no boys allowed in the room!!!!

OK, thanks, carl, I'll have a look for it.

I am actually a lot better than I've been, about "being weird about eating because: body shaming" these days.

But the whole "being weird about ~everything~ because: OMG BOUNDARIES" is still something I'm struggling a lot with at the moment.

It gets worse in times of stress; being in long-term unemployment is a definite cause of stress right now.

Thanks for listening to me, girls, and thanks for discussing this stuff. This is a great source of strength and comfort to me.

my use of "special snowflake" was mostly self-effacing, sorry if it upset anyone. It is about how people from the rest of the country perceive a certain culture where I live.

Branwell, your mom sounds like my mom in terms of size and dieting and health issues, though my mom doesn't have gout, she does have bad knees, which has made me fearful of exercise, which is totally irrational. But, my mom actually has fairly healthy attitudes towards food and didn't really instill me with any food ~issues~ apart from the genetic inevitability that I too would become a fat woman. But she also instilled in me that there were far worse things you can be than fat: you could be cruel, hateful, self-loathing, and have all sorts of other health problems.

In terms of values about food learned from my mom (so much of my childhood and youth is a blur at this point), I remember going to restaurants with my family and occasionally being mildly shamed for not being hungry enough to eat everything, but once it was established that I actually was pretty full, my mom would say things like, "Well, just eat the shrimp, that's the good part, pasta is cheap. It's the shrimp that made it expensive." And also, "don't eat unhealthy junk. if you want ice cream and cheese, get the good stuff, make it as delicious as possible."

It makes me sad reading about ladies on this thread with moms that shamed them and gave them body image issues.

seriously though, I feel like I live half my life in an episode of Portlandia.

And now I am off to band practice at my underground noise co-op space where we have arguments about whether it is worth it to not buy plastic cups when what is really needed is the elimination of the police state and class warfare.

I do kinda feel right now like Mums are getting a bit of a bad rap right now. Like, I've been talking about my Mum, but she was by far not the only person in my family to weight shame me or food shame me. My brother (who was thin) was pretty relentless - he was the one who would make "oink oink" pig noises if I was deemed to be eating too much or too avidly. (With, of course, the full consent, and lack of any kind of chastisement for cruelty from my family.) And my uncle (who was fat, but his wife and his daughter were thin) was fucking relentless in the weight shaming.

Like, I think it maybe hurts more when mothers do it because of the nature and closeness and projection involved in the mother-daughter relationship. But there was still a metric fuckton of it coming from male members of the family.

(I don't remember my father's opinion on weight, which is odd. My father's battles revolved around hair and the cutting of it.)

But OMG, that whole thing of being shamed for not finishing a meal!I got that a lot, too - on top of the "you're a disgusting pig oink oink" messages, so talk about conflicting messages. Food I wouldn't eat at lunch (including seafood, to which I have turned out to be allergic) would be returned to the plate at dinner. To this day, I cannot *not* finish a meal. This is the hardest thing for me, to stop eating when I feel full. If there is food still on my plate, I will literally keep eating until I feel sick because... guilt. It still feels dirty or shameful or wrong (and I try to tell myself it's being a responsible adult, but it doesn't feel like it) if I throw away food, or put it in the food waste bin.

Ugh, I hate being neurotic about this stuff. I'm so bored with feeling like a crazy person so much of the time.

my mom has always been really cool about food -- she taught me to eat what i want when i'm hungry. she also was never (ever!) "dieting" and whenever people would ask her how she kept her figure, she would always say "i just eat when i'm hungry and stop when i'm not hungry, i don't know" and then she would change the subject. we're both really small boned people of short stature, and she always told me i should eat for me, not for other people. now she's proud of my cooking, but never embarrasses me about it.

xp You're not crazy, you've just had a lot of people's own internal eating battles projected on to you.

I am very lucky to have a mother who is fairly decent when it comes to food issues (my dad was a serious barbecue dude, which is another story). She kind of predates the whole PAY ATTENTION TO SEASONAL FOOD trend by years and/or never varying from the idea that stuff comes from gardens at particular times of year and never got into fad diets because 'it's good to have treats' and everything is OK in moderation except for over-processed food. I was allowed to be picky when young because I reacted badly to certain foods while having chemo. After that, I was made to at least try the objectionable thing on my plate once. My mom also watched my aunt refuse the same dish of oatmeal for three days running when they were kids, a battle my aunt won in the end, and never pulled that shit on us.

