Unbaked Obama Fat Tuesday Yoga Cookies

Tuesday is Fat Tuesday.

Tuesday is also Super Tuesday.

To combine the two Tuesdays with the yoga class I teach on Tuesdays, I made unbaked obama fat tuesday yoga cookies.

Unbaked because the cookies are...well...not baked. You pour boiled butter, milk and sugar on top of oatmeal, coconut, cocoa and vanilla.

obama because they are close to the skin color of my choice for the Democratic primary in California.

Fat Tuesday because they will be consumed in honor of fat tuesday, the day before Lent begins (even though I don't plan to give up anything for Lent!)

yoga because we're going to eat them in the yoga studio after class on tuesday

These cookies are an act of unncecessary conspicous consumption as well as a contradiction. First of all, I'm bringing them to yoga class. I seriously doubt anyone in that class, or anyone else I know for that matter, really needs any more refined sugar in their lives. Second, the recipes requires cocoa...which is a rainforest product and I seriously doubt the Nestle corporation is looking out for local forest peoples. Third, how bout those preservatives in the shredded coconut? And the stick of butter? Sure, it's organic (and therefore expensive) but it's industrial organic. Were the cows that made the milk fed on grass in a sustainable agricultural environment? I doubt it. Plus, I had to buy a roll of wax paper to let the cookies cool on.

One point for the industrial-food complex. Zero points for planet earth.

The cookies are also a bit of a contradiction because they reflect my desire to remain attached to the past. Nonattachment is the way of yoga...I know I know...but yoga sutras or not, I am emotionally bound to this recipe. I grew up with unbaked cookies. They are part of my personal history. Part of my culture. Walking into the kitchen after school and finding unbaked cookies cooling on the counter...made by mom mom before she went to work. Priceless.

coming back to Obama...I think these cookies will be like his presidency...sweet, but fundamentally not enough to sustain us in a healthy way. We need to be looking beyond unbaked obama fat tuesday yoga cookies and the oil, coal and natural gas that made them possible. We need to be thinking about a total restructuring of our food economy and more generally of the capitalistic system we have inherited.

but change doesn't come easily...look...I didn't even manage to change a cookie recipie to make it more earth friendly because I had a vested interest (my memories) in the status quo. If I can't change a cookie recipe, how are we going to reinvent the world economic system and the power structures that want to keep it in place?