Anti-bloating pills are not a party favor

Cooking is a unique beast. For some people, knowing how to cook various meals is the top indicator that you can actually take care of yourself. Sometimes cooking is not utilitarian but rather an act of love or compassion. Other people do not care whether their food is cooked in their kitchen or not and see cooking and eating as merely a mechanism for survival. We attach many meanings to food and cooking, making it a very complicated and unexpectedly personal topic. At this point in my life, I c…

Don't take that shot!

RIP arteries

Are you a good little lad who deserves a treat? Do you want a little cranberry tart to tide you over until suppertime? Are you going to huff and puff and groan and moan until you get it? Well, bad luck, son. There has been a treat shortage in Bethesda, Maryland, which is the town where we live. No, I'm afraid that even the most good little boys are not getting any Klondike bars today. No sirree. Instead, you've just got twenty-nine memes to take in. No need to cry! Memes are just as good as cre…

Supernanny is a TV show about children who will not eat their dinner. Well, at least that's one of the main behavior issues the titular Supernanny Jo deals with when going into the homes of American families. I loved watching Supernanny as a kid. Much like Wife Swap and Maury I was obsessed with watching families on TV that were far more dysfunctional than mine could ever be. I looked at that 8-year-old on Supernanny with contempt, thinking, “I'm eight too, and I would never act like this. That…

'A Chinese' ≠ Chinese food

'Tofu for me is just an ingredient'

That is a lot of money

I will be honest with you: I have not always been the biggest fan of Reddit. When I was a teenager, I wrote it off as a place where nothing good happens. I thought that Reddit and 4chan had the same user base, and I wanted nothing to do with that kind of person. In college, I learned that Reddit could be an excellent tool for advertising things around campus. I even got in some beef with some dudes on my university subreddit for promoting my comedy group's show Catholic: The Musical.' Some midw…

Let him eat air

As someone who loves food, there are certain combinations that shake me to my core. Pineapple on pizza , surprisingly, is not one of them. Banana on pizza, as they enjoy in Sweden, is another story altogether. While I recoil at that abomination, like I do any at any absurdly cheesy fish dish, there are certain things I enjoy that might make someone else cry out in horror. My affection for cottage cheese topped with salsa definitely falls into that category. I may be alone in terms of that guilt…

Nobody can like every food. Even if you pride yourself on not being picky, you probably have at least one food, even a popular food, that you don't like. For me, it's French Onion Soup. As someone who likes onions, soup, and cheesy bread, you'd think I'd enjoy this meal, but I don't. I don't like that there's a bunch of bread in my soup, and I don't like that I have to break through it to get to the soup part. I'm so sorry French people , but I must speak my truth. This stuff is nasty, and I'm…

Food. We all know we need it to survive, but for us humans, eating has become a whole lot more than just a necessity. Instead, it's shifted from survival to become an experience of shared joy, from snapping pics of our meals for the 'gram to whipping up a feast for our loved ones. But let's be real, sometimes our food choices can be downright gross. I'm talking about those food trends that make you want to gag, or that one friend who insists on putting pineapple on their pizza. And don't even g…

Are you guys bored? I'm not bored! As a gross and hot David Thewlis once said in the Mike Leigh movie Naked : "Was I bored? No, I wasn't f*ckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it." As angsty and Gen X as that statement is, I can't help but agree with it.…

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