Although I tried to be a vegetarian for a few months, and she did buy me tofu to go along with it, she did also wind up sabotaging the mission by buying the finest deli corned beef she could find and leaving it there in the fridge next to mustard and pumpernickel until I caved. I was a crap vegetarian and make a much better omnivore, though I enjoy the challenge of cooking for veggies (because it's not a challenge to a good cook).

I think I do need to give my Mum props for some aspects of food, despite diet weirdness and a lot of offhanded terrible comments (including pounding into my head that I was built like her and I was destined to have weight issues like her and always with the disparaging 'ugh you have boobs like your mother' 'ugh you have thighs like your mother' aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway)

The thing I'm really grateful for, w/r/t food is that she welcomed all of us kids into the kitchen, taught us how to pick out ripe fruits and vegetables at the store, when she got a microwave she bought a microwave cookbook for kids for us to make cakes and weird shit in the microwave, or cut up vegetables for a stir fry, whatever. a rite of passage when you were about 5 was when Mum let you hold the butter knife and cut pieces of banana or melon for a fruit salad. She did that for all 3 of us, and now my nephews as well. Teaching us how to stir gravy by having us write the alphabet in the saucepan 3 times (standing on a chair by the stove mind you but still)

That to me is worth rubies, because I know a lot of people whose parents did not welcome them into the kitchen and/or just made food be a very alien, scary kind of thing. My niece is 16 and is afraid to use an oven. Not that you HAVE to cook, but just as a basic survival/money saving skill, it's a good tool to have in your belt and I'm grateful to Mum for giving me that.

Xp suzy. My mom worked for farmers starting when I was 8 or 9 and she would drive out to the fields and bring home food for dinner.

My mom could make a celebration out of driving 15 miles to the roadside stands that sold grocery bags full of freshly picked corn in season. In many ways she's ideal, to wit: food - 'it's awesome, eat a balanced diet so the good stuff tastes like the treat it is.' Sex: 'the most fun two people can have with their clothes off'.

As a mother (huh, that is still weird) it is very useful and lovely to read stories of what mothers did right wrt food and their daughters.

My mom did her best but she was a petite, slim woman blessed with a let's say robust child and a single mom at a time when having a fat kid was a clear sign of bad parenting (I guess that is now too) so while she had my husky ass on a constant diet starting at age nine, her heart was in the right place. Like she was never mean about it but she was prone to seeing fat people and saying things like, "If I ever get that fat, just shoot me" and that will do a number on a fat kid's psyche.

I'm happy to talk with others about how I/they eat if it's very matter of fact and involves no judgment - otherwise, no. I'm interested in talking about what I eat only to the extent that I'm trying to find out what really satisfying eating looks like for me, and I'm interested in the diversity of how it is for others. Trusted peeps are needed for that kind of conversation. I only really dropped the last vestiges of paleo last autumn. Figuring out how to eat happily without rules is now a big goal for me, trying to focus on what feels great to eat (including some 'unhealthy' things) and what doesn't (including some 'healthy' things). Sometimes I feel clear-sighted about that, and other times I seem to rebel and just want to eat too much no matter how terrible it makes me feel. Definitely a bid for control.

In the past I've definitely been the person who burbles to the world about why they're only taking 1/8 of a slice of cake (no donuts, they're not my favourite). No more of that. Sometimes I do only take 1/8 of the slice and sometimes two slices (and a third at the end of the day when the leftovers have gone to the fridge) - my decision.

I don't think I've ever been food shamed as badly as some of the stories here. 'George'!!' WTF.

Sitting out of this discussion about discussion of eating b/c I think our socialization, as feminists and what have you, is to discuss the discussion of eating and my little protest is to say ENOUGH.

With empathy and respect, for real, but that is my only .02 cents: when we focus on a (negative) focus, we're still focusing on the (unhealthy, unhelpful, gender-biased) topic.

I think in the face of people saying "this is so not a thing, that never happens" to turn around and say "actually, this is a thing, it happens to me all the time, am I crazy, or does this happen to other people?' is one of the most powerful tools one can have. I am not going to apologise for talking about something I am beaten in the face with every day, like I am not going to apologise for talking about the narrative of rape culture when other people are all "omg why are you talking about rape yet again, how boring, you victim mentality, you".

