Ordinarily, I would never eat turnips. I managed to go 30 years without buying one. But now every winter I’m faced with a two-month supply, not to mention the kale, collards, and flat-leaf Italian parsley that sit in my refrigerator, slowly wilting, filling me with guilt every time I reach past them for the milk. After three years of practice, I’ve figured out simple ways to deal with most of these problem vegetables: I braise the turnips in butter and white wine; I sauté the kale and collards with olive oil and sea salt; I wait until the parsley shrivels and then throw it out. The abundance of roughage is overwhelming.

I subscribe to a CSA —a program, short for “community supported agriculture,” in which you pay in advance for a weekly box of fresh produce delivered from a local organic farm. For the most part, it’s great — until you reach your seventh straight week of radishes and start to lose the faith. I wrote for Slate about my attempts to get it back.

You know what I hate? The Park Slope Food Co-op. Sure, it has great organic food at incredibly low prices. But  something about the two-and-three-quarter-hour workshifts, self-righteous squad leaders, “work alerts” and widespread indignation against “the man” pushed me to the dark side. My resulting essay was featured in an anthology called Before the Mortgage (Simon and Schuster). 

It is Halloween. This month I am working at the front door, swiping membership cards. Halfway through the shift, sick of announcing to people that they are on “work alert” for missed shifts, I switch roles with my co-worker, Elga. Now I am head trick-or-treat coordinator, responsible for giving rewards to a costumed parade of pesticide-free children. Other shops, aware of the urban wives’ tale of razor blades being embedded in unwrapped treats, are handing out tootsie rolls and mini-Snickers bars. We are handing out apples. 

A small, androgynous fireman/bear walks up to me and extends its jack-o-lantern bucket. 

            “He’s adorable,” I say to the fireman bear’s mother, just as her child picks my apple out of the bucket and puts it back on the counter.

             “I want chocolate,” it says.

            “We’re not giving out chocolate.”

            “I want chocolate,” s/he repeats.

            “We only have apples.”

            “Chocolate!”

            “I don’t understand,” says the mother. “She’s been organic since birth.”

 

I’ve long thought that the body mass index, the oft-cited calculation of whether you’re obese, is flawed — after all, it doesn’t take into account whether your extra weight comes from muscle or fat. As an (equally meaningless) alternative, I propose a different measurement, one that reflects how you actually feel. I call it the Body Image Index, and I wrote about it for O Magazine.

What do feelings have to do with numbers? Most women know that it is possible to immediately gain 15 pounds by eating one pint of Ben & Jerry’s. And when it comes to your butt (which can enlarge six sizes in the wrong pair of jeans), the rules of physics no longer apply. 

We need a better way to quantify these fluctuations — a formula that goes beyond your BMI and calculates the feel of overweight. So I propose the personal body image index (PBII).

The general idea is as follows:

• Start with your weight. 
• Subtract seven pounds if you have just worked out. 
• Add five if you’ve single-handedly finished a plate of guacamole and chips; four for macaroni and cheese; six for death-by-chocolate cake. 
• Subtract 10 pounds if people nearby are fatter than you.
• If you’re wearing black pants, subtract two; if in a bathing suit, add eight. 
• If you are more than seven years older than the group average or are surrounded by bikini-clad undergraduates with toned stomachs and cellulite-free thighs, add 20.