More fun with typos

This is the best one yet. Last night, at a Chinese restaurant here in Redding, we spotted this in the seafood section of the menu:

I knew it

A new study has found that bacon and other fatty foods can be as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

The study, done on rats, found that they'd eat junk food to the point of extreme obesity. They even kept eating when they were receiving electric shocks.

Researchers say fatty foods turn on "pleasure centers" in the brain, just like drugs, and overstimulation leads to compulsive consumption.

Hmmm, bacon.

Wait. What were we talking about?

Full story here.

Boys will be chefs

Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a young boy playing with his new train set, his baseball glove and his toy kitchen.

That’s right. Kitchen. As in junior-sized appliances, where the lad can pretend to cook and do dishes.

According to an article from The Associated Press, boys increasingly are playing “chef” with toy kitchens, even though the thought of it can make uptight fathers dash out into the yard and roll in the flowerbeds.

Many modern dads are OK with their sons playing with toy kitchens, the article said, partly because the dads themselves spend more time in the real kitchen. Boys see their fathers whipping up dinner, or they see male chefs on the many food shows on TV, and they want to emulate those activities. Toy companies are catering (ha!) to that interest by making gender-neutral kitchens for kids, the article said.

“Men are reshaping and rethinking their roles,” said Dr. Michael Kaplan, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center. “They are doing much more (cooking and housework) than they ever have.”

Kaplan said boys shouldn’t be discouraged from playing with toys usually associated with girls because it can lead to self-esteem problems.

That’s where he lost me. I’m a living, breathing example of a man who played with a toy kitchen, over his father’s objections, and, as anyone who knows me will tell you, “self-esteem” is the least of my problems. Just the opposite, in fact.

My toy kitchen was a little turquoise-colored number -- a stove, a sink and a refrigerator with food items and condiments painted on the inside -- where I whiled away many hours making mud pies that I insisted all the grown-ups actually eat.

I was 4 years old at the time, which would’ve made it around 1961. Not an era when men spent much time in the kitchen.

I vaguely recall my dad expressing concern over his firstborn son spending so much time baking mud pies and what that might do to my developing male psyche. At least I think that’s what he was saying as he rolled in the flowerbeds.

Clearly, everything turned out fine, as I grew up to be a housewife. Kidding! I grew up to be a work-at-home dad, who doesn’t mind spending time in the kitchen. Still not much of a chef, but at least I don’t serve up mud pies anymore.

Today’s toymakers can appease all the worried dads and still make a buck off the toy kitchen market. It’s simply a matter of tailoring the appliances to men.

For instance, toy kitchens for boys shouldn’t come in colors like pink or turquoise that might “feminize” them. They should be made of stainless steel. Like a DeLorean.

Manufacturers could make macho dads happy by designing a toy fridge that holds nothing but beer. For the garage.

Microwave ovens didn’t exist when I was a child, but now we can’t get along without them. Every boy’s kitchen should come with a microwave, preferably one that can actually make live cats explode. (Kidding some more! Take it easy, cat-lovers. Sheesh.)

Even the most manly man thinks it’s OK to cook outdoors. Most will, in fact, hip-check their wives away from the barbecue grill so they can char their own steaks.

If toymakers want to make a really authentic barbecue grill, they should rig it up with a 10-foot-tall blaze that will singe off hair and eyebrows. Then Junior can look just like Dad.

To extinguish the flames, they can roll in the flowerbeds together.

Your party footprint

All the talk these days centers on carbon footprints -- how much pollution we generate and energy we consume. But party footprints are important, too, and more immediate. You might have trouble calculating your carbon footprint, but your party footprint can easily be tallied by counting the number of food stains on your shirt.

My personal party footprint is huge. I’m a big guy, so I take up a lot of space. I eat and drink more than my share. I spill. I tend to get effusive (especially when I’ve had a few) and talk with my hands. Anyone crowded too close is in real danger of losing an eye.

I suspect that the size of my party footprint inhibits our social life. When people make party plans, they say: “We can’t invite the Brewers. She’s OK, but we simply don’t have room for HIM.”

Men typically have bigger party footprints than women. We’re louder, larger, hairier, hungrier, thirstier. We tend to forget social niceties, especially as the evening wears on (see “thirstier”). Women at holiday parties are like bright birds, twittering demurely and picking at the food. Men, as we’re frequently reminded, are pigs from Mars.

(Yes, I’m speaking in generalities, but that is my native language.)

