Topic One was about tofu. I'm a big tofu fan. Been eating it more and more instead of pork or red meat (I haven't given in to the vegetarian thing yet...). I cook with it and even eat it raw. That thought can make people squeamish right there. I had told a friend about my tofu fried rice dish that I make. She is interested in starting to eat more tofu and that seemed like a good beginner meal suggestion. My version is very low-fat. You almost can't even use the term 'fried' for it. But, 'tofu rice' doesn't really describe the dish or even suggest a flavor like 'tofu fried rice' does. Even if you've never had tofu, but you've had fried rice, you can semi-guess on the taste.
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| My tofu fried rice. Low fat, easy to make and delicious. |
Anyway, she is new to tofu and researched it because that's what she does. She found some interesting information on the web that I didn't know. Like young children shouldn't eat raw tofu. I had to look that up myself and found that as long as it was individually packaged and pasteurized, it was okay. She also found that because it had so much protein, it shouldn't be over-eaten. I do eat a very high-protein diet. Between my Greek yogurt every morning and other sources of protein...hmm...may have to rethink the mega protein thing...but I do balance my diet out with lots of fruits and veggies and healthy carbs. (Okay, so the homemade sourdough bread I'm making every few days may not be able to include the moniker of 'healthy' but it's homemade...doesn't have preservatives and crap in it...so it's healthier than not. And, it's darned yummy).
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| My sourdough francese bread that I make every few days. Not quite as good as Iggy's Bakery in MA, but darned close. |
I posed the question on Facebook tonight as to what came to mind when my friends thought of tofu. With over twenty responses, I got things like "Yum," "Cooking some at this very moment" to "Where's the nearest Five Guys?" and "Sponge." Who knew it could be such an interesting topic?
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| Tofu cubes and half a block. I'll eat them raw like this with edamame and Bragg's liquid aminos on them or maybe topped with a ginger miso dressing of some sort. |
Now, if I posed the question of Topic Two that came up at work today, I may have got even more interesting answers. Or, I may have been defriended by many conservative friends. But, then again, I'm guessing that I could have had friend requests from friends of friends. That question would have been, "How fleshy is your vulva?"
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| This whole diagram of the female parts "down there" falls into the vulva category... just so you know for sure what we're talking about. |
How does that topic even come up, you ask? Through yoga. You know, those tofu-eating, healthy people? Actually, it came up with two awesome friends who are share-anything-with kinds of people. It was really more about yoga pants than yoga itself. And, the question of do you wear underwear under them? A thong? Or, nothing at all? If it's nothing at all, and you have a fleshy vulva, the whole camel-toe thing could come into play. Remember Sally O'Malley from Saturday Night Live? She liked to kick! Stretch! And she was 50 years old? She was proud of her red outfit that she called her Desert Rose because it featured her camel toes. She sure liked to show hers off. (Check out the link to Hulu.com below if you haven't seen it before...or at least in a while).
So, I was talking with another friend tonight about the vulva conversation that I had had and she was absolutely horrified that I'd be involved in talking about that. I honestly don't think anything of talking about this stuff. It's the human body. I see it like a medical professional would. I don't think of it from any sort of sexual point of view. Is that how others see it? Maybe? Maybe not? This all goes back to my theory that the more things are kept taboo and hush hush, the creepier people get about them.
Why don't we just talk more about tofu and vulvas and take the squeamish out of squishy?
Do you ever talk about vulvas at work? Leave your comments below!
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I've never talked about vulvas at work, but like you, I think it's crazy how many people get their feathers ruffled over discussion of the human body. And, in particular, the female body. It seems to be more socially acceptable to discuss a penis in public than a vagina (anyone who's ever played the "penis game" knows this). When I was in 8th grade, I remember my literature teacher reading "Seed of Sarah" to us--a horrifying account of a girl taken as prisoner in a Holocaust concentration camp. There's a passage in which the girl describes bleach being sprayed on the women's vulvas, and the burning pain that resulted. Well, as she read it, my teacher said "bleep" in place of the word "vulva"--EVERY time the word came up in the passage. I mean, seriously? I think as 8th graders we giggled more over our teacher, who was clearly uncomfortable with the word, and her "bleeping" than if she had actually used the correct word. And for at least a portion of us, a quick look in the dictionary confirmed our suspicions that the word had something to do with the female body. Why? Because no one--not our moms, our health teachers, anyone--had ever used the word "vulva" when discussing the female anatomy (or clitoris, now that I think of it). Females have a vagina, boys have a penis. Penis goes into vagina and woman gets pregnant. Pregnancy results in a baby 9 months later. That's all we had been taught.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing that! I would like to see people not so weird over sex and the human body. If kids don't get the education about it at home or in schools (I was one of those), where else do they get it? I talk openly with my girls and use the proper terminology. They know it isn't conversation they'd get at their dad's, but they're getting used to it. They are even comfortable enough to ask me questions about sex now too. One step at a time!
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