Tag Archives: Chocolate

Pop Culture

The Candy Holidays

During the past few weeks, I kept seeing the same message: Follow the bunny – he has the chocolate!  And I was reminded of a post I wrote a while back that still rings true.

It’s over.  I can breathe a sigh of relief.  You know what I mean.  The candy holidays.  No normal human being can resist the constant barrage of sugary treats that appear in September and last until April.

It starts with that damn candy corn and the “fun size” candy bars.  You can have a few because they’re so small, harmless really.  Yeah, right.  It’s only fun until you suddenly can’t zip up your favorite jeans unless you lie down on your bed and hold your breath.  Let’s say that by some small miracle you make it through Harvest without gaining any weight.  Now it’s the hap-happiest season and you’re surrounded by candy canes and chocolate Santas.  Be careful here or you might get sucked into the sugar vortex that leads to an obscenely gigantic heart-shaped box of caramel and nut-covered chocolates, and a bag of tiny red cinnamon candies that, if you eat one too many, will burn your tongue and leave the roof of your mouth numb.  Next you’re hopping down the bunny trail trying to dodge those pastel-shelled chocolate mini-eggs, (I refer to as “devil eggs”) and neon-yellow marshmallow chicks.

As alluring as all that candy is every time you go shopping at the supermarket, drugstore, or large retail chain, the real challenge, at least for me, is the day after Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter when holiday candy gets marked down to half-price.  Forget the allure of the candy itself.  Who can resist such a bargain?  Clearly, not me.

Easter Sunday has come and gone and here’s my dilemma:

What to do about those Peeps?   A friend of mine once told me of a long-standing tradition that took place at her ivy-league university.  After eating one or two of the gritty, sticky little things, the rest of the brood got put into the microwave.  To get nuked.  Until they exploded.  I swear I’m not making this up.

Summer’s coming and fortunately, there are no Fourth of July sweets to tempt me.

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Girl Talk, Life Lessons

I Blame Shakespeare

My friend’s two young daughters refer to Valentine’s Day as “the love holiday” because, even at their tender age, they’ve figured out that couples celebrate with greeting cards pledging love and devotion, bouquets of flowers, and gigantic heart-shaped boxes of chocolates.  But not everyone has a significant other.  And for some single folks, February 14th can be a tough day.  Here’s a re-post from March 2016 with my perspective.

The “rom-com” plot never changes: the pretty, but downtrodden, single woman gets saved by the rich, good looking, completely idealized man, whose only flaw is that it takes him a little while to figure out that he’s in love with her; then in the last ten minutes of the movie, he must race somewhere to find her and keep her from leaving town.

“Feel good movies,” that’s what they’re called.  But who feels good after seeing them?  Single women?  Like seeing this one movie is going to wash away past hurts and disappointments, bringing instead, inspiration and hope to carry on – and to believe – yes believe, that the exact same thing will happen for you because Mr. Right is just around the very next turn…

While channel surfing late one night, I realized this movie formula was well-established with 1950’s films like Sabrina, and the Doris Day comedies.  Who says that in order to have a happy ending, the couple must get together?

The BardShakespeare.  He’s the one.  All the comedies end with a wedding, just as all the tragedies end with a death.  We’ve had over four hundred years of conditioning!  But The Bard was wrong.  This is the new millennium and, back me up here ladies, in the real world the guy tells the girl that he doesn’t deserve her, that she’s going to be a great wife for some other lucky guy, blah, blah, blah, before leaving her with a few mementos and a broken heart.

So what’s a modern girl to do?

I muted the television and sat for a while in the darkness, only the blue glow of the screen lighting my way.  And in the solitude of my living room, I figured it out.

It’s time to change the narrative.  You can’t expect or rely on another person for your happiness.  You have to find your own bliss.  A happy ending can be whatever you want it to be.red poppy

 

 

 

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Life Lessons

New Year’s Resolutions

Eat healthy, lose weight, join a gym, get more sleep…  It’s easy to make New Year’s resolutions but most people have a hard time keeping them.  For me, the key to keeping New Year’s resolutions is to be honest with yourself by setting realistic goals and adopting behaviors you can live with.  In that spirit, I’d like to share my plan for the new year.

Diet:  My three fruits per day will be two raisins and a glass of wine.  Cutting carbs is never easy, so rather than set myself up for failure, I won’t even attempt this.  However, when choosing brown food over white food, I will include two servings of chocolate (one dark and one milk). This way, the milk chocolate can double as one of my two dairy servings.  The other, a cup of ice cream (any flavor).  To reduce meat intake, I’ll cut bacon to no more than 3 slices with my weekend breakfast or brunch.  And a daily glass of V-8 to wash down a multi-vitamin should cover my veggies.

Weight:  Some people weigh themselves every morning, but I’ve always found once a week to be sufficient.  Funny thing: back in October, my scale broke.  I haven’t bought a new one and I’m not sure I need to because I really don’t miss this weekly ritual.

Exercise:  The gym is conveniently located a few doors down from the drug store and supermarket in the strip mall nearest home so I can easily go to the gym a few times per week.  If I park at the far end of the parking lot, and walk, I don’t even have to actually go into the gym.  I can just go past it on my way to the market where I’ll be buying all of my healthy food.

Sleep:  The sleep experts advise getting up and going to bed at the same time each day.  This would mean getting up at 6 AM on Saturday and Sunday.  Seriously?  What if I don’t set my alarm clock over the weekend and simply leave my rise-and-shine time up to fate?  I do resolve to go to bed earlier.  My goal is to turn out the lights at 1 o’clock.  After all, you can’t get much earlier in the day than 1:00 AM.

This should all work for me – hope it’s helpful for you.  Happy New Year!

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Pop Culture

The Candy Holidays

It’s over.  I can breathe a sigh of relief.  You know what I mean.  The candy holidays.  No normal human being can resist the constant barrage of sugary treats that appear in September and last until April.

It starts with that damn candy corn and the “fun size” candy bars.  You can have a few because they’re so small, harmless really.  Yeah, right.  It’s only fun until you suddenly can’t zip up your favorite jeans unless you lie down on your bed and hold your breath.  Let’s say that by some small miracle you make it through Harvest without gaining any weight.  Now it’s the hap-happiest season and you’re surrounded by candy canes and chocolate Santas.  Be careful here or you might get sucked into the sugar vortex that leads to an obscenely gigantic heart-shaped box of caramel and nut-covered chocolates, and a bag of tiny red cinnamon candies that, if you eat one too many, will burn your tongue and leave the roof of your mouth numb.  Next you’re hopping down the bunny trail trying to dodge those pastel-shelled chocolate mini-eggs, (I refer to as “devil eggs”) and neon-yellow marshmallow chicks.

As alluring as all that candy is every time you go shopping at the supermarket, drugstore, or large retail chain, the real challenge, at least for me, is the day after Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter when holiday candy gets marked down to half-price.  Forget the allure of the candy itself.  Who can resist such a bargain?  Clearly, not me.

Easter Sunday has come and gone and here’s my dilemma:

What to do about those Peeps?   A friend of mine once told me of a long-standing tradition that took place at her ivy-league university.  After eating one or two of the gritty, sticky little things, the rest of the brood got put into the microwave.  To get nuked.  Until they exploded.  I swear I’m not making this up.

Summer’s coming and fortunately, there are no Fourth of July sweets to tempt me.

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