I respect your decision to sit the discussion out, but walking into a discussion already in progress and saying "ENOUGH" is not exactly sitting it out, is it? With all due respect, I'm not feeling a lot of empathy from your posts.

Maybe I am just cranky because I have mysteriously just gotten my second period in two weeks. OMG, we sure talk about our periods a lot on this thread, too! How unhelpfully gender-based and unhealthy! Or maybe we have few other places to actually talk about this stuff in the company of other women without being chastised or challenged for it.

I think there has been a really good mixture of discussion of negative aspects, and countering with positive responses. Sorry if the discussion was ~not to your taste~ but it *had* been very helpful for me.

I agree with BraNwell.

BB, Is it a mittelschmerz-type period thing or a proper one? Because the former is pretty normal, especially to people with fibroids. The latter less so, but fibroids also have this strange habit of kicking off an extra period. I've got them too, only mine are not quite as bad as what you've posted about previously.

My mother and I have a pretty fraught relationship in other areas - eg. me objecting to her co-dependence with my sister - but in terms of food and body image, we're golden. We spent half an hour on the phone talking about the authentic Polish sausages we were going to drive to NE Minneapolis to get on my next visit FFS.

Nope, I've never had this before. (Well, once, but that was because I stopped The Pill in the middle of my cycle because it was making me psychotic.) I thought it was just spotting yesterday, but today it's full blown (will spare you the details). Ugh. It's exactly 15 days from the start of the last one. Feeling pretty flattened to be honest.

It is perfectly normal to have a mini-period at that point in the cycle, when one has fibroids. In my case, I'm having the painters in about once every three weeks because of these nasty womb-squatters.

I have generally not been food-shamed too badly despite being fat, or I've been oblivious to it, but I still know that feeling of worrying omg what will the supermarket cashier think, the "Coke please" "ok, diet Coke" "uh, no" (when I used to drink a lot of diet Coke I had headaches every day - maybe just coincidence but it makes me wary anyway. so I don't like it when they don't even ask and just pour me a diet Coke), worrying that I'm that coworker who's conspicuously always eating, etc.

My new GP sent me to do "food diarising" with the nurse. I've been really bad about doing it, mostly out of laziness and a grumpy "it's none of anyone's business", but also the shame of admitting to everything I eat: the nights when I'm too tired to shop properly or cook, or when I'm trying to fit in with someone else who apparently only eats pizza or chips, or when I'm sad/busy and my brain stupidly tells me junk food will get me through.

And it's not just the fat/calorie content which is potentially shameful but all the other food-related shame, like I can hear the nurse's voice going "you eat a lot of ready meals, don't you? can't you cook? why do you buy pre-made sandwiches when you could make them? you ate noodles 3 nights in a row, that's a bit weird, isn't it? have you ever heard of fresh vegetables?"

Last week I went for conveyor-belt sushi with someone and ate about a third of what he did but I still felt the barbs in the waiter's "ooh you must have been hungry" (we stacked our plates together). Maybe I take things too personally.

I've been told 'you girls can EAT' but tbh I think that was either making misguided conversation or misguided 'flattery'. I did one of those food diaries for a general health check-up and honestly, there is no way to win with them. I.do mainly cook from scratch but because they extrapolate from a few days I got lectured on the amount of sugar in dried apricots (I ate one packet over the 5 days) and that I should 'lay off the pizza express' (first one in about a year that happened to fall into the diary period) so basically it's their job to make you aware, but they can also sod off.

I do sometimes wonder how much of this is internalised (that worry of "OMG, is the supermarket cashier judging my groceries" - actually, no, she's probably just counting down the minutes until her next smoke break and doesn't care what you're buying) and how much of this is actually genuinely external (i.e. every other example on this thread, the Georges of the world). It's a mixture of both, with the external stuff endlessly reinforcing the internalised monologue.