Let’s look at the different ways the genders approach parties:

Women enjoy parties for the conversation and companionship. Men like that stuff, too, but it’s difficult to keep a scintillating conversation going while eating with both hands.

When hosting a party, women want to make sure that all the guests feel good. Men want to make themselves feel good. Yes, this is similar to sex. (Hah, beat you to it.)

Women enjoy planning a party and getting everything ready. You can count on men to buy ice.

For women, fancy parties offer an opportunity to dress up. For men, parties are a reason to wear pants, at least at first.

Parties give women a chance to be artistic (décor, fancy food). Men are more interested in the mechanical (BBQ grills, proper keg flow).

At dinner parties, women compliment the chef by oohing over the food and asking for recipes. Men compliment the chef by groaning and asking for more.

Women politely offer to help the hosts serve food and drink. Men sometimes clean up their own spills.

Some parties include dancing, which many women enjoy. Men prefer a challenging game of drunken Twister.

Holiday gatherings let women bask in the warm glow of family and friends. Men prefer the warm glow of televised football.

At family events, women think of the children and the fond memories that are being made. Men say to the kids, “Don’t stand in front of the TV.”

Women like to make an entrance. Men prefer to make a memorable exit.

Women always remember to thank the hosts. Men often remember to apologize to the hosts.

Women like to engage in post-party analysis. Men are happy if they can find the car.

These differences don’t necessarily mean that women are superior to men, but it does mean women have smaller party footprints and often make better hosts/guests. Lucky for us guys, the women have to drag us along or face a lot of embarrassing questions.

Ladies, don’t feel you must apologize for your men’s enormous party footprints. Just say, “I’m with Sasquatch.” Everyone will understand.

Think yourself fat

It’s not chocolate and booze that are making me fat, it’s all the thinking.

A study in Canada has found that the more you work your brain, the more you want to eat. This is extremely bad news for a large segment of the New Internet Economy -- people who sit at computers all day, thinking about stuff. It’s not bad enough that we lead such a sedentary lifestyle. Now it turns out that the stress of mental work makes us want more food.

Researchers at Laval University reported the study in a recent issue of “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal.” (Don’t you love that there’s a publication called “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal?” I used to subscribe to it, but I thought it was making me sick.)

The researchers measured food consumption after subjects did reading/writing tasks or performed computerized tests. The study was done on 14 students (the white lab rats of humanity), who were turned loose on an all-you-can-eat buffet after performing the 45-minute tests.

Students who read a document and wrote a summary of it ate 24 percent more than students who simply rested in a sitting position during the test period. Students who did the computer test activity ate 29 percent more than those who rested.

“Those who had a more demanding mental task were more stressed and ate more,” said researcher Angelo Tremblay and, yes, that’s his real name.

Tremblay and his fellow researchers found that stress from mental work increased the hormone cortisol and also affected glucose levels, both of which can stimulate appetite.

Unfortunately, other studies have found that brainwork does nothing to burn calories. That seems unfair. Sure, our brains will spur us to visit the buffet again and again, but when it comes time to get rid of those accumulated calories, the brain can’t be bothered. It’s too busy pondering the infield fly rule or trying to remember the name of that cross-eyed kid we knew in third grade.

So what’s to be done? You already know the answer: physical exercise. Most of us don’t do enough manual labor to burn up the calories we consume; we’re too busy sitting at computers, playing Spider Solitaire. Since our brains won’t help burn calories, the only solution is to make our bodies do it through regular workouts, the researchers said.

They did find one glimmer of hope for the exercise-phobic, though that wasn’t their intention.
Because brain chemistry apparently can make us overeat, “mental work is a worse activity than simply doing nothing,” Tremblay said.

So there’s your answer. Stop using your brain so much, and maybe you’ll eat less. If you can stand to sit and stare into space without fidgeting or thinking, you’re all set.

This doesn’t explain why you run into so many stupid people who are also fat. But perhaps even a little bit of thinking is harder work for such mouth-breathers and therefore more stressful.

You’ll notice one important omission in the Canadian study: Television. Sitting and staring at TV is completely passive, but it clearly stimulates those same brain chemicals because nothing makes us want snacks more than televised sporting events. If sitting at a computer and thinking about stuff makes us fat, then sitting in front of a TV should make us HUGE. I know it’s working for me.

Anyway, that’s my theory about this new obesity study. I put a lot of thought into it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat. I’m starving.

Food mortgages

Remember when a trip to the supermarket didn’t require a major investment?

