Category Archives: food

Do Kids Make You Fat?

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Photo by artur84 freedigitalphotos.net

Photo by artur84 freedigitalphotos.net

Only if you add sugar.

I have no doubt that having kids makes your heart fuller and your wallet slimmer, but what about your waistline? According to a study by the University of Iowa College of Medicine and the University of Michigan, living with the little darlings also makes your belly bulge. And I’m not talking about pregnancy pudge here. Nor am I referring to all of that “drinking for two” that most fathers-to-be indulge in.

Nope, an examination of the nutritional cost of parenting found that simply living with children boosts your fat intake by almost five grams a day.

Could this mean that those last few bites of macaroni and cheese, pizza crusts and Girl Scout cookie crumbs actually count as calories? Even if you eat them standing up? What if you don’t want to carry the rest of the soccer snacks all the way back to the car? Or what if you bought the extra box of candy for a good cause? Those calories couldn’t possibly make you fat.

As caring and health-conscious parents, my husband and I do our best to intervene with the Halloween candy, Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses, Hanukah gelt, chocolate Easter bunnies and infinite supply of birthday goodie bags. Was it possible that this conscientious parenting was making us fat?

Before I got too stressed out about all this (and began foraging through the leftover birthday goodie bags for chocolate), I went to the most reliable and accurate source of health information available, Google. What do you know, not only does having kids make you fat, so do a lot of other things.

The International Journal of Obesity asked a group of scientists to weigh in on some of the causes of obesity. Number one was subscribing to The International Journal of Obesity.

Their remaining top ten list: 1. Inadequate sleep (there is definitely a connection to having children there). 2. Endocrine disruptors — substances in some foods that may alter fats in the body (I knew all that celery would end up biting me in the butt). 3. Pleasant temperatures — air conditioning and heating limit calories burned from sweating and shivering. 4. Fewer smokers — less appetite suppression. Also, dying makes you very skinny. 5. Medicines that cause weight gain. 6. Population changes — more middle-aged people in the population, who have higher obesity rates. 7. Older mothers — they tend to have heavier children (because they can’t hear Junior when he asks for that fourth cookie). 8. Genetic influences during pregnancy. 9. Darwinian natural selection — fat people living longer. 10. “Assortative” mating — overweight people procreating with others of the same body type, gradually skewing the population toward the heavy end (and providing a boon for the wedding registry business by providing the “supersize” option for china, bedding, towels and lingerie).

Architecture can make you fat too. That’s right, now they are saying that buildings and the way they are designed can make you fat.

“Take out all the elevators in buildings and people would be more fit,” urges a British architect. Even making stairways easier to find will help encourage fitness. And putting houses closer to shops, restaurants and workplaces will encourage people to walk or ride bikes. That’s right, that suburban ranch house that you bought once you had kids…it’s making you fat.

To counteract this phenomenon, I hear that an aerobics tycoon in Dallas is developing a 51-acre community that will be geared around a comprehensive wellness program.

Homeowners will pay a premium to build their own homes alongside a personal trainer, in 300 hour-long sessions. Only a limited number of cars will be allowed in the complex because guess what–you know what else makes you fat–cars. According to a study of Atlanta residents, there is a correlation between driving and weight gain. Each additional hour spent in a car per day is associated with a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity. You know where moms spend most of their lives? Cars.

All of which leads me to the obvious conclusion that the witch in Hansel and Gretel must be thin because she built her own house, drives a broom, and eats kids instead of living with them. Hmmm…could this be the new Atkins Diet?

Do kids make you fat? Sound off at by emailing Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on October 7, 2011.

My Kind of Playground

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Viva ELVIS - Courtesy Julie Aucoin, Aria Resort

Viva ELVIS – Courtesy Julie Aucoin, Aria Resort

Once you have children, those moments when you feel completely relaxed are few and far between. I think I had one once in the early 90s and then another time in 2002 when I was zonked out on cold medicine, but until recently, that’s about it. And it occurs to me that I didn’t even have a kid in the 90s, so that must have just been anticipation. It’s not that being a mom isn’t absolutely wonderful, precious and fulfilling at least 77 percent of the time, but it’s almost never relaxing.

