I'M READY FOR A COOKIE NOW

Spent all day reading textbooks, swilling strong tea, taking walks with a pipe, and occasionally nibbling on snacks. Plus a pan-fried meat bun. There was also a decent quantity of cooked vegetables for taste, textural contrast, and fibre. Which is good for the bowels. And you were probably wondering for a moment if there was anything beneficial there, given the rather riotous English indulgences of the other things described, weren't you?
Does the old devil actually do anything healthy?

Because a walk while smoking, and wired to the eye-brows on tea, can not, strictly speaking, be considered healthy. The tobacco fumes subtract from the good karma. Or something.

Smoked one of my father's old pipes today.

It brought back wonderful memories.

See, that's where married men have a much better deal going. Not only do their wives or girl-friends harangue them about the evils of tobacco, but they also insist that the old goat must eat properly. If they have to put up with him while he turns old and grumpy, they want him leaner and more limber, so they can chase him out of the house once in a while and won't need to push his sorry carcass uphill in a wheelchair.


Now, you might think that having as I do a female apartment mate, the problem would be solved. But there is no romantic relationship there, we're just good friends from the period when she was in college and needed to get away from her parental nest -- being Cantonese and a girl, that "nest" was in almost no way supportive of independent thought, opinions, or an actual education for females -- and she has all the dietary habits of a fratboy with somewhat better tastes and no beer. So if we regularly ate together, I'd damned well have to join a gym. Good thing we're both 'bachelors'.

Her very late lunch when she finally took a break from 'work-at-home' was something gooey with chicken fat and noodles. The only "vegetarian content" was, I believe, fried tofu. This morning, while I was out with my first pipe of the day, she pan-fried something of animal origin for breakfast.

No, she's not plump, despite what she wails to the contrary.
She gets plenty of exercise, and stays wiry.

But if we were a couple, we'd probably both have leftover pizza for breakfast regularly, cake every week, and fried chicken for dinner when neither of us felt like cooking.


Men, unlike many women, need real nutrition.


When I came back from my tea time smoke, she was heading out of the house to go grocery shopping. Which probably means more meat, more cheese, more eggs, and more ice cream.
I haven't checked the refrigerator yet. It may be dangerous.
Nothing she buys is "diet".



AFTER WORD

White people also sometimes eat tofu, but they do strange inedible things to it. The favourite Cantonese treatment of tofu is to stuff it with spiced fatty pork and fishpaste, and deepfry it. Before adding it to soups or dipping it in sauce. Which is actually Hakka cooking: 釀豆腐 ('yong tau fu').

Cantonese women are not all opposed to smoking; there's a rather dour old auntie who lives around the corner who often sits in the sun having a smoke. After several months we've finally gotten to the "howdy" stage. Plus at least two of the women I occasionally see when I'm shopping in Chinatown are furtive cigarette fiends.

TOBACCO INDEX


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