The Duggars and Their World: Fashion, Food, Finance, Schoolin’ and Child Rearin'

[GeeGolly]

6 hours ago, kbott925 said:

So, I've been trying to figure this out for awhile.....how and where in the world do these people get houses? Is it the show that can pay for their homes? Most of their homes don't seem huge or anything, but I just don't understand considering the men don't really have jobs and the women's jobs are having babies. They can't get paid THAT much money because there are so many on the show. 

I'm guessing for their area in Arkansas as well as Laredo TX, what they make from the show is enough to live a middle class lifestyle. In many other areas of the country houses and everyday expenses are more costly and their TLC income would hardly cover housing, nevermind food, clothing, etc.

[Marshmallow Mollie]

Before they had the tv show, the Duggars had x amount of kids, were living in cramped quarters in housing provided by their church (I think), and were receiving love offerings. In theory, the church members knew about the molestations. Meanwhile Michelle is continuing to birth children at record levels. Surely their peers were thinking the Duggars, at minimum, should be introduced to abstinence. I wonder if they were always regarded as extra blessed by God, or if that didn’t happen until the tv shows came along.

[Churchhoney]

26 minutes ago, Marshmallow Mollie said:

Before they had the tv show, the Duggars had x amount of kids, were living in cramped quarters in housing provided by their church (I think), and were receiving love offerings. In theory, the church members knew about the molestations. Meanwhile Michelle is continuing to birth children at record levels. Surely their peers were thinking the Duggars, at minimum, should be introduced to abstinence. I wonder if they were always regarded as extra blessed by God, or if that didn’t happen until the tv shows came along.

My bet is that it was the TeeVee......I'm pretty sure we way underestimate the effect media exposure has on raising people up into larger-than-life figures. 

Several years ago an intern in my office happened to see me doing a tv morning-news interview on the station's above-the-street outdoor screen. He'd looked right through me before, but that afternoon he came into my office sounding a little awestruck and said, "I saw you on the side of a building this morning!" His whole demeanor toward me changed from that time forward. I feel as if that was clear evidence that people tend to think of you differently when they've seen you on a screen!

Edited April 3, 2019 by Churchhoney

[BigBingerBro]

3 hours ago, Churchhoney said:

My bet is that it was the TeeVee......I'm pretty sure we way underestimate the effect media exposure has on raising people up into larger-than-life figures. 

It's true!  One time I managed to get tickets to The Antiques Roadshow.  It's like a lottery system, so I was super excited I got them.  I posted to Facebook that I got the tickets and about what I was going to bring.  OMG - my inbox blew up from distant relatives asking when it's going to be on TV, congrats, blah, blah blah.   I'm like, don't you realize that I most likely will NOT be shown on the program??  And I wasn't.  But still if people freak out over that kind of exposure, I can't imagine what kind of reaction they'd have over something like a reality show.

[Churchhoney]

I want to blather more about why I don't think the Duggar's so-called religion deserves to be respected as if it were actually a religion. 

This is why I don't respect JB's and M's damn "religion" and why I also don't think his children have any obligation to respect it.

It's not a religion. It's not a church! Being in it has nothing to do with faith. It's a system -- created by an insecure greedy man who wanted access to lots of teen-girl toes to fondle -- to give insecure greedy men the power they crave to control their wives and children. 

What I said over in my Jana's-clothes rant was not that JB could have embraced a different church. What I said was that he didn't and doesn't embrace a church at all. 

JB shuns churches -- and he does and has all along, once he found Gothard -- because being involved with a church would take attention away from the only thing that really matters to him (and it isn't Jesus) -- the Gothard-created empowerment mechanism that's kept him totally in charge of enough children to get onto tv for all these years and assuaged his insecurities by making him the big patriarch. 

In my opinion, the Duggars aren't really Christians at all.

In the Gothard cult, it looks to me as if the Christian language and trappings and supposed beliefs are just window dressing to make more palatable the things that really mattered to Gothard, when he created this thing, and to those who took it up while pretending to themselves that it was a faith.

