Beans with Sweet-Sour Sauce

Recipe #4: p. 99,Beans with Sweet-Sour Sauce--Helen E. Reiger, Newton, Kansas
navy beans
fat
flour
sugar
corn syrup
salt
vinegar

An excerpt from an e-mail I sent to some of my friends:
"I'm preparing to make my next meal from More with Less for my blog, and I am such a cooking novice that I need some help! The recipe calls for 1.5 T of fat.  What do I use?  I don't have leftover fat from meat or anything, so I don't know if I use an olive oil, crisco, butter.  Can any of you help me?"


"Characteristics of anorexia nervosa include self-starvation and a strong fear if being fat." "I'm Like So Fat!" Dianne Neumark-Sztainer p. 11


"Rollie: I feel so fat.
Kathy: You feel fat?  I feel really fat...

When teenagers, particularly teenage girls, engage in fat talk, they're often looking for reassurance...

What does it mean to "feel" fat?  Author Sandra Friedman (When Girls Feel Fat...) correctly states that fat is not a feeling...Unfortunately, dieting won't erase the feeling, because being fat is not the issue."  "I'm Like So Fat! Dianne Neumark-Sztainer p. 59-60


FAT
Talk about a terrible word for a person suffering with Anorexia Nervosa and one with so many meanings, memories, and feelings associated with it.

I distinctly remember in fifth grade beginning my eating disordered thinking.  I had always been an anxious child and had tendencies toward obsessive compulsive behavior, but in the fifth grade my anxieties became centralized in my body.

Many stressors in my life compiled along with actual physical changes related to puberty during that time period, and I began linking my negative feelings with being fat.

"Do I look fat?" was a question that I asked my mom countless times during that time in my life and would ask many other loved ones over the next 15 years.

As you're reading this, you may think: "I've felt fat before," but the feeling is extreme for people with AN, and it leads us to take extreme measures to ensure that we do not become fat or are able to reverse these fat feelings.

The fat feeling used to compel me to restrict food, to exercise a few more minutes, to obsessively plan ways to cut calories, and to imagine how much calmer and happier I would be if I didn't feel fat.

Now that I'm further along in my recovery, fat no longer holds the same power over me as it once did.  I can stand up straight and not "cover" myself with my arms hoping that no one will see my fat.  Fat is not something that I need to avoid or remove from all of my food and from my body.  I am able to look at fat as an ingredient in a recipe instead of as something that I embody.

And for those of you who are wondering, I ended up using a butter-substitute in the recipe, and the family and I all really enjoyed the beans.  We highly recommend them!