothest finishing Scotch I have encountered.

See more progress on: drink the six classic malts

Technorati Tags: food and drink, scotch

Reading Gide's Journals led by an anonymous guide

Some time back I bought the two volume set of Andre Gide’s Journals in a second hand bookstore. They sat on my bookshelf for about a year until I got round to them. Once I began reading, I noticed that there were a lot of passages of no interest to me and also a few passages that were brilliant and insightful. The latter were almost always marked by a line of ballpoint pen drawn in the margin of the page. No comments or underlining, just the vertical blue line.
I decided to trust my anonymous annotator, and to read just the marked passages. I suppose I’ve lost the sense of Gide as a person living his day to day intellectual life, but I feel like the previous owner of the books has left me a gift, an act of blazing the trail and guiding me to the best of what Gide had to say.

See more progress on: Read more great books

Technorati Tags: books, culture

Tartuffe

Moliere is the master of French theatre. He wrote in the late seventeenth century and is most famous for his comedies. Tartuffe, the title character, is a religious hypocrite. While loudly proclaiming his piety, he cynically pursues women and property. Tartuffe was controversial in its own day because it made the upper classes uncomfortable. It certainly has a message for our contemporary world, where professions of piety are essential for political and career success.

See more progress on: Read more great books

Technorati Tags: France, drama, literature

London

I don’t think that I enjoyed London as much as I should have. When I got there I was severely jet lagged, the bed and breadfast was not very nice, and the weather was atrocious. These factors all detracted from my experience of the place.
The people were wonderful. My favourite memory of London is drinking in a neighbourhood pub in the company of a group of roofers. We downed pint after pint of bitter and closed the night out with a shot of scotch in lemonade.
What can you do in London when you have only three days? Run around like a maniac in an orgy of sightseeing. I want to go back and do it right.
See more progress on: visit the great cities of the world

Technorati Tags: england, london, travel