The centerpieces of Gothardism are these -- All the insane blathering in the "wisdom booklets" that seems to be designed for the same purposes as the scientology language crap -- keeping people confused and unable to resist by thinking straight; all the idiot prohibitions on things like embroidered "eye traps" on women's clothes; women being enjoined to have the ridiculous long hair and being told that if they have skirts above the knee they're evilly triggering uncontrollable lust in every man on the planet; the injunction against kids having friends their own age; the internment camps of Alert and Journey to the Heart, which are all about learning that you must be under somebody else's control. Etc.

None of that has anything at all to do with anything Christian. It could just as easily have been used in Chairman Mao's re-education camps or any other control-freak situation. 

Gothard just stuck words like "bible' and "Jesus" all over it because that's how he could justify for himself dreaming up this whole nutso "philosophy" that's really only designed to help control freaks (mostly male, but also including some parents who are scared of their teenagers) to maintain control.

And the people who adopt it also unconsciously use its supposed -- but not real -- ties to Christian belief to justify their strong embrace of one guy's schemes to control other people. They might not be able to justify it to themselves if they didn't pretend it was Christianity and faith....But Gothard needed the same justification so he made it easy for them, pasting Jesus stickers all over something that doesn't actually derive from anything biblical at all. 

Edited April 8, 2019 by Churchhoney

[Absolom]

Jim Bob and Michelle began married life attending Cross Church in whatever incarnation it was in at that time.  Then they wandered to an IFB church and somewhere around that time they picked up Gothard.  They did "home church" especially after Josh round 1 and quite a bit of that seemed centered on Gothard.  After Josh 2, their private warehouse church broke up and they're back attending IFB again.  

[JoanArc]

1 hour ago, Absolom said:

Jim Bob and Michelle began married life attending Cross Church in whatever incarnation it was in at that time.  Then they wandered to an IFB church and somewhere around that time they picked up Gothard.  They did "home church" especially after Josh round 1 and quite a bit of that seemed centered on Gothard.  After Josh 2, their private warehouse church broke up and they're back attending IFB again.  

Weren't they living in the house provided by Cross at the start of the TV Specials?

I hate how these people use legitimate churches- as a form of charity and legitimacy so they don't look like yokels that preach in their living rooms (which they are). 

[allonsyalice]

Hello, hi, yes. I had to read this so so do you.

[BitterApple]

10 minutes ago, allonsyalice said:

Hello, hi, yes. I had to read this so so do you.

Okay, that's hilarious. I never knew there was so much controversy over Deviled Eggs. People really don't know that "deviled" is in reference to the yolks being "spiced up" and not Satan?!

[Jynnan tonnix]

28 minutes ago, BitterApple said:

Okay, that's hilarious. I never knew there was so much controversy over Deviled Eggs. People really don't know that "deviled" is in reference to the yolks being "spiced up" and not Satan?!

Ah, but the spice makes them hot, Hell is hot, therefore it still indirectly goes back to Satan.

Personally, I don't make them spicy, but I still call them deviled eggs because they are so eeevily tasty that I'm always tempted to eat more of them than is good for me.

[DangerousMinds]

They are concerned over eating something called “deviled eggs” but they are not superstitious at all, right?🤣

[crazycatlady58]

47 minutes ago, allonsyalice said:

Hello, hi, yes. I had to read this so so do you.

Lord have mercy .

[JoanArc]

Do they call Devil's Food Cake Angel Food Cake?

[Churchhoney]

32 minutes ago, DangerousMinds said:

They are concerned over eating something called “deviled eggs” but they are not superstitious at all, right?🤣

Well, I don't know when Gothard kind of backed off publicizing this, but at least through the 80s and I believe later than that, too, he was big on throwing stuff out of your house that might have demons in it.....Including but not limited to art, Cabbage Patch dolls, tapes and records of pop music including Christian rock, and many of the souvenirs one might bring home from foreign travels.

So their role model was a superstition fan. 

