It is no secret that Neal does most of the “around the house” stuff here.  He has a much lower tolerance for clutter than I do so he’s almost always cleaning something.  He also usually cooks.  This has lead some to believe that I’m utterly incapable of taking care of myself without him.

Last holiday season, Neal went to his grandmother’s to make holiday cookies.  It’s a family tradition that they have where Neal, his mother, aunt and grandmother get together and make cookies.  The first year we were together, I went but stayed out of the kitchen.  This year I stayed home to work on some sewing I was doing for gifts.  Neal made sloppy joes to take with him so they would have lunch while making cookies.  He hates to stop to have someone go pick up fast food plus we both try to avoid eating fast food whenever possible.  When he arrived with the food, his grandmother asked if he’d left any at home for me.  When he said no, she asked “What’s Julian going to eat?”  It led to Neal and I having a good laugh over his grandmother thinking that I’m helpless to make myself something to eat when Neal’s gone.

We have a friend, Holly.  Recently her partner, Julie, went out of town.  While she was away, Holly posted on Facebook that Julie needed to come home because she was eating rainbow sherbert out of a mug with a fork.  I left my full time job in April to freelance so I’m working at home now.  Neal, on the other hand, just started a new job this week.  He works in restaurants so it is not unusual for him to work a double shift and be gone all day.  He’s been joking about me eating pudding with a knife because all the spoons were dirty while he’s gone.    When we went to the grocery, he bought a big package of ramen for me to eat during the day.

It is funny but the truth is that I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.  No, really.  I know how to cook quite well.  I was a vegetarian for many years and had to cook for myself.  I think that it is unfair if you are following a special diet to ask others to cook for you or accommodate you.  I’m also someone who always has at least a dozen irons in the fire at a time though.  Often, I’ll eat a bowl of cereal for dinner, not because I don’t know how to cook for myself, but because I’m in the middle of some project, know that I should eat but don’t want to take the time to do so.  As a result, I do often make poor food choices: eating cereal for dinner, grabbing a milkshake, eating nothing but apples for an entire day, etc.  It’s not because I can’t do it.  It’s because I don’t.  And it’s usually motivated purely by the fact that I have other things to do.

Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up.  I actually am not completely incapable of caring for myself.  I just don’t.  Today, I took the 10 minutes to make ramen.  Neal will be happy and for a brief moment while eating ramen for lunch, I felt like I was in my 20s again.

A while ago I wrote about why we stopped shopping at the Easton Macy’s.  When I last blogged, we’d received a $25 off coupon as an invite to come see the store in better shape after Christmas.  We went in after the holidays and found the store was still a mess.   The fine print on the coupon said it couldn’t be used on “special collection shops”.  We took this to mean Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, etc.  And I’m not complaining about that, I understand why those shops would be excluded.  But a couple weeks later Neal went into Macy’s to give them one more try.  He wanted to get a new beard trimmer for me as mine had finally died.  After looking around he found a Norelco beard trimmer and decided to use the coupon on it.  Guess what?  Even though Macy’s carries about 3 Norelco products–it’s a special “shop” and excluded from the coupon.  So as an apology for the incredible mess and poor experience my sister had in their store, Macy’s sent us a worthless coupon that couldn’t be used on a number of items in the store but no where on the coupon or in the store can you actually determine what it can or can’t be used on.  The sales associates don’t know either.  Neal asked them and they said the only way to tell was to try to ring it up.  That was strike number 2.

I think you’re going to enjoy strike number 3.  Neal and I were so flabbergasted by this one.  Neal was starting a new job and needed a particular style of tie.  We went to Kohl’s and he found one.  The style he needed was a popular Ralph Lauren style for a while so we thought we’d wander into Macy’s to see if they had the tie he needed.  In the men’s dress department, we were greeted by this:

Would you buy a tie from this display?