Food prices have climbed so much recently that buying groceries should now come with a mountain of qualifying paperwork, like a second mortgage.

“Sorry, sir,” the cashier would say, “but it appears you don’t have the financial history to take on this much debt. You’d better put back the ice cream.”

Food prices are tied to energy prices -- shipping food to your supermarket requires diesel -- and we all know how that’s gone lately. Truckers are going broke, farmers are barely staying afloat, and the oil barons would be laughing all the way to the bank if weren’t for the strain of carrying all that money.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are standing in the supermarket aisles, trying to decide whether we can afford to invest in dessert.

Maybe this is the latest strategy for curing obesity -- make food so expensive that we Americans have to curtail our eating. Won’t work, of course, because the most fattening foods are the cheapest.

The government tells us we should eat healthy fish and lean meat and fresh fruit and vegetables, then the prices on those items go through the roof. Pretty soon, all we can afford is hyphenated food like mac-and-cheese and Rice-a-Roni and Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. Every day, we get a little fatter and a little poorer.

It starts to feel like it would be cheaper to eat dollar-menu fast food all the time -- at least you wouldn’t have to heat up the kitchen -- but who can afford enough gasoline to sit in a drive-thru line? And, if you eat burgers all the time, it eventually will cause your spleen to explode.

I’d been somewhat insulated from the latest surge of food price inflation because I hadn’t been doing the grocery shopping. For years, my wife was the breadwinner, and I did the actual shopping for bread. But once she joined me in working at home, she took over the hunting and gathering.

My wife’s a more canny shopper than I am. She’ll go to three different discount grocery stores to get the best deals and come home with loads of food for less money than I might spend on, say, beer.

Bargain-shopping makes for strange combinations sometimes and some unfamiliar labels in the pantry, but she knows how to whip these items into delicious meals that might not even involve the microwave, so it turns out fine.

Recently, though, she was busy and I went to the store. I did it my usual way -- no coupons, no comparison shopping, same supermarket I always use because I know where everything is.
Holy mackerel! No, wait, mackerel’s too expensive. Let’s say: Holy ramen noodles! I couldn’t believe how much prices have soared.

I started paying attention to prices, hunting the cheapest brands, putting stuff back, and I still spent $200 on a not-quite-full cart of groceries. At the checkout stand, I swiped the “club card” that entitles me to special prices, then played Bob Barker -- “Come on down!” -- while I watched the total on the register readout diminish only slightly.

I sheepishly brought the groceries home. Our two teen-aged sons had it all eaten within, oh, three days. Then they wanted to know why we were out of ice cream.

“Because,” I told them, “I’m waiting for the paperwork to clear on the home-equity loan.”

Cooking for one

Sometimes, selfishness can be delicious.

Unless you live alone, you probably cook for more than one person at a time. You’re forced to take into account the others’ tastes and preferences. Sharing the meal means sharing in the compromise that is communal cooking.

But sometimes, you get to prepare food just for yourself, just the way you like it, and those are the best meals going, aren’t they?

Take, for example, one of my favorites: A breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee. This is a traditional whole-family meal, partly because it typically occurs in the morning when everyone’s more likely to be home and partly because it’s an easy meal to serve the masses.

But there’s a lot of compromise built into such a breakfast. Some people like their bacon crisp and their eggs runny, while others want just the opposite. (And you know how difficult it can be to make runny bacon.) There’s over easy vs. scrambled vs. sunny-side up. Whole wheat vs. sourdough. Fresh ground coffee vs. that sludge your father used to make.

You have be a regular short-order cook to meet all these demands. Or, you ignore the demands and cook everything however you like, with the full knowledge that this will result in complaints and upturned noses and walkouts.

The true joy of cooking is cooking for one. No one to please but yourself.

There’s no greater culinary moment than getting your eggs, bacon and toast precisely the way you like them, all on the plate together at the same time, still hot. Yum.

There’s no guilt. No backlash. No catering to the whims of a small child who will only eat “jiggly” eggs and dry toast that are not touching on the plate. No complaints when it’s over. Just one satisfied customer, who maybe even got a quiet moment with the newspaper while eating.

The mere thought of it makes me relax, makes my blood pressure go down (even while my cholesterol’s going up). Makes me hungry.

When preparing food strictly for yourself, you can take liberties that aren’t allowed around the communal pot. You can “taste-test” right off the serving spoon. You can use paper plates, or no plate at all. You can lick your fingers. Everyone knows that drippy foods eaten over the kitchen sink contain no calories.