But once in a harvest moon the stars align just right and someone offers you and your husband a free trip to Las Vegas on the exact same weekend that someone else offers to take your son camping and, miracle of miracles, your kid’s soccer team has a bye that weekend.

Talk about timing.

I’ve heard rumors that younger, childless people stay out late and drink cocktails with fancy names on a regular basis, and I have a vague foggy memory of doing something like that myself once upon another lifetime. I’ve also heard alien mumblings about sleeping in, massages, long baths and spa treatments, but again, it had been a long, long while since I had indulged in anything that luscious.

I shooed away any guilty thoughts about lazy Saturdays as I lay soaking in a vanilla-scented spa tub at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, which is surely one of the least Vegas-like hotels on the strip. For some reason everything in this hotel smells like vanilla – although I’m guessing the reason is that they pump in the scent of vanilla. And, dare I say it; the opulent decor is tasteful by Vegas standards. From the curved 250-feet-long by 24-feet-high water wall that greets you along with the valet, to the stunning-but understated-for-Vegas-anyway, Maya Lin silver sculpture of the Colorado River that flows above the registration desk-this is hardly a typical hotel.

The Aria is the largest hotel in the world to earn a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, but it also features the most technologically advanced guest rooms in the country, as my husband discovered when he put new grey hairs onto my head by accidentally pushing the “sleep” button, where one click closes the curtains, shuts down all of the electronics and turns off all the lights.

Luckily I was out of the tub at that point.

Even the casino has eco-friendly features like slot machine bases that serve as floor air-conditioning and specialized air curtains that help minimize the impact of tobacco smoke and perhaps pump the vanilla scent in. Of course neither of those things stopped us from losing what could have been a very nice pair of shoes at the Craps tables, but it was fun anyway.

We were wined and dined through a global variety of cuisines at the Town Square Center, with yummy nibbles and cocktails from Cana Latin Kitchen & Bar (South American), Texas de Brazil (Brazilian by way of Texas), Tommy Bahama’s Restaurant & Bar (Island-inspired), BRIO Tuscan Grille (Northern Italian) and Blue Martini (all-American alcohol). Then in a lovely coincidence, we were able to meet up with some of our best friends from Santa Barbara who happened to be spending their anniversary in Vegas.

Meeting for late night drinks (yes, more drinks) at the Aria’s View Bar, where my husband and our male friend were more drawn to the view of our sexy waitress’ accoutrements than the (also excellent) view of the strip, we couldn’t help but giggle at how much fun it was to be out late and not worrying about babysitters’ curfews.

The next morning it was spa time. Spa just happens to be one of my favorite words in the English language. My Vita Boost Facial was wonderfully relaxing and my skin looked great afterward, unlike some of the facials I’ve had where “bringing all of the impurities to the surface” actually makes your skin look worse. Not only that, the lovely Gina gave me paraffin treatments as well, leaving my hands and feet ever so soft and happy.

Then it was on to more gourmet cuisine (don’t miss the stuffed piquillo peppers, pintxo de chorizos and the churros with chili chocolate sauce at Julian Serrano), and my discovery of what a pleasant daytime beverage white sangria can be.

After a tour of Crystals, an impressive 500,000-square-foot retail/dining area at CityCenter featuring gorgeous galleries and stores like Prada, Christian Dior, Bulgari, Carolina Herrera, Hermes, Cartier, and Van Cleef & Arpels, it was time to tour the shopping areas of Town Square Center, where the more along the lines of my budget retailers like Old Navy, Victoria’s Secret, Borders, Lucky Brand Jeans and Bebe reside.

