The paleo diet first came to my attention in the Tweet of Geoffrey Miller, the professor who says fat people are too lazy and fat to earn PhDs. I quickly found myself in an online pro paleo forum in which, as in many online mosh pits, young women (no old ones except me ventured where angels feared to tread) were being stomped, regularly, as the paleo diet was clearly the perquisite of digital oligarch males.
The cherry on that narrative arc was the controversy over a recent Craigslist want ad by San Francisco toolies for a paleo chef/slave/office serf.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140612213421/http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/ofc/4512279091.html
I’ve always had lots of problems with it, aside from the fact it seems to be the new men’s rights movement diet. In the blue zones, where people today live to be 100 years old as a matter of course, meat is the one significant thing absent from their very diverse diets. Legumes, dairy or grains sustain the centenarians in Okinawa, Sardinia, Loma Linda CA, Costa Rica and Ikaria with the Loma Lindans being vegetarians by religious scruple. Each obviously adds regional specialties to the diet — cloudy red wine rich with anti-oxidants, green tea, lime-slaked tortillas, tomatoes, oranges, olive oil — but meat is mostly off the menu for the oldest healthy people on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
The second big reason is that the paleo diet is for rich people, and grass fed beef is unsustainable. This new piece on the rise of paleo in the New Yorker reminds us of what major food sustainability research has been saying for 20 years — beef is not sustainable. Something the healthy, but significantly not wealthy, centenarians have known for millenia.
“Pound for pound, beef production demands at least ten times as much water as wheat production, and, calorie for calorie, it demands almost twenty times as much energy. Livestock are major sources of greenhouse-gas emissions, not just because of the fuel it takes to raise them but also because they do things like belch out methane and produce lots of shit, which in turn produces lots of nitrous oxide.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/28/stone-soup
My observation is that Peter Pan guys who grew up eating Slim Jims and cereal for dinner have found something to do with their money. Paleo.
Here is the classic piece by Candace Bushnell, one of her original Sex and the City pieces, about the most profoundly unsexy men of all. The paleo boys.
http://observer.com/2007/07/what-has-two-wheels-wears-seersucker-and-makes-a-sucker-of-me-a-bicycle-boy/
Paleo
Okay, fashionistas and fatshionistas, here’s my dilemma. I’ve been looking for office clothes with difficulty for over 40 years. What it is now is almost what it was then: basically men’s wear cut for women. Jackets. I’ve had short sleeved batik ones over sundresses, I’ve had khaki jumpsuits, zippered flight type jackets in Prince of Wales plaid (with matching bell bottoms, to be sure), long-sleeved midi length washable poly velvet Jane Avril dress for those parties I had to cover, you name it. One of my favorites was a hip academic outfit confected for a conference in Ireland: widewale corduroy leggings in eau de Nil, gigantic white cashmere sweater, knee length Wellingtons, and pink pearls. No nipples. And, after 25, no minis.
What it is now is what all the serious girls at the uni around the corner from where I used to live wore and wear: techno fiber pants (black, black or black), $100+ V-necked t shirt (dark, dark, dark or jewel), jacket (“), Rolex and ankle boots. My t shirts cost $9, my big black face Timex $30, and I can’t get my freakishly high arches into boots. No jewelry. Although my discovery of $8 necklaces at Forever21 is a big monkey wrench in my Afro Pomo Homo minimalist femme costume. Don’t forget the hair *cut* not a hair *do*.
Coming up, because it’s 400 degrees outside, an LBD with a black linen moto and ballet flats.
(Wouldn’t this $6.80 gigantic faux pearl necklace look awesome with my moto?
http://tinyurl.com/pd4jxdw
(I think perhaps not. One of the secrets of dressing the ancient avoirdupois is to let your wrinkles and your hair cut be the jewels.)
I am very interested in fashion and the cutting edge of future fashion, which as everybody knows is coming out of art schools in Britain, headed up by the late Alexander McQueen, with punk and artisanal references. He had some other references in there, also sublime. Part of the punk thing is sustainable, locavore, dumpster-diving, upcycled fashion, in which I am extremely interested. As we all know, street fashion drives couture. One of the biggest influences in street fashion since, I think, the Pointer Sisters started raiding the Good Will Stores of ’60s San Francisco for ’40s suits and ’30s panne velvet, is the Good Will. Now monetized by bottom feeder Hollywood stylists into “vintage” clothes, Good Will outfits worn by chic club kids have been fashion’s — and couture’s — leading influence. (All those chicken hawks like Lagerfeld and Galliano circle, cawing, over kids’ nightclubs.)
Courtesy of Alabama Chanin, who is selling a book called <em>Refashioned: Cutting Edge Clothing From Upcycled Materials, I have just perused the very interesting straight edge DIY books on how to turn old clothes into new ones.
Without exception, the new clothes are all performance wear. Nothing for the office. Extraordinary that paupers should be fashioning ball gowns out of t shirts. Why is this? I ask you.
The only actual instructions, for example, I’ve found for turning a man’s overcoat into a lady’s jacket or a child’s coat are in ‘40s WW2 British sewing dictionaries, discovered in Kate Davies’ wonderful blog, along with instructions on how to make underwear out of worn nightgowns and other useful information. It’s called Odham’s Big Book of Needlecraft.
I think the tailored recycling of good old clothes is because there were no throwaway clothes in those days, and also because fabric was rationed. I was born close enough to those times to have worn clothes made by seamstresses. I miss them, and I am stunned by the Harajuku ho tutus all those straight edge designers are making out of shitty old concert t shirts. Where are the upcycled work clothes?
It may be part of the Art School Confidential syndrome that every upcycled garment looks like a circus poodle outfit. I’m on it. Watch this space.
http://www.amazon.com/ReFashioned-Cutting-Edge-Clothing-Upcycled-Materials/dp/1780673019
I live for tea sandwiches. I troll the menus of fancy hotels for tea sandwich ideas, which are strangely few and far between. As mentioned, the best big honkin’ sammie ideas evar came from Chicago’s Cafe Lula, and Alice’s Tea Cup in NY (Lula’s Tineka sammie — peanut butter, sambal, sweet soy sauce, vine ripe tomato, red onion, cuke, whole grain; Alice’s Tea Cup — cumin-roasted carrots, tapenade, goat cheese on sesame semolina). The one takes a day’s shopping and the other a day’s cooking and another day to wash the dishes, but they are ROLL YOUR EYES BACK good. Alai Nna, who learned to cook in NOLA, with Vietnamese touches, is the best sandwich imagineer ever. I think she might find these a little heavy, both in concept and with the hippie dippie bread.
This one, from a five star British hotel I cannot now name, fits way more easily into the Dolce Far Niente summer cooking style: Pickled onion cream cheese, cukes, cress on — what have you. A nice challah toast, I’m thinking.
Slice a cup of red onion very thinly. Put it in a microwave bowl. Cover with red wine vinegar and pickling spice. Nuke. Cool. When they’re sufficiently pickled (I waited a couple days), take a well-drained handful (2/3 cup) and add to food processor with a bar of Neufchatel, some pepper and salt. Blend. It’s pink. It’s awesome. It’s ONION DIP, people. without the frightening sodium content of the Lipton’s kind. Total prep time, possibly five minutes, and five minutes to wash the processor. Lick first.
http://lulacafe.com/
http://alicesteacup.com/menus/ATC_all_day_W_30.html
Writing 