I could eat.....

Have you ever been sitting around and someone says "You hungry?" You reply "I could eat."

Man could I eat. I love to eat. Piizza. Donuts. Streaks. Pasta. Meatball hero. Liverwurst and onions on a kasier roll. Pastrami on rye. Meat loaf. Sausage and peppers. Panale sandwiches. Roast beef sandwichs dipped in au juis. Veal parmigiana. Calzones. Burritos. Tacos. Perogies in sour cream. Tuna salad on a roll. Grilled cheese. Bacon. Scrambled eggs. Fritattas. Potatoes and eggs.  Veal stew. Irish stew.. Shepards pie. Bangers and mash. Irish breakfast. Rueben sandwichs. Egg rolls. Spring rolls. Kaiser rolls with butter. Pork fried dumplings. Low Mein. Beef with Broccoli. Phad Thai. Spam on toast with pineapple.  Dirty water dog with the works. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, chips, Pepsi.

I can eat.

The problem is that with my dietary restrictions I have to watch every freaking thing I eat. I can't just go to the corner and have four slices and a couple of beers. Go to the pub for a corn beef sandwich and a pint. Even to the hot dog stand for a dirty water dog. Everything is limited. Constricted. Taboo.

Still and all it was fun while it lasted. If you don't have those restrictions please pig out and tell me about it. Tell me about what you love to eat. Or what you used to love to eat but can't eat anymore.

Because you know one thing.

 I could eat.

Vicariously.

Put Those Collards Down. You People Are Gentrifying Greens.

Since the beginning of January, Whole Foods has been screaming it from their Facebook pages, corporate blog, news affiliates, and tastefully designed signage: “Collards are the new kale!” While at first glance this just seems like a flash-in-the-pan and downright lazy line of ad copy, its casual, trend-focused language raised red flags among some people. When Mikki Kendall, a Black feminist and writer who tweets as Karnythia, began riffing on the laughable idea of Whole Foods and their customers “discovering” a vegetable that had been a staple of working class Black and White Southern Americans’ meals for centuries,the hashtag #foodgentrification was born.

(Is this the right time to point out that the linked article was written by a woman named Ho and published in Bitch Media? I thought you might want to know, because it seems like life often imitates The Onion.)

What all of this adds up to is a massive PR campaign aimed at rebranding collard greens, divorcing the vegetable from its working class and indigenous affiliations to place it squarely within the culinary crosshairs of the same massive gourmet health food apparatus that turned acai berries, quinoa, tofu, and chia seeds into “superfoods.” Though the health benefits of such foods are well-documented, their trendiness within majority populations tends to result in a generally unhealthy outcomes for their cultures of origin. The tendency takes the form of a curious kind of reacharound logic wherein economic and racial minorities are castigated for eating “primitively” and “unhealthily” while their traditional foods are cherry picked for use by the upper class as “exotic” delicacies. As a result, the price of that food item inflates to meet the surge in mainstream demand for it.

What is "reacharound logic"?  Anyone care to hazard a guess, because the author leaves us not a clue as to its meaning.

Nor does she provide examples of racial minorities being "castigated for eating "primitively" and "unhealthily" while their traditional foods are cherry picked for use by the upper class...".  Does she refer to criticism of the junk foods bought by people receiving governmental aid?  That is not isolated to any one racial group, although perhaps in her mind there is only one racial minority.  No, wait, she references working class "white" and "black" southern Americans.  Working class, that convenient catch-all for people in an undescribed demographic.  Everyone who has a job is working class, am I right?