Spa treatments, gourmet food and shopping all in the same day! This is my kind of playtime. But it got even better. After returning to BRIO for yummy crab cakes and Mezza Chicken Limone, they treated us to Cirque Du Soleil’s newest offering, Viva ELVIS, an energetic fusion of dance, acrobatics and live music that had us bopping our heads and singing along with the King. Watching the show was actually one of the few times in this decidedly adult weekend that I wished my son had been with us, as it was definitely an entertaining event that kids of all ages would appreciate.

As for the rest, well, sometimes it’s good to get away from it all and play like a grownup.

When Leslie’s not fantasizing about her return to the Aria spa, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on October 15, 2010.

Dude Food

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516AmvTQJnL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-v3-big,TopRight,0,-55_SX278_SY278_PIkin4,BottomRight,1,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_Is there really such a thing as dude food? If you were an alien looking in on our culture of Burger King and Yoplait ads you would certainly think so. But how much of our “dude food” and “chick picks” food preferences are based on cultural and gender stereotypes and messaging? A lot, according to “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” a book I recently picked up.

The author, Brian Wansink, is the director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab and a professor of consumer behavior. We—the American consumer—are the lab rats for this scholar of the drive through window and the office candy bowl. I must say, we make pretty interesting subjects.

The average person makes more than 200 food decisions a day-and can’t explain most of them-according to Wansink. But society certainly seems to play a role.

While most traditional diet and nutrition books focus on what dieticians and health practitioners know, this book focuses on what psychologists and marketers know, and offers some new insight into why we eat what we eat.

For example, Wansink’s research found that 40 percent of people, both men and women, identified their favorite comfort foods as relatively healthy fare like soup, pasta, steak, and casseroles.

However, when it came time to rate a list of the foods they personally found the most comforting, “men and women might well have been from Mars and Venus,” writes Wansink. Women chose ice cream, chocolate and cookies as their most comforting foods. Throw in red wine and a Meg Ryan DVD and you’ve pretty much got my “cure for a stressful day” shopping list. Men, on the other hand, chose ice cream, soup and pizza or pasta as their comfort food faves.

The explanation for these preferences?

“When we asked men why they preferred pizza, pasta and soup over cakes and cookies, men generally talked about how good they tasted and how filling they were.” But when the researchers probed a little more they got additional feedback from the men that those foods made them feel cared for, important, or the focus of attention of either their wife or their mother.

No wonder they found them comforting.

When women were asked about those same foods, they found them less comforting because they thought about having to make them-or how hard their mothers had worked to make them-and then having to clean up after making them. In other words, despite the ease of picking up the phone and calling Rusty’s, which I guess they don’t have in Ithaca, some of the so-called comfort foods signaled discomfort for the women.

“For women, snack-like foods-candy, cookies, ice cream, chocolate-were hassle-free. (I guess they’re not making handmade truffles or Cherry Garcia.) Part of their comfort was to not have to make up or clean up anything. It was both effortless and mindless eating,” writes Wansink.

This book definitely made me wonder if the reason so many men behave like Hoover vacuums when it comes to food is that they aren’t usually the ones to clean up afterwards. It also made me wonder (be still my heart) if the younger generation of men, who willingly drink Diet Cokes and eat Cesar salads without making jokes about keeping their girlish figures, might also be more willing to pick up the vacuum.

Share your thoughts on dude food and chick picks with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 16, 2010.

How much duck could a turkey chuck?

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Turducken (via wikipedia)

Turducken (via wikipedia)

I giggle every time I hear the word “Turducken.” I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s the first four letters, or the “duck” (literally) in the middle, but Turducken references abound this time of year and I can’t help but chuckle every time I hear or read the word.

I’ve never even tasted Turducken, though I have tried Tofurky, and Turducken has got to be better than that. It’s certainly funnier, and not at all self-righteous. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder about the origins of this Thanksgiving delicacy, so I decided to do some research.