Eating alone allows you to indulge in favorite foods normally skipped because of complaints from family members. Chili dogs, for instance. Marshmallow Peeps. Lard. You can eat a giant bean burrito without worrying about the repercussions. You can make it as spicy as you like. No one’s around to see you sweat.

This self-indulgent freedom is particularly thrilling to guys. Given the chance to dine solo, guys generally go straight to The Forbidden Zone of the worst possible food choices.

I ran into a friend in my neighborhood supermarket recently. This man’s entire shopping haul consisted of a six-pack and two large bags of pork rinds.

Me: “Wife out of town?”

Him, beaming: “How did you guess?”

Of course, it’s easy to fall into a rut if you’re pleasing only yourself. Another friend told me his wife had been out of town for several weeks and, “I’ve been living on ham-and-cheese sandwiches.” Not the healthiest choice, perhaps, but I’m sure they were made exactly the way he likes them. Runny, with extra lard.

Treat yourself to a little selfish pleasure. Whip up a meal for you and you alone. Have it your way.

Caution: Too much self-indulgent food can make you “jiggly.”

Table manners for boys

One of our favorite pastimes is eating out, and our two sons have grown up in restaurants. To them, fine dining is no big deal.

These days, it’s rare for all four of us to dine out together. Our boys are on the go with their friends around the clock, and they’re way too busy to spend time in places where there’s no actual skateboarding or Guitar Hero II. Plus, they’re teen-agers and therefore can withstand the presence of their parents for only so many ticking minutes before their heads explode.

Once in a while we lure them out on the town with us, often using pasta as bait, and it’s always a treat to watch them handle themselves well in a restaurant, dealing with waiters and minding their manners.

At times like those, a parent can tear an elbow ligament trying to pat himself on the back, but it’s a good idea to put that fork down first.

Recently, my wife and I had such an outing with our young son. (Where was the older one? I don’t know. I believe he said, “Out.”) We showed up at a nice Italian joint in time for the sunset special, our son bobbing along beside us to a music only he can hear. His long hair hid his face, his posture was a question mark, and he wore an AC/DC “devil horns” T-shirt over pants that looked as if they’d been gnawed away at the knees by attack beavers. The usual.

As soon as we were seated, Mr. Scruffy became Mr. Savoir Faire, ordering with aplomb and using the correct fork and making only one brief joke with the napkin before putting it in his lap where it belonged. He participated in the conversation, didn’t dip his hair in his food, and generally was as pleasant a dinner companion as a person could desire, if that person didn’t mind picking up the tab.

So different from the way I’d see him a few hours later, slumped on the carpet in front of the TV, hooting at “Family Guy” and spooning sticky mint ice cream directly out of the carton.

Both versions are the direct result of his upbringing. From the time our sons were babies, they were drilled in “restaurant behavior.” Things were relaxed at home, where they might be able to get away with certain violations, such as that never-stale sabertooth joke with the asparagus spears. But such behavior doesn’t fly in restaurants.

Yes, it’s a double standard, and yes, it’s probably not the best way to rear children. Strict disciplinarians would argue that manners should be perfect at every meal, but those people are too uptight to enjoy a fine meal anyway, and should just eat tidy pellets like hamsters.

My wife and I were determined to keep dining out, even when the kids were small and couldn’t get through a single meal without knocking over at least one king-sized beverage. We were the only family at the diner where the adults were the ones wearing rubber pants.

Every time, as we entered, the kids got a little lecture about “restaurant behavior,” a reminder to use our best manners while sharing the establishment with other diners, including some who do not want to play “seafood.”

These excursions were stressful, of course, but gradually the lessons took, and on a few occasions, perfect strangers stopped by our table to remark on how quiet and well-behaved our boys were. This usually made us parents burst into tears.

Our answer, then, now and always: “You should see them at home.”

Signed, sealed, delirious

Is there any greater lie in American marketing than "easy to open?"

Products today are tamper-proof, childproof, moisture-resistant, safety-wrapped and vacuum-sealed, but easy to open they’re not.

Many of the foods we eat are sealed so tightly, you could starve to death before you get them open. Every time I wrestle a bottle of medicine, I think how it's a good thing my life's not depending on an emergency dose. Opening over-the-counter remedies requires scissors, a sharp knife and manual dexterity, and that's just the box. To free one of the individually entombed "caplets," you might need a small explosive.

