Two things. One is that I'm really fascinated -- and horrified -- by the extent to which eating habits, in this country at least, become an issue of morality. Certainly, there are aspects that can be viewed as having clear moral implications (by shopping at farmers' markets you're -- in theory -- supporting small, independent businesses rather that corporate behemoths; by buying locally you're -- in theory -- decreasing the amount of fuel used to transport food and thus decreasing our national demand for oil, etc.). But I'm not thinking of political morality so much as personal morality -- the notion that eating a cookie is "bad" whereas eating steamed spinach is "good," that caring a whole lot about what you eat (and, in particular, how much pleasure you take in it) is somehow suspect and sissified, that there are "right" and "wrong" ways to eat. I wonder to what extent this is mirrored in other cultures. I kind of suspect it's the walking definition of a privilege problem -- i.e., you don't really give a damn about whether eating cookies is "naughty" (I'm quoting my mother here) if Chips Ahoy are the only game in town.

This horrified fascination of mine extends to the way in which food becomes a medium of control. It's that attempted control over what other people choose to put in their mouths that I was reacting to in responding to Mandy. And I'm also thinking of the incredulity with which I read Amanda Hesser's book -- in particular one section in which she travels with her grandmother to Italy, and is driven absolutely nuts by the fact that her grandmother, accustomed to a lifetime of eating big breakfasts and quick, snack-y lunches, refuses to conform to the Italian habit of grabbing a fast breakfast and relaxing later over a long, large, liesurely lunch. Granny doesn't want to eat a four-course lunch. She wants to buy a sandwich from the street kiosk and go wait in line to get into the Uffizi. And Amanda simply cannot understand that her grandmother doesn't share her obsession with food, that her interest in Italy has little to do with finding the Platonic ideal of buccatini.

And it's that larger drive to control that really drives me nuts, that insistence that other people share our beliefs in what is important. For Amanda -- and for Mandy, and, hell, for me, a LONGtime foodie and former caterer -- food matters a whole big bunch. But not everybody feels that way and -- to beat a seriously dead horse, here -- it does seem to me to be the height of presumption to demand that other people buy into our individual value systems. There are some things we need to agree on -- "hurting people is bad" comes to mind -- in order for us to live together in what passes for civilized society. But beyond that, why, WHY do we, as a species, tend to care so damn much about whether somebody else shares our particular belief in the importance of praying to one or another god, culinary or otherwise?

>And if you think, you know

Actually, I tend to believe just the opposite, that the more you think, the less rigid your certainties become. Thinking, for me, almost always involves considering more aspects of a given issue than may be immediately apparent, and than fit tidily into a soundbite ("Local food good, corporate food bad"). And the more complex you concede an issue to be, the more likely you are to acknowledge that few questions produce wholly good/bad, black/white answers. That doesn't mean you don't pick a side, but it does mean, ideally, that you're less likely to be bombastic about it, and more likely to be able to forge a workable compromise that everyone can live with.

I man if I make a great tomato sauce, I don't want to eat it 5 days straight!

The freezer is your friend. And actually, I find the freezer a total godsend when I'm in the kind of mood where I have no time and I'm ravenous and lousy Chinese takeout is calling to me. I've got lamb-and-kale stew and pork-and-turnip stew and tomato sauce and cauliflower-and-turkey-sausage casserole and escarole soup in there in single-serve Tupperware, ready for nuking. And if you're into starches, cooked brown rice freezes pretty well.

>to say that Biblical teaching equals subjigation of women is just igorant and frankly, scripturally and historically incorect.

Really? You might want to look at 1 Corinthians 14:34-14:35, which the "New International Translation" (available at BibleGateway.com) renders as:

34 women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.

35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

As to women having positions of authority in the Catholic Church, it's rather like the position of non-lawyers in a law firm. They may conceivably ascend to certain high-status titles, but they will never be part of the central core of the organization or at the center of its work; their roles will always involve providing support to the people who DO fill those core positions, and they will never have any significant authority over the people who, by virtue of one quirk or another (gender, legal degrees) are at the center of the organization.

If you can point to a woman within the Church who has significant authority over priests or other men within the Church hierarchy, have at it. Otherwise, you're arguing from faith, rather than evidence, and while I see nothing wrong with faith, it's not much of a tool in the context of logical argument.