Turducken, for those of you that haven’t heard about this, is what you get when you take a chicken and stuff it inside of a duck, then you take that ducken and stuff it inside of a turkey.

In my head, I keep hearing Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof singing “Turducken, Turducken. Turducken!”

According to a 2002 New York Times story by Amanda Hesser, turkey found his inner duck (and chicken), “Once upon a time, possibly at a lodge in Wyoming, possibly at a butcher shop in Maurice, Louisiana, or maybe even at a plantation in South Carolina.” She wrote that “an enterprising cook decided to take a boned chicken, a boned duck and a boned turkey, stuff them one inside the other like Russian dolls, and roast them. He called his masterpiece Turducken.”

I guess chickdurkey and duchicky were already taken.

Of course these scenarios are certainly possible, as are the unsubstantiated claims that Cajun-Creole fusion chef Paul Prudhomme created the Turducken. But here’s the thing: all of these Turducken theories revolve around the idea that a man was the one who created the Turducken. I for one have never, in my 40-something year history of Thanksgiving celebrations, seen a man willingly move more than four feet away from any TV screening football games on Thanksgiving Day.

Therefore, it seems completely logical to me that a woman must have invented the Turducken.

Here’s my theory. You probably know the tune.

I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turducken (with apologies to anyone who can carry a tune or make a rhyme)

I know an old lady who swallowed a Turducken

I don’t know what kind of booze she was chuckin

She first bought a chicken

It seemed finger licken

But then in walked Chuck

He’d picked up a duck

The old lady sighed

With no room in the freezer

She’d have to cook both, to please the old geezer

She consulted Giada and Martha, her coven

They both told her simply to turn on the oven

She swallowed some wine, then swallowed some beer

What she did at this point isn’t perfectly clear

But then Rita showed up at the door with a turkey

The old lady took it; she didn’t want to be jerky

The oven then beeped it was ready to cook

How could the old lady get off the hook?

There was no way to fit three birds in her range

She had an idea, although it was strange

She’d seen a commercial a time long ago

Where peanut butter and chocolate did a Do-Se-Do

If Reese’s can do it then so can I

She gulped her martini and let out a sigh

Perhaps I’ll try.

And there you have the real explanation for how the Turducken came to be. Happy Thanksgiving!

If you’ve got a better explanation for this culinary oddity, email Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on November 20, 2009.

I Like to Watch

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9fb5e72e6e4eae69_FoodnetworkchefI have a confession to make.

I like to watch people play with exotic tools like drizzlesticks, poach pods, mincers and mandolins. I find the sight of a grown man rubbing naked chickens down with butter dangerously alluring. In fact, I’d rather have Duff Goldman whisk my eggs and Bobby Flay pinch my salt than watch Skin-a-Max any night of the week.

Whether it’s Nigella Lawson lustfully sucking up oil-soaked spaghetti, Guy Fieri ferociously French-frying a potato, Paula Deen daintily deboning a chicken, or Michael Symon taking mucho macho control of an impossible mission, I love to watch the Food Network.

Food porn is my porn of choice.

“Just like sexual porn, food porn is something that you watch but not necessarily with the view of doing or putting in practice,” said a story in “The Montreal Gazette,” which quoted Valerie Bourdeau, a Concordia University student who did her master’s thesis on the subject. “The watching is the entertainment.”

I couldn’t agree more.

But my predilections aren’t limited to the small screen. “Big Night” is one of my favorite movies, as are “Chocolat,” “Ratatouille” and especially “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

I appreciate print as well. One of my favorite times of the year is chocolate catalog season. Though I’ve never actually ordered anything from Hickory Farms, their catalog has kept me company through many a long winter’s night.

Yes, I’ll admit it. I am addicted to food porn.

And just like some people who like to watch that other kind of porn (or so I’m told), just because I like to watch other people do it, doesn’t mean I want to try that at home.