[EAG46]

So I guess cranking up Stevie Wonder's classic song "Superstition" and playing it outside of a Gothard/Duggar gathering isn't a good idea either, then.  🙄  I saw that article about deviled eggs and thought of this forum.  The deliberate ignorance of these people is astounding.

[McManda]

4 hours ago, JoanArc said:

Do they call Devil's Food Cake Angel Food Cake?

... but then what would they call actual Angel Food Cake? 🤔

[Marshmallow Mollie]

Such lack of faith. Not only lacking faith in their faith, but lack of faith in God. They say God’s name fifty million times a day, but they think if they say deviled eggs, it will invite the devil in their house? Do they not think God will protect them? It sounds like they think the devil is mightier than God.

[IOU Payne]

They can call them Stuffed Eggs, which is a quite common term  if you're using something non-spicy in the filling. But the plate needs a pop of color so, by any name, they should be served on a bed of Devil's Lettuce.

[sixlets]

So these assholes have a hard line on deviled eggs, but they just laugh & wave off the molestation that took place in their own home, TO THEIR OWN GIRLS???  "It happens in every family".  

I would love to throw everyone single one of those eggs at Michelle.  1/2 boiled, 1/2 raw.  They have gone beyond clueless and just moved onto downright stupid.

[JoanArc]

11 hours ago, McManda said:

... but then what would they call actual Angel Food Cake? 🤔

A Sandra Lee?

[bigskygirl]

9 hours ago, sixlets said:

So these assholes have a hard line on deviled eggs, but they just laugh & wave off the molestation that took place in their own home, TO THEIR OWN GIRLS???  "It happens in every family".  

I would love to throw everyone single one of those eggs at Michelle.  1/2 boiled, 1/2 raw.  They have gone beyond clueless and just moved onto downright stupid.

I would like to get the plastic eggs, fill them up with rocks and throw them at JB, Michelle, and Smugs.

[sigmaforce86]

Reminds me of after France disapproved of our invasion of Iraq restaurants started using the term "Freedom Fries" instead of French Fries.

French fries aren't a French invention (there are two theories where the word came from, one that French soldiers introduced them to US soldiers even though they originated in Belgium, the other that I think is more accurate that it's an old Irish term that roughly sounds like the word french and means "to cut into pieces")  anyway - changing them to "freedom fries" had about as much to do with France as remove the word "Devil" from the eggs has to do with Satan.  To Devil something means to cook or prepare it with a lot of hot spices, that's it.  Oddly there are "Angel Eggs" but the term is used to mean they're not made in the spicy deviled tradition, it's an alternate recipe with less fat and cholesterol.  

Shit like this is why I couldn't start an on-line discussion with someone in England about classicism in British food in the early 1900's.  We got flagged and deleted because there's a certain food we were discussing and we used the correct food name - to be nice I won't put it here but it starts with an F, as in F***ot and the word is now also a derogatory term for a homosexual person.  It was a food before it was a slur, it was also a term for a cord of wood or a cigarette but we still couldn't use it in the discussion.  Anyway before I digress to far just an observation that words can have multiple meanings that have nothing to do with the negative connotation AND it occurs to me if MeChelle was ever served that particular "F word" food and told the correct name of it we could enjoy watching her get the vapors then pass out cold.  

[sigmaforce86]

10 hours ago, sixlets said:

So these assholes have a hard line on deviled eggs, but they just laugh & wave off the molestation that took place in their own home, TO THEIR OWN GIRLS???  "It happens in every family".  

I would love to throw everyone single one of those eggs at Michelle.  1/2 boiled, 1/2 raw.  They have gone beyond clueless and just moved onto downright stupid.

The Roman Numeral for a million is an M with a line above it.  We need primertimer to add a symbol to their like feature, something like:     XM  (with the line above it) just for posts like yours so we can indicate it is so awesome we like it times a million.  For some posts one thumbs up just isn't enough!

[Jynnan tonnix]

3 minutes ago, sigmaforce86 said:

Reminds me of after France disapproved of our invasion of Iraq restaurants started using the term "Freedom Fries" instead of French Fries.

