{"id":2348,"date":"2009-11-16T00:34:48","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T05:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/?p=2348"},"modified":"2009-11-16T00:34:48","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T05:34:48","slug":"repostunderstanding-the-blueberry-muffin-ta-nehisi-coates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/16\/repostunderstanding-the-blueberry-muffin-ta-nehisi-coates\/","title":{"rendered":"rePost::Understanding The Blueberry Muffin &#8211; Ta-Nehisi Coates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I used to cook everyday. It was a great way to end the day. Of course this meant that I slept very late preparing the meal for next day, and that I was spending more on <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Food\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Food\">food<\/a> compared to other people and compared to me when I eat out (without factoring the time spent on <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Cooking\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cooking\">cooking<\/a>). But I loved cooking. Sadly our stove and oven conked out and it has been over a year and a half and I&#8217;m still getting by with an electric stove. I hope (I will) I can get my stove\/oven fixed and start cooking again. In a way it personalizes food. It also is a way to de-stress.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>My <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Family\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Family\">family<\/a>, like most families, generally lives on the go, and we rarely get to have a decent breakfast in the morning. So most weekends I make twelve <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Muffin\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Muffin\">muffins<\/a> (a different flavor each week) as breakfast for the week. I&#8217;m sure that someone, somewhere is scolding me for feeding my kid a muffin for breakfast. But here&#8217;s what I know. When you make Mocha Chip Muffins, as I did this weekend, and see the ingredients going in&#8211;the copious amounts of <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Butter\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Butter\">butter<\/a>, dairy and <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Sugar\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sugar\">sugar<\/a>&#8211;it makes you think long and hard about what you&#8217;re eating, and what you should eat the rest of the day. It&#8217;s one thing to know that a muffin is fatty. It&#8217;s another thing to actually add the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Fat\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fat\">fat<\/a> in yourself. Moreover, it&#8217;s another thing to see the size of your muffins, and then see the gargantuan muffins that are sold in the stores.<br \/>\nCooking&#8211;and really cooking from scratch&#8211;creates a consciousness about food. It creates a respect, an understanding of what, exactly, you&#8217;re putting in your body. It&#8217;s not that cooking is magically healthier. I&#8217;m not convinced that, say, my fried <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Chicken\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chicken\">chicken<\/a> has less calories than KFCs. But that isn&#8217;t the point. The point is doing the actual work of <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Frying\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frying\">frying<\/a> a great chicken. It&#8217;s actually having to see all the oil and <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Egg (food)\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Egg_%28food%29\">eggs<\/a> (depending on your recipe) used in the process. For me at least, doing that, has made it unlikely that I&#8217;ll fry chicken every day, or even every week.<br \/>\nvia <a href=\"http:\/\/ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com\/archives\/2009\/10\/the_parable_of_the_blueberry_muffin.php\">Understanding The Blueberry Muffin &#8211; Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" href=\"http:\/\/reblog.zemanta.com\/zemified\/1fdfa433-8fce-43fd-a0f7-addaaad6ee65\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/reblog_e.png?w=525\" alt=\"Reblog this post [with Zemanta]\" \/><\/a><span class=\"zem-script more-related pretty-attribution\"><script src=\"http:\/\/static.zemanta.com\/readside\/loader.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to cook everyday. It was a great way to end the day. Of course this meant that I slept very late preparing the meal for next day, and that I was spending more on food compared to other people and compared to me when I eat out (without factoring the time spent on &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/16\/repostunderstanding-the-blueberry-muffin-ta-nehisi-coates\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;rePost::Understanding The Blueberry Muffin &#8211; Ta-Nehisi Coates&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,62],"tags":[668,1185],"class_list":["post-2348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice-for-the-day","category-best-read","category-personal-angol","tag-health","tag-recreation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}