With all of these joy of cooking shows on TV, “Julie & Julia” lighting up the big screen and everyone from Maureen Dowd to Barbara Kingsolver writing about food, it’s a culinary orgy out there-but I just like to watch.

Watching other people cook is, well, potent. Watch Giada or Ina or Mario for a half hour and then go shopping. You’ll see that even a fairly standard grocery store can feel like a glutton’s paradise, with the smells and the colors and the labels of the food romancing your senses.

But while I lust for all things gastronomic, I have absolutely no desire to bisect a living lobster, truss up a pheasant or go anywhere near a sweetbread, despite it’s deceptively enticing sounding name. Like the best of pornography (or so I’m told), food porn depicts beautiful things arranged in ways you might not have previously thought of, with star chefs doing things onscreen that few amateurs like me would ever try at home.

In fact, if my husband told me he wanted to take over ALL of the cooking tomorrow and forevermore, I could quite happily never set foot in my kitchen again.

Sadly, that’s not going to happen.

We both admit to marrying poorly in the kitchen department. While I cook more than I used to out of necessity, my most used recipe card is still the one my sister-in-law gave me, with phone numbers for all the local takeout places that deliver. The only thing I truly “like” to make is reservations. In fact, we once joked about holding a Plastic Chef competition at our house. Hey, if the Chairman lets us hold it in Kitchen Stadium with Alton Brown doing the play by play, then “let the battle begin.”

That’s something I’d really like to watch.

When Leslie’s not perusing the Food Network, she’s online at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on August 14, 2009.

Yogurt Culture

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Photo by Rakratchada Torsap, freedigitalphotos.net

Photo by Rakratchada Torsap, freedigitalphotos.net

I’ve been spending a lot of time in yogurt stores lately. You can’t cross the street without bumping into a new one, so they’re kind of hard to avoid. In fact, the last time I was at Yogurt House in the Yogurt City pavilion, construction workers were putting up the walls for a brand new Yogurt Pantry inside. I tried to go home to avoid it, but they were busy installing a Yogurt Heaven between my kitchen and the living room.

They’re scaring all the cupcake stores away.

I hear they’re even chasing Starbucks out in some towns, though thankfully, not in ours-at least not yet. But it only takes a short stroll down State Street to see froyo fans of all fashions digging their pink and green plastic spoons deep into quadruple latte sized paper cups. Clearly frozen yogurt has regained its cool.

“The Restaurant Guy” John Dickson attributes the yogurt store invasion to the huge success of Pinkberry, a tarter and tangier version of the frozen treat, which first came to California in 2005 and opened in Santa Barbara in January.

There’s no doubt that the popularity of tart, healthier tasting yogurt has spurred some new business, but I have some theories of my own about this new yogurt culture.

Theory 1: People like frozen yogurt because it’s a treat masquerading as health food.

Yogurt stores throw around buzz words like “organic” and “probiotic” and “active cultures,” but let’s face it, the real selling points for most of us are the toppings, which give us the chance to eat Captain Crunch, Heath Bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and still feel like we’re being virtuous.

Conclusion: Or maybe that’s just me.

Theory 2: It’s all about self-service.

While not all of these new stores let customers serve themselves, a lot of them do. There’s something decadent about being able to fill your cup to your heart’s content with flavor combinations you would never order over the counter.

Conclusion: Peanut butter, root beer, and cheesecake anyone?

Theory 3: You can tell a lot about someone by watching them fill up a cup of frozen yogurt.

My nine-year-old son likes to add things like gummy worms and Froot Loops to his yogurt; really anything that leaves candy colored streaks in his chocolate flavored yogurt is yummy in his book and disgusting in mine. He also likes to stir it to milkshake consistency, at which point he decides it tastes bad and he wants a new one.

Conclusion: Little boys like to make a mess, and if they can gross their moms out at the same time it’s even better.