French fries aren't a French invention (there are two theories where the word came from, one that French soldiers introduced them to US soldiers even though they originated in Belgium, the other that I think is more accurate that it's an old Irish term that roughly sounds like the word french and means "to cut into pieces")  anyway - changing them to "freedom fries" had about as much to do with France as remove the word "Devil" from the eggs has to do with Satan.  To Devil something means to cook or prepare it with a lot of hot spices, that's it.  Oddly there are "Angel Eggs" but the term is used to mean they're not made in the spicy deviled tradition, it's an alternate recipe with less fat and cholesterol.  

Shit like this is why I couldn't start an on-line discussion with someone in England about classicism in British food in the early 1900's.  We got flagged and deleted because there's a certain food we were discussing and we used the correct food name - to be nice I won't put it here but it starts with an F, as in F***ot and the word is now also a derogatory term for a homosexual person.  It was a food before it was a slur, it was also a term for a cord of wood or a cigarette but we still couldn't use it in the discussion.  Anyway before I digress to far just an observation that words can have multiple meanings that have nothing to do with the negative connotation AND it occurs to me if MeChelle was ever served that particular "F word" food and told the correct name of it we could enjoy watching her get the vapors then pass out cold.  

Classical English cuisine also includes a dessert recipe by the name of "spotted dick"...There are always going to be lots of words with double meanings. If there weren't, there would be no puns, and how much fun could life be without those? 😂

[MargeGunderson]

I swear - to God, because I could not possibly care less about blaspheming - that just when I think these idiots cannot be any more ridiculous, they reach new lows. Well played, Duggars. 

[Now I am inspired to make deviled eggs and deviled ham just to tempt Satan. Don't bother praying for me y'all, I want to see where this goes....presumably to hell in a hand basket.]

Edited April 24, 2019 by MargeGunderson

[ginger90]

My contribution:

[Westiepeach]

53 minutes ago, ginger90 said:

My contribution:

Can you bring those to the Prayer Closet? Those are delish!

[marypat57]

I'm fond of Funny Bones myself...devil's food chocolate cake, peanut butter filling and chocolate covering..

So good and even better frozen.

[BrianJ1962]

38 minutes ago, Westiepeach said:

Can you bring those to the Prayer Closet? Those are delish!

 Heavenly Hash Brownies made Devil's Food Cake Mix

[fonfereksglen]

10 minutes ago, BrianJ1962 said:

 Heavenly Hash Brownies made Devil's Food Cake Mix

No. No. No.

[Churchhoney]

7 hours ago, Jynnan tonnix said:

Classical English cuisine also includes a dessert recipe by the name of "spotted dick"...There are always going to be lots of words with double meanings. If there weren't, there would be no puns, and how much fun could life be without those? 😂

There was a study a couple of years ago that found people with damage to a part of the brain's prefrontal cortex that allows one to have cognitive flexibility and openness to new experiences were very prone to religious fundamentalism. 

Some extrapolate from that to suggest that if that part of your brain is smaller or less active or whatever it may predispose you to religious fundamentalism, too. And some speculate even further to hypothesize that a fundamentalist-type upbringing might actually stunt development of that brain region in some people. But it would take a lot more very-tricky-to-pull-off research to either establish or discredit those notions. 

When I think of JB and M, though, I think of people who I'd guess don't have that much activity in that part of their brains -- or have tiny brains in that area! (same goes for some others, like Steve Maxwell, for example...)

And I definitely think that they're people who probably never make or even enjoy or even get puns. For all I know, of course, they sit around punning all the time. But I have a hard time imagining them enjoying humor of that type. Just as I have a very hard time imagining them embracing a non-legalistic religion, or encouraging open-minded discussion or tolerance about things. 

They don't have much -- any?! -- cognitive flexibility or openness to experience that I can see. And maybe it is a brain thing. 

Neuropsychologia. 2017 Jun;100:18-25. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.04.009. Epub 2017 Apr 6.

Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism.

Zhong W1, Cristofori I1, Bulbulia J2, Krueger F3, Grafman J4.