How many minutes out of the average day do we spend trying to open packages? How much American productivity goes down the tubes while workers search for box cutters or letter openers? How much heartburn is caused daily by the phrase "Open Other End?"

I know the manufacturers of consumer products are trying to keep us safe, so we won't sue them, and much of the security packaging is required by government regulation. But it's hard to keep all that in mind when opening a simple bottle of water requires pliers.

People over a certain age can remember when the biggest obstacle between them and an aspirin was that little cotton ball the manufacturers stuffed inside the bottle to keep them from rattling around.

The Tylenol tampering deaths in 1982 resulted in new rules for over-the-counter medications. They now come with multiple layers of tamper-resistant packaging. First, you've got to remove that plastic film that's wrapped around the childproof cap (and good luck managing that without a sharp instrument of some kind). Then you've got to line up the little arrows to pop off the childproof cap. Inside, there's usually a foil seal that must be punctured and removed. By the time you get through those layers of protection, you're either not sick anymore or you're dead.

I had a cold recently, and took over-the-counter decongestants so I could function until the bug ran its course. Which meant that four times a day, you could find me cursing and sniffling and working my fingers to the bone, trying to remove the tablets from their individual paper-foil-plastic containers. There's a reason it's called a "blister pack."

Resealable packages are all the rage at the supermarket, but what's the point of "resealable" if you can't get it open in the first place?

Here's how they're supposed to work: Tear off an outer strip of plastic, and what's left is a zipper arrangement like those on sandwich bags. Does that plastic strip ever tear off straight? Once you do rip it off, how do you get the package open? There's nothing left to grab hold of. Most kitchens aren't equipped with tweezers.

My wife recently ran into this problem with a package of cold cuts. After repeated attempts to get it open, she turned to me and said, "You bought these. How do you open them?"

"I slice the package open with scissors," I said, "then put the meat in a Ziploc bag."

"You don't even TRY to use the package it came in?"

"Who needs the aggravation? I'm crazy enough already."

There's probably a pill for such madness, but imagine how hard it would be to open.

Pillage people

Here’s the leading cause of obesity in America: Grocery Day.

All across this great country, we citizens waddle into gigantic supermarkets once a week and spend way more than we should on way more groceries than we should buy. We cart these goods home, then immediately pig out on them, sampling all the richest, sweetest, highest-calorie foods.

We’re bloated after this unofficial feast day. About the time we recover, the cupboards are bare because the kids and their friends have eaten everything, and we do it all over again.

Once upon a time, when people still walked places, they picked up only a few groceries at a time from corner markets. Enough for tonight’s meal, tomorrow’s breakfast. They ate less and they walked more and, guess what, fewer of them were fat.

Before widespread refrigeration and international food transport, shoppers were limited to what was available from surrounding farms, to what was in season. Not a lot of choice, but people also didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether their tofu or their mango should be kept in the fridge.

As SUVs and suburbs and side-by-side Frigidaires took over the landscape, people started treated Grocery Day less like a safari and more like a stockpiling raid. No longer hunter-gatherers, we became swooping hordes of shoppers, repeatedly pillaging the small village of Safeway, amassing so much loot we need large wheeled carts to haul it all away.

At least that’s the way I like to think of it, when I’m picking over the artichokes with the snowbirds on a Thursday afternoon. I lead a rich fantasy life.

Because we have two strapping teen-aged boys at our house, I buy lots of groceries every week, so many I barely can fit them all into one cart. The groceries fill the cargo hold and back seat of my Ford Lemonstar minivan.

When I get home, my sons help me haul the booty into the house, oohing and aahing over the Oreos and Cocoa Puffs they find in the bags. We work as team, putting away the groceries, then we launch into an individual competition to see who can eat the most the fastest.

It’s not intentional. But all that sudden variety is irresistible. Even if we try to avoid a pig-out, there are usually some treats lying about, simply because there’s not enough cabinet/fridge space to store everything, and it’s hard not to graze.

If there are teen-agers around, the snacks and sweets are the first things to go. So if we parents want a crack at an Oreo ourselves, we’d better pounce on Grocery Day. After that, good luck.

Of course, we can’t eat all the groceries in one day, no matter how we try. Not a whole minivan load of them. So the second day, we’re hard at it again, trying to consume all the grapes before they go bad and the last few marshmallows before someone else eats them. By bedtime, we can barely walk.