Little girls tend to pick their topping and yogurt combinations by color. They like to combine multiple flavors with a variety of toppings, especially sprinkles, M & M’s and jimmies.

Conclusion: Little girls like to accessorize.

I’ve noticed that teenage boys also fail to note the delicate differences between fruity sweets (which are a waste of calories to me) and actual sweets. They like to layer the yogurt and the toppings parfait style, and are not at all concerned with food faux pas like mixing Irish Mint yogurt with Nerds, Cappuccino with Kiwi Lime Sauce or even Cookies and Cream with Ketchup.

Conclusion: Teenage boys will eat anything.

Teenage girls tend to be yogurt purists. They know what they want, since they frequent yogurt stores almost as frequently as they text. In general, they stick with fruity flavors like mango or strawberry topped by actual fruit or granola, or go for the gusto with Cheesecake yogurt and brownie bites or Chocolate Decadence and Carmel sauce.

Conclusion: Teenage girls know everything, so of course they know exactly what they want.

Their moms are the same way. It seems there’s no middle ground when it comes to frozen yogurt, it’s either healthy or diabetic coma inducing.

Conclusion: Moms are good decision makers.

Hmm … should we go to Yogurtland or Yo Yum Yum this afternoon? Clearly this frozen yogurt trend is not going to be melting anytime soon.

Share your favorite yogurt combinations with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 17, 2009.

My fling with Fling

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flingMy son started giggling when he saw the pink candy bar in the checkout line at Vons. “Mom, that looks like something you would like,” he chuckled, as he pointed to the new “Fling” chocolate bar, a hot pink-drenched confection that looks so girly it could have stepped right off the shelf of Barbie’s Dream House.

When I told him we needed to try it, he giggled even harder, and turned a little red in the face. This candy bar screams “girl cooties” even louder than the tampons my husband thinks he deserves a medal for buying.

I don’t know when Mars began using five-year-old girls as graphic designers-I’m surprised its shiny pink and silver packaging isn’t wrapped with a feather boa. And I don’t know when Mars started using frat boys in its marketing department- they must have been working round the clock to come up with the tag line “Naughty, but not that naughty” as the motto for this 85-calorie trifle. It’s positioned as a simple pleasure you can guiltlessly enjoy in the middle of a workday, with ads that winkingly allude to a different kind of simple pleasure you can guiltlessly enjoy in the middle of the workday.

The television commercials seem to depict strangers having sex in a dressing room (they’re actually in adjacent dressing rooms and the woman is only eating chocolate), while the print ads urge you to “Pleasure yourself” with “Fling’s slender fingers.”

So much for slyly winking innuendo-they want you to pleasure yourself with slender chocolate fingers! You don’t have to have a dirty mind to go THERE with that one.

Other “Fling” ads urge you to: “Have a ‘Fling’ in private, or wave it all around town; in the office, the bedroom, or the great outdoors.” Nothing ambiguous there.

Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. Sexual euphemisms are now available at the grocery store-at least in California where the product is being test marketed-in convenient chocolate form.

Not only is this candy sexy, it shimmers. According to the website (www.flingchocolate.com, not www.fling.com, which is a risque dating site which I accidentally went to in the course of writing this column, and which forced me to figure out how to erase my browser history so my son and husband wouldn’t freak out when they next went on-line): “You are not seeing things. The Milk Chocolate flavor has a pink shimmer, the Dark Chocolate has a gold shimmer, and the Hazelnut has an orange shimmer. We like variety.”

Clearly this candy bar from Mars is aiming for women from Venus. What I don’t really understand is why. Maybe the fact that “Fling” is the first new chocolate bar Mars has introduced in 20 years is the real explanation for the stereotypical “Marketing to Women 101” campaign. They’ve covered all of the cliched bases: skinny, sparkly, naughty but nice and most of all, pink.