Author information

Abstract

Beliefs profoundly affect people's lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has identified the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as critical to representing religious beliefs, the means by which vmPFC enables religious belief is uncertain. We hypothesized that the vmPFC represents diverse religious beliefs and that a vmPFC lesion would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs. To test this prediction, we assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of 119 patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI). If the vmPFC is crucial to modulating diverse personal religious beliefs, we predicted that pTBI patients with lesions to the vmPFC would exhibit greater fundamentalism, and that this would be modulated by cognitive flexibility and trait openness. Instead, we found that participants with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions have fundamentalist beliefs similar to patients with vmPFC lesions and that the effect of a dlPFC lesion on fundamentalism was significantly mediated by decreased cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28392301

Edited April 24, 2019 by Churchhoney

[Catlyn]

9 hours ago, sigmaforce86 said:

Reminds me of after France disapproved of our invasion of Iraq restaurants started using the term "Freedom Fries" instead of French Fries.

French fries aren't a French invention (there are two theories where the word came from, one that French soldiers introduced them to US soldiers even though they originated in Belgium, the other that I think is more accurate that it's an old Irish term that roughly sounds like the word french and means "to cut into pieces")  anyway - changing them to "freedom fries" had about as much to do with France as remove the word "Devil" from the eggs has to do with Satan.  To Devil something means to cook or prepare it with a lot of hot spices, that's it.  Oddly there are "Angel Eggs" but the term is used to mean they're not made in the spicy deviled tradition, it's an alternate recipe with less fat and cholesterol.  

Shit like this is why I couldn't start an on-line discussion with someone in England about classicism in British food in the early 1900's.  We got flagged and deleted because there's a certain food we were discussing and we used the correct food name - to be nice I won't put it here but it starts with an F, as in F***ot and the word is now also a derogatory term for a homosexual person.  It was a food before it was a slur, it was also a term for a cord of wood or a cigarette but we still couldn't use it in the discussion.  Anyway before I digress to far just an observation that words can have multiple meanings that have nothing to do with the negative connotation AND it occurs to me if MeChelle was ever served that particular "F word" food and told the correct name of it we could enjoy watching her get the vapors then pass out cold.  

Bacon!

I used to read my aunt's old Chatterbox magazines from the early century. They'd usually have a story about life in a public school. It surprised me to read the word f**, meaning to serve, as in a younger boy serving an upperclassman. 

I also think French is a way of cutting such as French green beans.

What ever happened to speak the truth and shame the devil?

[Churchhoney]

On 4/23/2019 at 8:11 PM, McManda said:

... but then what would they call actual Angel Food Cake? 🤔

A Meeechelle Special?

She's the bestest, holiest and most Christian mom in the world, right? I mean, that's what they all keep telling us. They probably think that qualifies as an angel. 

Edited April 25, 2019 by Churchhoney

[floridamom]

The Duggars had better not say that none of their children have ever had a Devil Dog. I'm sure Michelle and Jim Bob ate them as children too...BTW, those are delicious. I had many of those as my after school snack back in the '60s & '70s.

[JoanArc]

10 hours ago, Churchhoney said:

A Meeechelle Special?

She's the bestest, holiest and most Christian mom in the world, right? I mean, that's what they call keep telling us. They probably think that qualifies as an angel. 

Oh, In Michelle's mind, she's heaven on earth. And Angel Pocket just sounds like a pussy euphemism.

I wonder what they call these:

[bigskygirl]

2 hours ago, JoanArc said:

Oh, In Michelle's mind, she's heaven on earth. And Angel Pocket just sounds like a pussy euphemism.

I wonder what they call these:

This is probably what she calls JB's equipment if you catch my drift. And please catch my drift because I do not want to explain it.

I think all the craziness at my house since Monday morning has affected my thinking.

[JoanArc]

1 minute ago, bigskygirl said:

This is probably what she calls JB's equipment if you catch my drift. And please catch my drift because I do not want to explain it.

I think all the craziness at my house since Monday morning has affected my thinking.