Consumption tapers off as the week wears on and choices diminish. Everything that’s left is either good for you or requires preparation more elaborate than a zap in the microwave. We survive on frozen food and random sandwiches.

The boys wander away in search of sweets and fast food pilfered from friends. Mom and Dad find themselves nibbling plain saltines in front of the TV because that’s all that’s available.

Time to go pillaging again. It’s Grocery Day.

Hold the ketchup

Restaurants in Chicago (and no doubt elsewhere) are trying to save money by limiting the condiments they give away.

News reports say Chili's and McDonalds are either restricting the number ketchup packets and other condiments for takeout orders or are asking customers whether they need them rather than automatically including them. Chili's also is eliminating cardboard coasters to save money.

What's next? Will restaurants save money on plates by throwing the food directly into our mouths?

Full story here.

A world too small for such a man

My mantra for middle age: Every day, in every way, I am getting fatter and fatter.

I diet (sort of). I exercise (a lot). Every day, I step onto the bathroom scales and groan.

I am not what doctors call "morbidly obese." More like pathetically obese. It's just sad the way fat accumulates on the body of a middle-aged man who gave up smoking a few years ago and took up Oreos instead.

One look in the mirror raises a number of questions: When did my hips become wider than my shoulders? When did my waist measurement leave my inseam in the dust? Where did my belt go? Oh, there it is, hiding under my paunch. Sneaky devil.

I know I'm not alone. News reports regularly scream that America's the fattest country on earth, that we're killing ourselves with our own mouths. We're all so concerned about obesity and health, we can find solace only in another snack.

"Middle age" apparently refers to body location rather than simple chronology. You pass 40, and your middle shows its age by ballooning up as it never has before. This so-called "spread" is the curse of adulthood.

("Middle-Age Spread" sounds like a ranch, one that extends from Armpit Valley to Bad Knee Junction, passing the mustard-stained slopes of Mount Belly and Lardbutt Heights along the way. Yee-haw. Git along, lil hoagies!)

I was already a large man before I became a large, pear-shaped man. I'm six-foot-five, and rarely a day goes by that I don't hit my head on something, which may explain my many mental "issues."

Because of my height, I already bought my clothes at "Big-and-Tall" shops. I used to shop in the "Tall" section. Now, in middle age, I need the "Big" part, too.

With this widening has come more frequent painful encounters with the door jambs and sharp edges of my everyday world. A few years ago, I only worried about hitting my head. Now, I worry about snagging a hip on a cabinet corner. I tuck my elbows against my sides when I go through doors. I'm usually sporting a bruise somewhere.

The world isn't designed for the big and tall. Countertops and light switches and sinks always are the wrong height. Beds are too short. Doorways are too narrow. Bucket seats? Don't make me laugh.

Worst, of course, are airplanes, which are designed by elfin workers at Boeing who get their revenge on the world by torturing us big guys. (You might not know this, but "Economy" comes from the Latin words for "pinch my fat with your armrest.")

Recently, I rode in one of those small, turboprop planes formally known as "puddle-jumpers," and was forced by dire need to squeeze my very large self into its very small bathroom.

I got in there all right, facing the correct direction, etc., but when it came time to emerge, I had a problem. I was wedged so tightly, I couldn't move my arms. Which meant I couldn’t release the door latch. Which raised the very real possibility that I would remain in that fiberglass coffin until someone got me out with a blowtorch. By exhaling and pivoting just right, I managed to get free, but there were a few panicky seconds when a headline flashed before my eyes:

Middle-Aged Fatty Trapped in Airplane Loo

God, the humiliation. Only one way to beat that rap -- blame someone else. So I pictured this headline instead:

Trapped Fatty Sues Airline; Nabisco Named as Co-Defendant

Ah, that's better. Let's eat!

The turkey says gobble

Now I know why we have the Full Turkey Dinner only once or twice a year. The leftovers last three months.

The holiday season is one long graze, an endless smorgasbord of cookies and cakes and turkey and dressing and egg nog. Everywhere you turn, there's more food, more booze, more festive calories.

No wonder the average American gains 137 pounds during the period between Halloween and Jan. 1. No wonder most people's New Year's resolutions focus on diet and exercise. We have to work off all that cheery holiday gluttony. Call it The Turkey's Revenge.

A friend remarked the other day that obese people always have food within easy reach. They're in front of the TV and they have chips and beer and candy and pork rinds all around them. All they need is a funnel.