Surely M & M’s and Snickers’ new little sister is looking for trouble with her flirty little wrapper, not-so-subtle wordplay, and marketing of herself to just half of the population. I personally shoulder (or should I say “thigh”) more than my fair share of the chocolate bar economy. As such, I’ve always thought the woman in the Dove commercial who’s satisfied with just one piece of chocolate was faking it. But even I can’t eat enough “Flings” to keep this new product on the shelves.

When she’s not nibbling on chocolate, Leslie can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.  Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on May 29, 2009.

Confessions of a Choc-Slut

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chocolate heartI have a confession to make: I’m not just a garden-variety chocoholic. I don’t just “like” chocolate, I am truly, madly, deeply, absolutely, completely and totally addicted to it. And I don’t have particularly high standards when it comes to chocolate. See’s Candy is great, but chocolate chips will do in a pinch, and so will that last finger-full of canned frosting.

I admit it. My name is Leslie, and I am a choco-slut.

Seriously, I can’t get enough of it. When I’m having a bad day (or, let’s face it, a good day, or an average day, or just a day), I put a piece of chocolate in my mouth, close my eyes and melt as the delicious flavor of cocoa spreads warmly over my mouth, caressing my tongue with its deep, rich essence.

Plus, chocolate is a lot cheaper than therapy and I don’t need to make an appointment. And I finally have science on my side. A recent study at Johns Hopkins University found that a little chocolate every day can cut the risk of heart attack.

You can imagine my excitement when I heard there was going to be a chocolate festival in Ventura. Scrumptiously delicious visions of chocolate rivers, waterfalls, dancing Oompa Loompas and magic glass elevators danced in my mind, as we drove to our destination. The festival’s website said we could help build a giant castle out of chocolate bars. I could just picture Count Chocula overseeing the towers by wielding a fudge-filled scepter over us minions.

By the time we arrived I was drooling with anticipation.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to sugarcoat this: the festival was a bittersweet bust.

Maybe my expectations were just too high. After all, I’ve been known to dance around the aisles of Vons when I spot the first itsy bitsy seasonally-attired Hershey Bars of each holiday season–and I can’t for the life of me figure out why they don’t do them up in red, white and blue for the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day.

A little chocolate usually goes a long way with me. And like I said before, the choco-slut in me isn’t all that particular.

But in the case of this particular festival, it was a little chocolate and a whole lot of tchotchkes.

For every Churro dipped in chocolate (which wasn’t as good as it sounds) there were at least three vendors pushing decorative loaves of soap and two selling animal-themed wind chimes. For every super-anti-oxidant dark chocolate menopause cure (which tasted exactly like it sounds), there were at least three Balinese clothing importers and two old ladies selling knitted purses.

Nothing says chocolate like bankruptcy lawyers, life insurance salesmen, and Jacuzzi vendors. At least give me some chocolate with my junk mail, guys.

Sure, there were thick slabs of generously frosted cake, chocolate chip cookies up the wazoo, and thousands of tons of varieties of fudge by the pound–but there were no chocolate castles, no chocolate rivers, no chocolate waterfalls and no friggin Oompa Loompas.

Quite frankly, I felt a bit betrayed.

I walked through three pavilions and I still had money in my wallet and a shirt that was relatively free of chocolate stains. Talk about a disappointment!

Then I came across a scroll, with the “The Rules for Chocolate” on it. The author is unknown, but I feel quite certain she (and these were most certainly written by a woman) wouldn’t mind if I shared them with you:

-If you’ve got melted chocolate all over your hands, you’re eating it too slowly.

-Clearly, chocolate is a vegetable. Chocolate is derived from cacao beans. A bean is a vegetable. Sugar is derived from either sugar cane or sugar beets. Both are plants, which places them in the vegetable category. Therefore, chocolate is a vegetable.

-Chocolate-covered raisins, cherries, oranges, and strawberries all count as fruit. Eat as many as you want. Fruits are an important part of the Food Pyramid.