"It's the biggest one I've ever seen!"

"How many have you seen?'

"One"

[Jeeves]

9 hours ago, floridamom said:

The Duggars had better not say that none of their children have ever had a Devil Dog. I'm sure Michelle and Jim Bob ate them as children too...BTW, those are delicious. I had many of those as my after school snack back in the '60s & '70s.

The Duggars may indeed have not consumed - or even seen - those things.

I grew up in OK and TX in the 50's and 60's and I don't remember ever seeing those Devil Dogs, much less eating one. We had Hostess cupcakes, and Twinkies, and Moon Pies, and lots of other crap-filled junk food. But I truly don't remember Devil Dogs. Were they a regional thing?

ETA: I did a quick search and I think they may be an East Coast thing.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Jeeves

[ozziemom]

4 hours ago, Jeeves said:

I grew up in OK and TX in the 50's and 60's and I don't remember ever seeing those Devil Dogs, much less eating one. We had Hostess cupcakes, and Twinkies, and Moon Pies, and lots of other crap-filled junk food. But I truly don't remember Devil Dogs. Were they a regional thing?

ETA: I did a quick search and I think they may be an East Coast thing.

Definitely East coast thing. I lived in Texas in the 70’s and would bring boxes back every time I visited my parents 

[BrianJ1962]

5 hours ago, JoanArc said:

"It's the biggest one I've ever seen!"

"How many have you seen?'

"One"

She covets his Holy Scepter as he covets her fertile fruit basket

Edited April 25, 2019 by BrianJ1962

[floridamom]

Devil Dogs, Ring Dings, Yankee Doodles and Funny Bones are all made by Drake's Cakes. Yes, I think it's an East Coast thing... They really are delicious. Best I've had. (I have to stay away from them now that I'm old and everything is BAD for me.)

[BrianJ1962]

MeChelle likes to play with the Chief Ding Dong's ding dong 

[BrianJ1962]

I can't remember any of them making SOS - SH*t On Shingles, does anyone remember if the did

[Oldernowiser]

2 minutes ago, BrianJ1962 said:

I can't remember any of them making SOS - SH*t On Shingles, does anyone remember if the did

Too nutritious for the Duggardome...

[BrianJ1962]

1 minute ago, Oldernowiser said:

Too nutritious for the Duggardome...

Hunger Games at the Duggardome 

[Churchhoney]

26 minutes ago, BrianJ1962 said:

Hunger Games at the Duggardome 

That's why Jill had to eat in the bathroom.

[Albanyguy]

16 hours ago, Oldernowiser said:

I can't remember any of them making SOS - SH*t On Shingles, does anyone remember if the did

Jill would probably love it. It's "super easy" to make and it contains a massive amount of her favorite ingredient, sodium.

[Nysha]

I'm sure Jill's version, which she got from a family friend who made it whenever she came to visit, includes 2 cans of cream of chicken soup, a 1 lb. block of Velveeta cheese, and two loaves of toasted white bread. Preheat the oven to 350*F, melt the cheese and dump the soup in the cheese. Spread one loaf of toast in a 20"x48" baking pan, dump half the gloop over the toast, spread the rest of the toast over the gloop, then dump the rest of the gloop in the pan. Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour. 

Edited April 28, 2019 by Nysha

[Temperance]

The Duggars have pictures on their blog from Big Sandy. It's clear that most of the family were there. JB, Michelle, and their kids. Some of the married kids were there, including Jessa and Ben,  Anna and Josh, Kendra and Joe, Lauren and Si, and Joy and Austin and all of the grandkids whose parents were mentioned were there.  It looks like the Swansons were there as well. You can tell the Duggars were some of the speakers and that Joy is clearly pregnant in the photo with Austin and Gideon. 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Temperance

[Temperance]

At one point it looks like the women are giving a women's talk. Based on a later photo, it's clearly Michelle, Kendra, Lauren, Jessa,  and then Anna, and Jana. In between Anna and Jessa, is someone I can't tell who it is, but it's not Joy.