We just looked at each other and laughed.  There was no way we would buy a tie from this display.  Neal and I both are former retail managers.  If either one of us had seen that in our store, heads would’ve rolled.  And in fact, if a district manager had seen that in one of our stores, we’d have been fired.  As former retail managers, we can tell you that this is not the product of  a really busy day.  This is the product of total neglect.  It means no one was straightening this department for some time.  From a upscale retailer like Macy’s in an upscale location like Easton Town Center, this is simply unacceptable.  But we’ve learned our lesson.  We won’t contact Macy’s to tell them why they lost our business because our past experience has shown that Macy’s doesn’t care.  They’ve given up on being a top retailer or providing a good customer experience.  And it shows.  The saddest part of the story is that Macy’s has driven the great retailers that they absorbed like Marshall Fields into the slums.

The theme for this year’s Columbus Pride was “Celebrate Our Families”.   At first, this seems like a perfectly reasonable theme.  After, in the aftermath of Prop 8 and the continuing struggle for GLBT people to win equal rights in marriage, employment protections and the ability to serve in the military, it seems perfectly reasonable to focus on our families.  Family is a pretty broad term.  It can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.  However, even some people within our own community want to make it conform to their definition.  Jeremy of Give Mama Some Sugar, correctly predicted that there would be a vocal group vocally supporting their narrow definition of family.

It seems that Jeremy was right.  The controversy seems to be surrounding the float that Exile, Columbus’ local leather bar, had in the parade.  They had a “pup” and his master on their float complete with dog tail butt plug (link is NSFW).  I marched in the parade with my leather club, Trident International Columbus.  I watched the reactions of people as they first saw the float and then noticed the dog’s “tail”.  It ran the gamut from amused to shocked.  But after the Columbus Pride parade, it seems that the Internet lit up with indignant gay parents complaining about how their kids were exposed to that at a “family friendly” event.  Who’s family was this event supposed to be friendly to?  I have a leather family–the brothers and sisters of Trident International Columbus.  They are very precious to me and have supported me through a lot.  They are very much family to me.  And the dog tail butt plug was totally family friendly to us.

I also have friends that are polyamorous.  There are more than 2 partners to their relationships.  They are just as committed as anyone else and their relationship is just as valid.  That is their family.

This mentality of trying to whitewash the gay community and make them somehow palatable to the right in order to gain equality isn’t limited to Columbus, Ohio.  I’ve heard straight couples with kids who moved into the Castro complain about porn and sex toys in the store windows.  I don’t see why those of us that chose not to have children (and it is just as valid of a choice as having children) have to change how we live because some people don’t want to explain it to their kids.  I agree with a commenter on Jeremy’s post.  If I had kids and took them to a gay pride parade, I should be prepared to explain to them the things that they might see.  I should not expect the parade to change to accommodate my discomfort in explaining certain things to my kids.  If I don’t want to explain those things to my kids, I should realize that maybe a gay pride parade is not an appropriate place to take my kids.

Now I know what some people might be thinking.  You might be saying that you want your kids to be aware of gay pride and to appreciate diversity.  I think that’s great.  Then teach your kids about diversity–all of it!  I’ve been around the pagan community for a long time and I’ve seen children who grew up attending clothing optional festivals.  Those same kids learned about sex a lot earlier too.  And you know what?  They’re really well adjusted children.  In fact, one girl I know who is currently a college sophomore, decided that sex was a gift from the Goddess and beautiful and has been saving herself for marriage.  Maybe the Puritanical viewpoints of some parents is really what needs to change.

What is worse though is that some of the GLBT community are willing to sacrifice the rights and equality of the rest of the community in the interest of “family friendliness”.  There was a Facebook page this year calling for the boycott of Pride in Akron, Ohio.  The reason?  It seems that the Pride festival was being held at a facility called “Lock 3″.  Lock 3 has strict “family friendly” policies so it was announced that drag queens weren’t welcome.  That’s right.  They were setting up a stage at an alternate venue for drag shows.  So the drag queens could have their own “separate but equal” Pride.  Sound familiar?  It should.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is really two fold.  First, if you have children, I applaud your choice but don’t force me to change my life to accommodate that choice.  I chose not too because I didn’t want to make the sacrifices that are required to raise children.  Think about it.  Second, we cannot as a community ditch whichever aspects of the community outsiders are uncomfortable with when its convenient.  If we’re going to win equal rights they have to be for everyone, not just the gay couples with kids that can pass for the “average wholesome American family”.  Whatever the fuck that is.  So yes, celebrate our families.  All of them.  No matter what they look like.