During the holidays, this situation applies to us all. Food is everywhere and you can't avoid it, even if you try. There's too much peer pressure. Fail to partake of holiday fare, and people will think something's wrong with you, that you're sick or depressed.

Try this one at Thanksgiving sometime: "No turkey for me, thanks." Your family will want to feel your forehead for fever. Your host will glare at you, because that's one serving of turkey that will be left over, and your host simply can't fit another thing into the freezer.

There's so much food during the holidays that some folks become desperate to get rid of it. They do this by forcing it down the throats of their friends and co-workers. People bring Halloween candy and Santa cookies to the office to "get them out of the house." You can't stop by a friend's house without being offered a seven-course dessert tray. And you have to lock the car to keep neighbors from stashing Zip-Loc bags of leftover turkey in the glove compartment.

We're guilty within our own homes. We leave plastic-wrapped plates of desserts sitting out, hoping others will consume them before they spoil or before Easter, whichever comes first. Eventually, all these goodies migrate to the nearest TV, where they are within easy reach. Next thing you know, it's February and we're investing in a Stairmaster.

I'd like to say this dire situation is confined to the holidays, but that's not the case at my house. We have two growing boys and they think the entire house is an open-air buffet. Boxes of cereal and bags of chips and granola bars and Popsicles wander about our house, seemingly of their own accord, following our boys wherever they go. Always within easy reach.

We parents don't encourage this behavior. Indeed, we've tried to confine food to the kitchen, where there's no carpet to catch spills. But food is portable and the boys have a full of agenda of running around to accomplish every day. They can't help it if the food chooses to go with them.

The part I find most alarming is that they aren't even stealthy about their disobedience. They leave a trail of candy wrappers and apple cores in their wake.

Imagine this scenario repeated, with variations, oh, 42 times a day:

Son: "Dad, can I have a Popsicle?"
Dad: "Sure. Eat it in the kitchen."
Son: "Okay."
Hours later, I'll find the sticky Popsicle stick on my bedside table.
Dad: "How did that get in here?"
Son, wide-eyed: "I have no idea."
Dad: (Grumble, grumble.)

And it's not just the remains they leave. They also have packages of food stashed all over the house in case of emergency.

One day, I pulled into our driveway. The shades were up in one son's bedroom window and there, sitting on the sill, facing out at the world, was a bright orange jumbo box of Cheese Nips. It looked like a billboard or a political poster, as if our household had decided to come out in favor of Cheese Nips and we wanted the whole world to know it.

I was mortified, of course. I don't even like Cheese Nips. If we're going to endorse a food product, it should be leftover turkey.

Give thanks for strange foods

Why do Americans love Thanksgiving? Because it's one holiday that's unequivocally centered on the thing we love best -- eating.

The very roots of Thanksgiving lie in food. The holiday began as a harvest festival for the Pilgrims, who were thankful they'd survived long enough to reap some food before another hard winter descended.

(Which raises the question: If you were a European settler arriving in the New World, would you choose chilly New England as your destination? Wouldn't it be better to stay on the boat one more week and land in, say, Miami Beach? But I digress.)

Today, we Americans mark the holiday by eating enough food, per capita, to keep the average Third World family alive for a month. Then we stagger to the nearest recliner and sleep it off to the sweet drone of televised football. We need to rest and digest, because soon we must tackle our next harvest -- leftovers.

Many Americans don't know that the Thanksgiving meal has its own colorful folklore. Why, for example, do we traditionally eat yams at Thanksgiving? Do you eat yams the rest of the year? Probably not. But Mom throws that orange glop on your plate at Thanksgiving, and you're a grateful American.

We've been conditioned, year in and year out, to eat certain Thanksgiving items, such as "giblets," that we normally wouldn't touch. We happily wolf them down, then trundle off to our recliners, blissfully unaware of the history and tradition behind what we've just consumed.

Here, then, is a primer on traditional Thanksgiving foods, their origins and their significance, and why, one Thursday in November, we gobble them up:

TURKEY

The Thanksgiving turkey has become an annual event, the Super Bowl of eating. Did the Pilgrims eat turkey at their first Thanksgiving? No one knows for sure. But if they did, you can bet the turkeys were wild, scrawny animals, not the pumped-up Schwarzenegger birds of today, which require a forklift to reach the table.

The turkey became the traditional harvest entrée because it's one of only two North American animals that looks better dead than it does alive. (The other is the lobster.)

