Sorting tupperware + not junk food + sports bra origins

May 1

May I recommend

Sorting your Tupperware by lids and bottoms.

In our kitchen, we have one smaller, shallower drawer with all the lids and one deeper drawer with all the bottoms. If you know about this already you are probably annoyed by this obvious recommendation and think it’s unworthy of your time. If you don’t know about this already, I have just made your life better and saved your relationship with your partner/children/ sanity.

white plastic food container on white table — Photo by Kate Trifo on Unsplash

Obviously, when I talk about “Tupperware” I don’t mean the name brand stuff, but whatever garbage you buy in October when you realize that you’ve lost all your sandwich-sized bottoms and your kid has to put her chicken noodle soup in a Ziplock baggie.

Do I need to write much more? I think you get it. This is a top tier recommendation. DO IT.

Tupperware just don’t care? Hit me with your reaction in the comments below!

Don’t call it junk food

There is no such thing as “junk” food”

Food is food and the sooner we can take our own value judgements and biases (often just thinly disguised fat phobia) out of the equation, the better.

Now, I know how a policer of the food hierarchy would defend this categorization: collard greens, a staple of soul food, are often prepared with bacon or a ham hock. But listen: Kale is often coated in Caesar dressing, sautéed in generous dollops of olive oil. The real differentiation is rooted in race and class: The food largely associated with bougie white people is “healthy”; the one associated with Black people in the South is “unhealthy.” Who a food is produced by and consumed by has no correlation to its health quotient. This is especially the case when it comes to “junk” food. A bag of Lay’s Potato Chips and Kettle Brand Salt & Pepper Chips taste delicious in different ways, but beyond flavor, the only difference is the price tag. Same with Honey Bunches of Oats and farmers market granola, or a Snickers and a Clif Bar.

The power of the sports bra

The Mostly Untold Story of How the Sports Bra Conquered the World

I never thought about how important and liberating the sports bra was.

Bras made exclusively for sports or exercise had never been produced. Women runners were forced to wear their everyday bras and suffer chafed skin and bleeding nipples. Some took to strapping on two bras to curtail movement even as they endured derogatory comments from men.
“My breasts were flopping all over the place,” Lisa remembered. “My bra straps would slip off my shoulders, and I was always pulling them up, and sometimes it would get very hot and sweaty under my breasts. I figured that was the price I had to pay until my sister Victoria started jogging. She called me and said, ‘What do you wear for a bra?’ I said, ‘I don’t really have a good solution. I’ve tried wearing a bra that was a cup size too small, but that doesn’t really help.’”
Then, Victoria made a joke: “Why isn’t there a jockstrap for women?” she asked. Same concept, different part of the anatomy. The sisters thought that was hysterical and howled with laughter.
Then the lightbulb went on. Afterward, Lisa said to herself, “Wait a minute. That’s a really good idea.”

This quiz is worth doing

Trash or recycling?

Plastic recycling is a giant nightmare that doesn’t really work well at all. The CBC had a recent story about the issue and the interviewee talked about how we need to mindset shift ourselves into thinking of plastic as a precious, permanent commodity, as opposed to treating it as a “cheap” “disposable” product like we currently do. Anyway, this is a fun article thing about what you can actually recycle. Helpful!

The universal symbol for recycling, known as the “chasing arrows” logo, is stamped on so many things. But that doesn’t mean they’re recyclable.
Manufacturers can print the logo on just about any product. That’s because its main purpose isn’t to say whether it’s recyclable, but to identify the type of plastic it’s made from. (For example, if there’s a “3” in the center, it’s PVC, which most curbside recycling programs don’t accept.) The logo is so widely misunderstood that last year California banned its use on things that aren’t recyclable.

Book News

I had a wonderful, wonderful event at Brome Lake Books in Knowlton Qc yesterday. I got to chat with all sorts of people I hadn’t seen in a long while and one friend of my mother’s bought photo albums from our old family trips to Cape Cod. Not only did I see myself and my siblings — curly-haired redheads cavorting in the sand - COME ON! (Though, I really would have liked to have seen more sun hats and sunscreen in those pics) but I also got so see my mother rock a bikini with a bouffant.

It was just so nice to get together and talk about reading and writing and how important book stores are for a community. They are, guys so if you have one near you, go in and support the heck out of it!