Yesterday, I talked about our office redesign and promised that today I would show how we made the drapes in our office for under $30.  These drapes are a basic panel.  They’re lined and have a rod pocket for the curtain rod to go through.  This also gathers the top of the drape.  They’re super easy to make.

First of all, you’re going to need the fabric for the drapes themselves and the fabric for the lining.  For the body of our drapes, we purchased 5 1/8 yards of 60 inch wide interior fabric.  When we were shopping for ours JoAnn Fabrics was having a sale where all clearance fabrics were 50% off.  We paid $3 a yard for it.  The 5 1/8 yards is enough to make 2 84 inch long panels.  You’ll want to adjust based on the number and length of panels you need.  I’ll show you how in a minute.  We also purchased 5 1/8 yards of draping lining fabric.  We purchased plain white cotton lining.  You can find this in the decorating fabrics section at JoAnn Fabrics as well.  Again, we purchased it during a 50% off sale.  It’s usually 60″ wide as well and you’ll need the same amount of lining fabric as you will drapery fabric.

Next, you’ll want to cut your fabric. Here’s the part where you can figure out how much fabric to buy if you want to make more panels or make them shorter.  For each panel, you’ll need to add 7 inches to the finished length.  This is 3 1/2 inches for the hem at the bottom and 3 1/2 inches for the rod pocket.  A wider rod pocket helps the drape slide along the rod easily and creates softer gathers at the top.  For our drapes, we wanted 84 inch long panels so we cut two pieces of  fabric 91 inches long.  Using that number, you can figure out your fabric needs.  Take the length of drapes you want to make, add 7 inches and then multiply by the number of panels you want to make.  Now divide this number by 36 and round up to the nearest 1/8 yard.

After you’ve cut your drapery fabric, you’ll need to cut the lining.  You’ll cut it the same length as the drapery fabric, in our case 91 inches.  Now, here’s the trick.  You need to get your lining so that its 4 inches less wide than your drapes.  We were using 60 inch wide fabric for our drapes so we cut the lining down to 56 inches wide.  You will want to use a straight edge and rotary cutter or some other method to keep the cut straight and square.

Now we’re ready to put the drapes together.  First, we’re going to sew the bottom hem on both the lining and the drapery fabric.  We used our serger to make a mock blind hem.  Here’s what the mock blind hem looks like from the wrong side (this is a scrap not the actual drapes which is why the stripes don’t line up):

Example of the mock blind hem made by a serger.

Notice how the raw edge is overlocked.  The threads the overlock the raw edge also catch the fold of the hem.  When pressed flat, this looks very much like a regular blind hem from the front.

If you don’t have a serger, turn up 1/2 inch of the raw edge to the wrong side.  Then turn up 3 inches.  Now top stitch the top edge.  If you have a serger and want to do a mock blind hem, you’ll need a blind hem foot.  Here’s a photo of what the one for our Babylock looks like:

Blind hem foot for our Babylock serger.

Consult the manual for your serger for the exact settings but on our Babylock, you thread both lower and upper loopers and only use the right hand needle (3 thread serging).  The cutting blade should be engaged.  Now the secret to doing the mock blind hem is to prepare your fabric properly.  I’m going to try to describe this and then I’ll post a photo with some helpful arrows to help explain it.  With the wrong side of your fabric facing up, turn up the full 3 1/2 inches of hem allowance.  Now you’re going to turn 3 inches back under to the right side.  You’ll have an accordion style fold with 1/2 inch of fabric at the raw edge sticking out from the fold.  Here’s a photo which I hope will help to explain this step:

How to fold the fabric to sew a mock blind hem.

Now, you’ll guide this through your serger folded just like this.  There’s a long arm on the blind hem foot.  The fold in this diagram should be lined up against this.  The cutting blade will trim off the raw edge and overlock it.  Here’s a photo of how the fabric goes through the serger:

Sewing the mock blind hem on the serger. Line the fold up with the "arm" on the presser foot.

Unfold the hem and press flat.  Repeat this for the lining.  Now, on your drapery fabric turn 2 1/2 inches on each side to the wrong side and press.  Open the fold back up and with right side together and the bottom hems lined up, sew one side of the lining to the drapery fabric using a 1/2 inch seam.  The top and bottom edges should line up.  Pull the edge of the lining fabric to line up with the other side of the drapery fabric.  Now sew that seam with a 1/2 inch  seam as well.  The drapery fabric is longer than the lining fabric so when we turn the drapes right side out, the 2 inches on either side of the draper fabric will turn to the inside.  (See photo of finished drapes at the end of the post).  Now, sew a 1/2 inch seam across the top edge.  Turn the drapes right side out and press.  Now you have a rectangle of drapery fabric that is lined.  Both the lining and the drapes are hemmed separately.

Finally, you need to make the rod pocket.  Turn 3 inches of the top to the wrong side.  Top stitch through all thickness near the edge.  You should have a 3 inch “pocket” now for the rod to slide through.  Here’s some photos of the finished product.

Office drapes - lined with a rod pocket

Here’s the top of the finished drapes.  You can kind of see the top stitching below the rod that holds the rod pocket together.

Lining on the office drapes

And here’s the drapes turned back so you can see the lining.  Notice the blind hem at the bottom and on the sides the drapery fabric pulls back to the wrong side creating a facing on the sides.

Hopefully, this little guide will show you how to make your own lined drapes.  Let me know how if this guide helps and how your drapes turn out.

Neal and I live in a 2 bedroom apartment.  Our spare bedroom is our home office and our sewing & crafts room.  When we originally moved in, we had Ikea Expedit desks separated by a 4×4 Expedit bookshelf along one wall.    We had a tiny little table for sewing but since we own (and use) both a straight stitch machine and a serger, we were always having to move machines around when working on a project.  We decided that the wide Ikea Expedit desk would be perfect for the sewing machines if you could sit at either side.  Here’s some photos of the redo:

Neal's desk in our home office.

We split the desks apart and moved them into either corner.   We removed the 4×4 Expedit and hooked each desk to its own 2×4 Expedit.  This gave us each more storage and helped open up the space.

Julian's desk in our home office

Bookcase by Julian's desk

The two images above are of Julian’s side of the office.  My desk is in the corner and next to it is the big 4 shelf Lack bookcase from Ikea.

Printer stand between our desks

Between our desks we have a 2×2 Ikea Expedit bookcase as a printer stand.  In front of it, you can see our paper shredder.  The printer stand holds our Konica-Minolta Colour Laser printer.  We used the cubicles of the Expedit for envelopes, paper and other printer supplies.

Sewing area in our home office

Another view of the sewing area

Here you can see the new sewing area.  We moved the 4×4 Expedit against the far wall.  Then we put an Ikea desk on it that sticks out into the room.  This allowed us to put the straight stitch machine on one side and the serger on the other.  The 4×4 Expedit gives us plenty of space to organize notions, thread and other supplies.

You may have noticed that we hung a curtain rod but it didn’t have any drapes on it.  That’s because we found a bargain on some interior fabric at JoAnn and had planned to make drapes.  These photos were taken in February before the drapes were done.

Office drapes - lined with a rod pocket

Lining on the office drapes

Here’s a couple photos of the drapes.  They have a pocket for the curtain rod which gathers the top.  They’re fully lined and have blind hems.  The total cost of the materials to make them was under $30.  Tomorrow I’ll post the step by step directions to make this style of drapes.  It’s much easier than you’d imagine.

I know I’m kind of late to be talking about the infamous “touchdown Jesus” but I’ve been following the news on it for a little while with some interest.  For those of you that haven’t heard about “touchdown Jesus”, it is a 62 foot fiberglass statue of Jesus with his arms outstretched  (like he just made a touchdown).  It sits along I-75 in southern Ohio in front of the Solid Rock Church, a typical evangelical, give us your money mega-church.  During an intense storm this week, touchdown Jesus was struck by lightning and burned down.  All that remains of touchdown Jesus is the metal frame that supported the fiberglass.  (And the reason that touchdown Jesus is now being called “Terminator Jesus”).  You can learn more about the events in this story about touchdown Jesus.

The leadership of this church is saying that they fully intend to rebuild the statue.  It was valued at over $300,000.  Now I will admit, I’m not a Christian and have no intention of ever being one.  I’m a out and proud gay man and a dirt worshipping pagan.  But that doesn’t mean that I’ve never read the Bible or pondered the words of Christ.  Now maybe as an outsider, there’s something I’m not getting but it seems to me that if you asked yourself “What would Jesus do?”–rebuilding a $300,000 statue during one of the worst economic recessions in history and surrounded by people in grave need would not be it.  I cannot understand why so many of these prosperity teaching mega-churches will gladly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an idol (or a hate campaign!  – We’re looking at you Church of Latter Day Saints) while people all around their community go hungry or have other needs.  According to the US Department of Agriculture in 2008 17.3 million people in America lived in households with very low food security.  That’s staggering to think that in the most prosperous nation in the world almost 17.3 million people are going hungry.  Wouldn’t $300,000 put a good dent in that?  Isn’t that what Jesus would do?  Now imagine how many could have been fed with the $37 million that the Mormon Church and Focus on the Family, a supposedly Christian organization, spent to take away the equal rights of a minority group in California.

My grandmother, who’s an evangelical, used to always say, “The Devil can quote scripture too”.  So what the hell?  I’m going to quote some scripture.

For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.

Luke 6:44

I think we can look at the fruit of “hate” that are gathered from many of these groups and judge the tree accordingly.

PS: Hunger is a cause that I feel very strongly about.  In an industrialized nation like our own, there is really no excuse for children to go hungry while CEOs take home 7 digit bonuses.  Please, support your local food banks and participate in food drives when you can.   And if you’re from Solid Rock Church, think about whether you really need another $300,000 touch down Jesus or would a better symbol be to use that money to help people in dire need during this rough economy.

Update 2: I forgot to mention that the Hustler adult book store across the street from Solid Rock Church has one of the largest signs in the area.  Their sign was spared so part of me likes to think that maybe God agrees with me about touchdown Jesus.

This post is a little bit of a rant.  But its also a serious call to the City of Columbus as to how they could earn a great deal of money.  And its easy, it only requires enforcing an existing law.  See, Neal and I are often pedestrians.  This is a conscious choice on our part.  We own a car.  We just don’t like to drive.  We also enjoy walking for exercise.  As anyone who has been a pedestrian in Columbus will tell you, pedestrians are often an object of disdain by Columbus drivers.  I’ve never lived in a city with so many drivers that were not only rude to pedestrians but usually completely oblivious to their presence.

Anyway, I mentioned that I knew how the City of Columbus could earn a budget surplus.  Let me give you a visual tour of how this could work.  First of all, Neal and I live in some nice apartments on Easton Way.  The corner of our building can be seen in this photo:

This is the corner of the street we live on. That building is our apartments.

And directly across the street from us on the other corner is Easton Town Center.  Here’s a photo:

The corner directly across the street from us has Easton Town Center on it.

Now, this is where it gets interesting so stay with me.  There is a parking lot just to the right of the Barnes & Noble bookstore.  This parking lot has an exit onto Easton Way heading West.  Here’s the part that gets interesting.  Easton Way is divided by a median.  So if you exit this parking lot, you have to head west.  And the interstate (270) is east of Easton Town Center.  This parking lot is the most popular lot at Easton.  So rather than park in one of the 3 parking garages or many other lots, people park in this lot by Barnes & Noble.  And when they leave, they leave heading west.  BUT, many of them want to get on the interstate which is east.  So, do they turn down a street and drive around the block?  NO!  Of course, not.  They are Columbus drivers and are way too important and in way too big of a hurry for that.  Instead, they get in the left turn lane in front of our apartments and make a U-Turn.  Here’s where the City of Columbus could cash in.  I’ll show you with an image of the median right by the left turn lane:

That's right, there's a HUGE FREAKING NO U-TURN SIGN.

Yep, that’s right.  As pedestrians we’ve nearly been mowed down by people making a U-Turn to get back to the interstate right in front of a huge honking sign that says “U-Turns Prohibited City Wide”.  We can see this intersection from our living room window and have on occasion counted the U-Turns.  We’ve seen 4 cars right in a row make a U-Turn there.  And sometimes we get a good laugh when late at night we see someone get pulled over and we see the police officer shine his flashlight on the no U-Turn sign.

So how about it City of Columbus?  Set up a U-Turn trap in front of Easton and you won’t need to raise income taxes again to pay for our police force.

My mother remarried a couple years ago.  She owned a house at the time and with the market depressed, she really couldn’t sell it.  Instead she rented it.  Her tenant moved out in April and the house needs some work.  Mostly, the bathroom needs redone and it needs painted.  Neal and I have been helping her but with her living in Dayton and us in Columbus, it has been going really slowly.  Our schedule always seems so packed that we’ve only been making it over there one day a week on Sundays.  This past week we decided to go on Friday and see if we couldn’t get a little more done.

We picked a lot of strawberries & sour cherries.

Since we were already over in Dayton, we decided to stop at Monnin’s Fruit Farm first.  They’re located at 8201 Frederick Pike.  For years my aunt Linda has been going there for their pick-your-own strawberries.  We figured it would be fun to pick our own strawberries too.  We’d told my mum that we were thinking about it earlier so she gave us the buckets that she already had.  The people there were really friendly and nice.  We drove down the hill to the strawberry field to pick our strawberries.  It was a really hot, humid day so it was hard work.  But it was also very satisfying work.  It was really exciting to lift the leaves on a strawberry plant and see a cluster of perfect, red berries just waiting to be picked.  We quickly filled two buckets full and drove back up to the storefront to pay.  The pick-your-own strawberries are sold by the pound.  We had 9 pounds of strawberries and paid just under $20.  (I think it was $1.75 per pound–a steal!)

While we were paying we noticed a sign that said they were also picking sour cherries.  We inquired and were directed to the cherry trees.  We walked out and started picking cherries as well.  The trees were absolutely loaded with ripe fruit.  Once we had about half the bucket full, we went in to pay.  The sour cherries were the same price as the strawberries: $1.75 per pound.  We’d picked 3 pounds.

When we were all done, we’d picked 9 pounds of strawberries and 3 pounds of sour cherries and spent under $25.  Once we finished working at my mum’s rental house, we drove home to Columbus and put strawberries and sour cherries in our food dehydrator.  Dried strawberries make a great addition to steel cut oats in the winter and the sour cherries dry to form sour little raisins that add a nice variety to oatmeal cookies.  Neal also made strawberry preserves and is planning on making strawberry ice cream.  We have a vacuum sealer so we’ll likely also vacuum pack and freeze some.  I’ve also been promised sour cherry soup sometime in the near future.  I’ll try to get him to post the recipe.

If you’re in the Dayton, Ohio area, check out Monnin’s sometime.  They have a large orchard and their signs indicated that in addition to picking your own strawberries and cherries, they also have raspberries and in the fall, apples.  They can sell you buckets but its best if your bring your own.  They’ll weigh them and then mark them with the weight.  That let’s them only charge you for the weight of the fruit you pick.  We used old 2 gallon ice cream buckets.

Oh, and man were our legs sore the next day.  We never realized that all that squatting and bending in the strawberry fields would be such a workout.  So we got some good exercise, got some whole foods inexpensively, and shopped local.  A big win all the way around!

Michael Pollan's Book: Food Rules

I know that just a day after posting about it being a donut day and encouraging everyone to go get a free Dunkin Donuts, it is going to seem odd that I’m posting a review of Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. Neal and I have always tried to eat healthily but we fall off the wagon often.  We had seen Michael Pollan in the movie Food, Inc. and were impressed with how simply he explained food and food production.  The last time we were in Baltimore, we were flipping channels in our hotel room and spotted Michael on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  He was talking about Food, Inc. and promoting his new book, Food Rules.

Again, we were quite impressed by how simply Michael presented his ideas.  There were no complicated concepts like complementary proteins or using supplements.  In fact, no mention of food science at all.  We stopped at Books a Million in Morgantown, WV on the way home and found the book on sale.

I sat down to read Michael’s book later that same weekend.  I think it took me 2 hours to read it cover to cover.  Michaels basic rules are broken down into three simple concepts:

1. Eat food.
2. Mostly plants.
3. Not too much

Food Rules dedicates a chapter to each of these three rules to expand on them with short simple saying and rules to help guide your food choices towards healthier foods that will maintain your wellness and the wellness of the environment.  Many of the saying and rules, Michael developed by asking older people about food rules and sayings that they learned before the rise of our highly packaged, processed food.  He makes the very good point that what is handed to us out of a drive through window would not be recognized by our ancestors as food.

In the intro, Michael Pollan talks briefly about food science and the inability of any of us to keep up with the constantly changing opinions and advice on what to eat, what nutrients to supplement with and how to eat that food scientists are bombarding us with.  Again, he makes the point that past generations maintained good health and did not have the epidemics of diabetes and obesity that we do without the insights of food science.

This book is an excellent read and great inspiration to anyone that has ever struggled with their weight, tried to eat healthy or just finds that avoiding junk food is difficult.  I know that we often fall into all three categories.  My favorite rule that we’ve been trying to adopt is the one that says to eat as much junk food as you want, as long as you make it yourself.  I have a terrible sweet tooth but if I have to bake the cookies, cakes or whatever myself, it does certainly cut down on how many of them I eat.

I definitely recommend Food Rules to everyone.  It will change how you thing about what you eat.

Today, Friday June 4 is a Donut Day.  This really has two meaning for me.  The first and obvious one is that today is National Donut Day and according to blog, Credit Card Outlaw, many donut establishments including Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme are giving away free donuts today.  Neal and I try to eat healthy and stick to whole foods but I’ve got to tell you, donuts are a real weakness of mine and Dunkin Donuts in particular.

I mentioned that today being a Donut Day has two meanings so I’ll let you in on the other one.  Neal and I have a friend who teaches kindergarten.  He often tells funny stories about things that his students do or say.  So one morning one of his students comes in and is sobbing, wailing and hysterical.  Our friend is trying to comfort the child and asks him what is wrong.  Through his sobs the child chokes out, “Today…is…not…a…DONUT….day”  Among our group of friends that expression has become a way of expressing a day that just isn’t going as well as we’d like.  But on the other hand, a Donut Day is a day where everything is clicking and falling into place, in other words, a great day.

We all need more donut days.  So go visit Dunkin Donuts and get your free donut today.  And hopefully, you’ll have a donut day in other ways too.

*DISCLAIMER* This post might sound like I was paid to write it by Dunkin Donuts but that is not the case.  I really do love their donuts that much and thought I’d share the freebie and the fun story.  (And not to create any controversy, Krispy Kremes are good too so go see them if you prefer.)