– Eat a chocolate bar before each meal. It’ll take the edge off your appetite and you’ll eat less.

-If calories are an issue, store your chocolate on top of the fridge. Calories are afraid of heights, and they will jump out of the chocolate to protect themselves.

-Chocolate has many preservatives. Preservatives make you look younger, therefore, chocolate is therapeutic.

-Put “eat chocolate” at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you’ll get one thing done.

-A nice box of chocolates can provide your total daily intake of calories in one place. Isn’t that handy?

And finally,

-If you can’t eat all your chocolate, it will keep in the freezer. But if you can’t eat all your chocolate, what’s wrong with you? Send it to me.

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound

How about a cookie with bite?

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© Karcich | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

© Karcich | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

I consider myself a connoisseur of all things take-out.

When I got married my mother’s friends (my fairy godmothers of wishful thinking) gave me a recipe shower, where each of them contributed a recipe and a kitchen item to start me off on my merry married way. It’s now almost 13 years later and the only card that is even a teeny-tiny bit grease-splattered is the one from my sister-in-law, which lists the “recipe” to call for take-out at Empress Palace, China Pavilion, Madame Wu, Pick Up Stix, and Jimmy’s House of White Rice and Brown Sauce.

In other words, we eat a lot of Chinese food at my house.

While the Kung Pao quality and the Won Ton worth can vary from place to place and night-to-night, one thing remains consistent in all of my experiences with Chinese food–the fortune cookie fortunes almost always bite.

First of all, 97.37% of the time they aren’t even fortunes, they’re sappy little aphorisms like, “The sun will come out tomorrow,” or “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Things that make you go “duh,” even when you try to spice them up by adding “between the sheets.”

And on the rare 7.59% chance that you do get a fortune that actually aspires to tell you something about the future, it’s inevitably something uninspiring, like, “You won’t win any math contests,” or “A pleasant surprise is in store for you.” A “pleasant” surprise doesn’t exactly conjure up fantasies of “You won the lottery,” or “You’re really the long-lost princess of Kamchatka.” A “pleasant” surprise is more like, “My son’s shirt has very few bodily fluids on it,” or “Look, his aim is improving.”

Let’s face it, fortune cookies have become kind of, well, vanilla.

Imagine how different things would be if after you’ve had your fill of Moo Goo Gai Pan, your cookie read: “You lack social skills, and your skull is oddly shaped.”

Sure, after you stopped laughing you might be a wee bit insulted when you friends don’t stop nodding their heads, but you’d certainly be riveted by the next guy’s fortune. Especially if it read, “That wasn’t really chicken,” or “If you leave us a tip we’ll stop peeing in your food, dude.”

I think that mixing in some of these misfortune cookies with fortunes like the one my husband once got, “You will meet a handsome stranger,” would make getting Chinese food a lot more fun. Just think of the fortune cookie pairing possibilities.

One person cracks open their cookie to find, “Your true love awaits you–at Match.com,” while their dining companion gets, “Someone will find great prosperity and happiness by stealing your identity.”

At the next table over, a group of friends reads, “You are very loving,” “Your girlfriend is sleeping with Tom,” and “Are you Tom? Cut it out.” Talk about some interesting post-dinner conversation.

Of course there is a downside (“Confucius says, “there is always a downside to every great idea”) to mixing up the fortune cookies with the misfortune cookies. Do we really want to give our waiters and waitresses that much control over our destinies? What if they use x-ray vision into your wallet and see that you don’t have enough cash on you for more than the used-to-be-standard-but-is-now-considered-cheap 15% tip? Do you really want to risk opening up a cookie that says, “You will have good luck for the rest of your life, as long as you do not break the cookie.”

Maybe that boring, old, non-future predicting fortune cookie advice– “Ideas are like children; there are none so wonderful as your own”– wasn’t so bad after all.

What’s the best “misfortune cookie” you ever got? Email Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com.

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound