helenrac

This book, The Art of Eating In, inspired this challenge.

Would anyone care to join me in an eating-in challenge, starting Monday, May 7th? (hashtag #eatingin)

The basics: No restaurant meals, no takeout for two weeks. Are you up for it? Save money, cut sodium, lose weight, eat healthier — there are a host of reasons you might want to get in on the action. It’s not political or activist, I’m not raising anything for anything, it’s only a plain old challenge.

I did this last year and wrote about in for More Magazine Canada (read about it here), and let me say, it’s not as easy as you think. 

Here’s what’s in:

Prescheduled restaurant meals (Mother’s Day for instance, or a longstanding lunch with friends), work meals. If you agreed to it before today, it’s good. If your boss wants you to be at a meal, also good.

Convenience store snacks. Because sometimes you just need a chocolate bar or cashews.*

Potlucks, meals at other people’s homes.

Bars. Just no meals.

Out:

Spontaneous restauranting and take-outing. 

Tim Hortons/Dunkin’ Donuts.

Starbucks.

Fast food.

So. Any takers? Any questions?

*This originally said “stuff” but I mean snacks, like chocolate and nuts.

May is melanoma awareness month.

My husband had a mole that looked like a pencil eraser (not black and irregular) and it was stage III melanoma.

Please, ask for a referral to a dermatologist if you have any moles you’re not sure about.

Here’s a really good slideshow of different cancerous moles from More Magazine Canada. Your visual guide to identifying skin cancer. Please check it out, all the way through to slides 7 and 8, because you might be surprised that skin cancer moles aren’t always black or dark.

So this blog post for the NYTimes Motherlode column is getting lots of media play:

Naked with children but for how long?

If you want to be naked, whatever…but what I want to know is, how is it possible that this family’s house is so warm that they can be naked all year long? The blogger is from Toronto, so we’re not talking tropics here.

I thought due to rising heating costs, and global warming we are all trying to keep our homes a little on the cooler side. Maybe this family lives in a hot condo or apartment where they don’t control the heat. 

Or the entire family has an unusual tolerance for low temperatures? Or maybe the writer isn’t talking about the 8 months of the year in Toronto where you need a sweater or at least long sleeves indoors.

Anyhow, my first and only thought was, “Why is their house so hot they can walk around naked most of the time?”