Food for the Table

 BY JANET HUNTINGTON
 
     Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.
     It’s time to order the flowers, buy the perfect dress, or remember to make reservations at a high dollar restaurant, all guaranteed to bring a sparkle to the eye of your beloved. It’s time to wipe the sparkle from your own eye, tears induced by a groaning credit card.
     What if you could capture the romance, set the mood, and reap all the benefits of a perfect date, without ever having to take off your oil-stained Patriots sweatshirt, much less put on a tie or shave? What if you could share your feelings, seal them with a kiss and not have the object of your affection burst into a sweaty rendition of, “Don’t Fence Me In?”
     It can be done and it all comes down to chemistry. The complicated feeling we call love is assisted by hormones and chemicals swirling in our bodies. With a simple understanding of what foods activate which chemicals, you can create a Valentine’s night so inspiring your date won’t notice you’re wearing three-day-old sweats and support knee-highs.
     Set the mood with a well thoughtout menu. You don’t need fine wines or to dig out your old Barry Mannilow eight-track tapes, just start your evening with a delectable seafood appetizer and a banana pineapple smoothie and you’ll be on your way.

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BY JANET HUNTINGTON

  Once we can admit we need to quit eating Pop Tarts in order to lose the extra pounds we have so enthusiastically packed on over the years, it becomes time to decide exactly how we’re going to go about it.
   There are several dietary approaches we can take on and I’m going to take a look at a few of the most popular and time-honored diets. They seem to break down into three main categories.   

*   Low calorie diets.
*   Low-fat diets
*   Low-carbohydrate diets

    I have been on them all, lost weight on them all, blown them all and gained my weight back after them all.
   How much of this was my fault and how much of it was because of the diet? It’s hard to decide, but by taking a hard look at what makes each one work and fail, maybe there’s a lifelong solution available. 

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 BY JANET HUNTINGTON
 In our household, diets become complicated. Mainly because I want to go on one
and my husband does not.
   He agrees we’ve become fairly stout, he agrees we ate way too much over the holidays. He even agrees we need to kick up our nutritional balance.
   So what’s stopping us? Pop Tarts®.
   He has a thing for Pop Tarts®.
   “I like it better when you buy the cheaper ones,” he said.
   “How come?” I ask him.
   “Because it seems more grown up to be eating ‘toaster pastries’ instead of ‘Pop Tarts®.’’
   I’m sorry, but there’s nothing grown up about those white flour, sugar loaded, slabs of cardboard filled with crayon colored “fruit filling” or better yet, chocolate or cinnamon goo.
   When the evil geniuses at Post Cereals first created the confection that would lead to Kellogg’s Pop Tarts®, they had no idea they were taking the idea of sugar for breakfast to new heights.
   It was the 1960’s, an era of “new and improved” food. The race was on to develop foods, which could be prepared with lightning speed and little or no work for the cook. Women were being freed from the kitchen so they could become part of another national trend, the dual income household.

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By Janet Huntington

 The New Year has begun. Now is the time to look ahead, make plans for the future and embrace the potential of a new beginning.
   Or, if you’re more like me, it’s time to start my taxes and take a hard look at damage control from the aftermath of the holiday season. I’m not just talking about taking down the tree, or throwing away the last of the “Turkey Fajita Delight,” which has been growing an entire new planet in the back of my refrigerator, I’m talking about the extra pounds I’ve packed on from enjoying my own cooking w-a-a-a-ay too much since somewhere around Halloween. You didn’t think I just write about food did you?
   Yes, I’m talking diet. Yuck. My husband and I will be facing the hard cold reality of our tight pants and popped buttons. Me with a vengeance and him with a lot of whining and sniveling.  I’m not sure why he cries so much, the last time we took on a serious weight loss plan he lost 30 pounds and I lost seven. I was pretty close to saintly and he refused to give up either Pop-Tarts or beer. Go figure.
   So what kind of diet should we choose? Health.com states an estimated 80 million Americans go on diets every year, spending more than $30 billion annually on programs and products.

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