With regards to comfort eating and binge eating - I used to be a massive comfort eater. (Also, with weird highly ritualised "bad food" episodes. Like, seriously, the first year I first moved back to England, I went through a phase where I would kind of compulsively go to the Swiss Cottage MacDonalds and eat a cheeseburger. I don't *like* the taste of meat. I *really* don't like Macdonalds food. But there was this weird "I am doing ~the forbidden thing~" mortification/punishment/thrill to it, and of course would go home and feel sick, and beat myself up for doing it. I've done this with alcohol, I've done this with sugar, or whatever "the Forbidden Thing" is.) But breaking out of that has been partly HAES, and partly my therapist. When we were talking about my desire to binge in response to An Upsetting Event, she told me something very unexpected: she gave me "permission" to go have a treat. She was like, what's your favourite ice cream? I was all "Ben N Jerry's Caramel Chew Chew". She told me to go and get a pint of it, and eat it, slowly, savouring every single mouthful and enjoying the taste and the texture. She told me, make an event of it, put on my favourite music or my favourite film while I ate it. Enjoy the hell out of it. Experience it as total pleasure and enjoyment. If you are comfort eating, you are allowed to comfort eat, *if* you allow yourself to get comfort out of it. Not view it as this weird, ritual mortification thing that I feel guilty as hell for doing. But as this lovely thing that is supposed to make you feel better, and does actually make you feel better because, wow, that tastes really nice.

But it's weird. Now that this is *available*, as a thing I can do, and enjoy, and I'm "allowed" to do it, I don't get the compulsion to do it all the time. I can keep a bar of good chocolate, or a box of my absolute favourite ginger biscuits in the house, all the time, and not just surrender to the urge to scarf the whole thing immediately. Sometimes they stay there for weeks! Keep it for when I need a little burst of pleasure! Which is, apparently, the kind of relationship with food that "normal" people have! This is amazing to me. I've never experienced food in this way before.

And it's like... remembering watching my Mother, joylessly and compulsively eating her way through a whole box of totally unsatisfying low calorie weight watchers "Ice Milk" or whatever, and beating herself up for doing it. And seeing myself doing the same fucking thing, and hating myself for doing it, on so many levels. The idea of decoupling guilt from pleasure, and just going "you know what? pleasure is really fucking nice. Might as well enjoy it."

I dunno. This is a different thing from what you're describing, APS, which sounds much more like the experience of being too tired and depressed and flattened to cook. Which is, y'know, you are tired and depressed and flattened, and cooking is work. (Its sometimes pleasurable, but it is still work, which is something that not all people have the time or the energy for. Which is fine!) But the idea of detaching the guilt (and the accompanying internal monologue) from that. "I eat like this because: reasons." You've been trying to address the reasons of depression and exhaustion and being flattened. But they are still *valid* reasons to be eating the way you do. And until those reasons are dealt with, your *eating* is not the problem. But decoupling guilt from food is hard when you're being overtly judged in the form of nurses or the internalised monologue of your food diary.

I dunno. Different strokes for different folks, though. Experiment until you find out what works for you. This is the thing that worked for me.

I also feel guilty for ~getting heavy~ on the thread, and would really like to lighten it with confetti and heritage apples and Kessler gifs.

I'm sorry.

Hey, you already mentioned those ginger biscuits, so that'll do....

She told me to go and get a pint of it, and eat it, slowly, savouring every single mouthful and enjoying the taste and the texture. She told me, make an event of it, put on my favourite music or my favourite film while I ate it. Enjoy the hell out of it. Experience it as total pleasure and enjoyment. If you are comfort eating, you are allowed to comfort eat, *if* you allow yourself to get comfort out of it.

I think this story is awesome! Yes, allow yourself to be comforted, not punished. So beautifully healthy and also! Ice cream!

I just started reading a book about mindful eating which talks a lot about doing just that as a way to regain a healthy relationship with food. It's pretty interesting stuff tbh.

E, which book? I seem to be collecting books about that on my Kindle...

yeah I'm curious

http://www.savorthebook.com/ - I used to work in the same dept as one of the writers.

I am really struggling with food issues lately. I've realized that ever since I was a teen, I've cycled between restrictive eating, orthorexia, or massive binging. And it's totally tanked my thyroid, and as a result, probably made me much heavier than I'd be if I'd NEVER DIETED IN THE FIRST PLACE. I've basically been on a massive binging streak since Christmas, and as a result put on 25 pounds. I keep thinking "tomorrow I'll go back to eating paleo"... but, ugh, WHY. I apologize if any of this was triggering.

I also read a book called "Diet Recovery" by Matt Stone that's been pretty eye opening about the effects of restrictive eating on overall health and metabolism, and kinda realizing I don't like this feeling of 'doing good' versus 'doing bad'

I think a lot of this information (about how dieting makes you fatter, including the ~here's the science bit~ behind how that works) is in the actual Health At Every Size book, by Linda Bacon. Which is one of those books I wish could just be issued to every man, woman and genderqueer at the age of 13 or something. (Granted, probably younger, but you get the idea.)

But I completely understand struggling with this stuff, and sympathise completely.

yes, this dude Matt Stone references the Linda Bacon book. I've never been able to keep off any significant weight loss for longer than four years.

The Linda Bacon book, genuinely (and I know I say this about every other book) but it really did change my life. Because it started with "this is the science behind why permanent weight loss is not effective" and then went through dealing with food shaming and body shaming, and then started talking about mindful eating. I'm trying to re-read it once a year, to make sure the ideas stay fresh in my head and don't slip back into shitty expectations because it's so hard to throw off stuff that's so ingrained. I wish it had existed 10, 20 years ago, but I'm just glad enough that it came into my life now.

I need to read that!!!

Well, this week I've just been eating what I want. I'm eating carbs. And I'm finding... whoa, I actually have energy. CRAZY.

Reading all this, taking it in. I have had my own issues, even this week, but I don't want to pass it down to August. I did feel ashamed for all the bullshit I went through this past week with the whole swim suit thing, body thing. I am 43 and felt 14 about my body and self-esteem. Working out is a mental fix for me and I'd feel better about so much more if I could stay moving on a regular basis. I hope to get there and started on Monday.

I love how August loves being in her lil body, she looks at herself in the mirror and the looks she gives herself kill me. So much pride and happiness there. We were all that way. To hear what everyone has gone through, remembering my own issues and battles, it's heartbreaking. Really, I mean it is fucking heartbreaking.

She is already aware and mimics much of what I do. I feel it is my responsibility to start cracking down on myself when it comes to negative comments, attitudes about my body. That is more important to me than trying to stop cussing.

I think that trying to disconnect this stuff from *shame* is pretty important. You had some body issues last week, you talked about it, I hope that talking made you feel better about it! Like, I had food issues this week, I talked about it, I felt better about it.

Me, I'm not a big fan of exercise, but one of the most important lessons of adulthood is that exercise is crucial - not for dieting, or looking good, or conforming to expectations of appearance - but for maintaining equanimity, and feeling good emotionally. I had tons and tons of shame and awfulness surrounding ~EXERCISE~ for years. It took discovering forms of exercise that make me feel great, to get my head around exercise. I like walking. I LOVE walking, whether it's just a mile up the road to the common and back, or a seven mile hike going up hills and looking for views and forests I've never seen before, and the deep noticing that happens when I'm walking. It feels so good! It feels so right!, being in my body, walking I love, love, love my body when I'm climbing hills, because it feels so good to be in it, I feel so proud and strong when I get to the top! (Especially if there's an amazing view.) And feeling good in my body is not something I get to experience very often, so it's such an amazing thing when I do.

So whatever it is that gets you to that feeling - whether it's climbing the North Downs or doing a work-out - do that thing! Go with the "this feels so GOOD" rather than that awful sense of shame over ~having~ to do it, or not doing it.

I dunno; the idea of being responsible for a child terrifies me. Because they do pick up everything you do. They model everything. So you can't just tell kids "do this, do that" you have to model things like self image, and model consent, and model mindful or intuitive eating (or whatever we're calling it). That idea scares the shit out of me.

Right now I'm trying to do things in reverse. I'm trying to model healthy boundaries, and model consent with my Mother right now, because I didn't get raised right on those issues. I can't change her, but I can change me. And just hope that changing me is something that will reflect back to her.

But this is not a fun place right now, so I'm going to go and take a walk to my favourite woods.

Guys I know this album cover is kind of ideologically gross but I was looking at the tank top design and was like 'damn I would really love a tank top with swoopy curly letters and saguaro and a secondary color palatte' – like if the idea was 'hey this is a cool shirt' then I agree

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9b/NRPSBestOf.jpg/220px-NRPSBestOf.jpg

agreed

In good 'tank top' related news, my male students call male tank tops 'bro tanks' and not 'wifebeaters.' I used the term 'wifebeater' when we were talking about examples of professional and non-professional dress and the unilateral reaction was revulsion. "WHY WOULD ANYONE CALL IT THAT? THAT'S DISGUSTING!" one young man said. They treated "wifebeater" like an odious relic of a bygone era and I sure hope it is. You know, because these ~20 students represent the entire generlizable future of language and humanity.

I hope they do! My heart is warmed.

Also, walking is the best, I hardly consider it an exercise I enjoy it so much (even in stupid-cold winter), as long as I've got good shoes on and give myself enough time. I don't know how I'd even do living in a place where walking (as commute or otherwise) was out of the ordinary...

being in my body, walking I love, love, love my body when I'm climbing hills, because it feels so good to be in it, I feel so proud and strong when I get to the top!

The good stuff. ^^^ I try not to be down on my body and I do better than I used to, but even in less charitable times I've turned to long bike rides or self-defense classes or hell even zumba workouts for the feeling of strength and capability I get to wear around afterward. And every time I feel it, the sense of ease gets a little more comfortable and easier to summon up in memory.

That shirt is indeed a really cool shirt, Crabbs. But "headless female torso as billboard-thing advert for men" is still just one of those things that makes me feel so icky.

Having an odd couple of days. I'm more disturbed than I thought I would be by recent events (I don't think I have to name, and would prefer not to get into details of, for obvious reasons) and feeling kinda ambivalent about the way that the discussion is unfolding. I can choose not to participate, because I don't think I have anything to add, but it's hard to either filter out or deal with.

And then woke up this morning to the results of the European elections and just feeling like the world is fast becoming a nastier place.

But it's like, not wanting to fall into misery over those things. Wanting to remind myself of the good and joyful and stuff-that-makes-it-worthwhile. I dunno, it can be dumb, stupid, shallow stuff (found a beautiful photo last night of Kessler, before he started straightening his hair, and how adorable curly-haired boys can be) or just self-improvement stuff (got two new pocket guides to trees and wildflowers, and have been learning the names of new plants - I found Vetch on the common. So exciting!) I dunno; I just need reminders of your little joys and little triumphs and little happinesses.

Like, my friend got a bit drunk on Tumblr last night and I woke up to my dashboard this morning filled with 8000 pictures of her crush. And just her giddy happiness and joy and excitement shone through, this was such a source of joy for her, and I felt happy seeing her so giddy and happy. What are the little things that give you those bursts of giddy joy?

dumb well-meaning musician dude posted a "rant" inspired by current events on fb -- one of those long posts where when you add "with my penis" to each sentence, it makes a lot more sense than as written.

What really brings me a lot of ***joy*** lately, and I'm sure everyone knows –– cacti/succulents...here is some of my backyard container garden:

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/igotabeefpastry/2014-05-26062140.jpg

I picked a few up a Costco (of all places) on a whim and got o*b*s*e*s*s*e*d learning about them, identifying them, looking at photos of them, and caring for them!

1. They are SURVIVORS and kind of a cool, inspirational model for how to live?
2. They are beautiful/machine-elf-weird and surprising, and it is FUN to watch things grow!
3. They are so biologically and reproductively different than animals or even other plants; learning about them is a constant source of fascination.
4. Riding my bike around Tucson, I see everyone's gardens, or overgrown desert patches, in a totally different way! It is like peeking over the hill into a valley of new information to explore. Knowing that's all ahead is very exciting, It makes me wonder what other things are all around me, now ignored, that will someday be a passion and make me see the world yet again anew. It makes me optimistic!

WOW! What an amazing plant collection / backyard space. That is really beautiful, and that space would make me happy.

Yeah I love to grill up a dinner, have a beer or two, tend to my plants, watch the sunset, play some music...always a perfect evening.

Beautiful! Also inspirational! I have some pots on our deck that I plan your standard assortment of sun annuals in every year (just got them done this weekend) and your garden makes me want to do more. I love it and all your cacti. Yay for happy places!

We have a substantial succ collection too - it has lasted several years.now, while the decorative grasses and ferns I recently planted have all died and the veg patch is looking pitiful.

For lunch, I just stir-fried beans that we harvested in the Community Garden yesterday. They tasted so ... like, I never knew beans could taste that strongly *beany*. That was a nice feeling of pride and "yeah! we did this!" Listening to music and eating home-grown beans.

Those beans got their carbon...FROM THE AIR! THEY ARE MADE OF AIR.