A live turkey is one ugly mother. Fat and mean, a tom turkey resembles a kid's drawing of an evil alien, assembled from disparate parts. Wrinkly, clawed feet and red wattles and beating wings and a feather-duster up its behind. Yuck.

But strip the turkey of its outer wrappings, roast it slowly, and it becomes a golden-brown mountain of meat, aromatic and tasty.

DRESSING

First, we strip the turkey naked and hollow out its insides, then we "dress" it all over again in a more palatable manner. Interestingly, traditional dressing includes some of the same items that were removed from inside the turkey originally. See "giblets" above.

Some people resort to "oyster dressing," which involves replacing slimy little giblets with slimy little shellfish. Go figure.

FRUIT SALAD

You can bet the original Pilgrims didn't have seedless grapes and pineapples and Mandarin oranges to mix up for a cold side dish. You can double that bet when it comes to suspending the mixture in whipped cream. How then has this dish become a Thanksgiving staple in many homes? Motherly guilt. If the family must consume all those thousands of calories, there should be something healthy in there, like fruit.

CRANBERRIES

Not really berries. Not really food. They grow in "bogs," which should tell you something. Currently infiltrating every kind of juice in America.

YAMS

They come from tropical climates, but resemble astronaut food. Beware any dish that must be disguised with marshmallows.

PUMPKIN PIE

The Pilgrims had all these pumpkins left over from Halloween. They found that the guts of the pumpkin, when removed and cooked, resembled yams. How to persuade the family to eat this? By adding sugar and a crust and calling it dessert.

Such innovation is truly American. Using traditional "foods" in new and different ways has led to the evolution of the modern Thanksgiving meal.

Give us Americans a turkey, and we make turkey salad.

Holiday diet tips

The annual Holiday Eating Season -- which runs from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day --officially begins this week, and that means trouble for those of us trying to lose weight.

Banquets and booze, potlucks and pastries, desserts and delicacies all gang up on us this time of year. Here a cookie, there a brownie, everywhere a cheese log. This abundance makes it nearly impossible to watch your weight.

(An aside: Isn't "watch your weight" a weird euphemism? I have no trouble watching my weight. It's right here in front of me. The problem is trying to watch anything beyond it -- my feet, for instance. If we need a euphemism for dieting, maybe we should call it "looking for feet.")

You can't escape the annual cornucopia, but you can find ways to manage your diet. Rather than counting every calorie or battling every temptation, use your imagination to set limits. Play little mind games with yourself, so you can pass up certain treats and keep your overall consumption within reason.

For example, some people allow themselves the freedom to indulge in holiday meals with loved ones, but skip desserts. Others eat only desserts, though this is not recommended. A handful go on the "all egg nog, all the time" regimen, a form of liquid diet guaranteed to result not only in weight gain, but probable arrest.

Here are some other creative dieting suggestions:

--The Alphabet Diet. Pick a letter of the alphabet and pledge not to eat any food that contains that letter in its name. Say, for instance, that you choose "R." Then turkey and risotto and cranberries are out for the holiday season. However, you could eat all the blintzes you want. Obese people might want to "up the ante" and select several letters. Caution: A vowel-free diet can result in medical problems.

--The Face Diet. Vegetarians often say, "I don't eat anything that has a face." This could be a good approach for holiday dieters, too. However, you might want to amend the rules to specify that really ugly faces don't count. You could, thereby, still eat turkey.

--The Repulsion Diet. When faced with the usual huge array of holiday foods, most people can identify one or two items that they simply can't stand -- such as gelid cranberry sauce or creamed spinach or oyster dressing. Load up your plate with your least-favorite things. Pretty soon, you'll find that you'd rather go hungry.

--The Rah-Team Diet. Cut down your sports-related noshing by eating only when your favorite team is winning. Warning: This season, fans of the San Francisco 49ers could starve to death.

--The Denture-Free Diet. If you wear false teeth, take them out before holiday meals. This will limit you to mushy stuff, and cut down your caloric intake. This method could help your loved ones lose weight, too, because watching you will turn their stomachs.

--The Battle-Axe Diet. If you can't stand your mother-in-law, be sure to sit directly across from her at every family gathering. That ought to kill your appetite.

--The Hangover Diet. "Tie one on" the night before every big family meal. True, booze is full of empty calories. But you won't want any yams the next day. Trust me.

Using such imaginative approaches, you can find a diet plan that will get you through the Holiday Eating Season.

If nothing works, tell yourself that obesity is the direct result of a happy, abundant life. Count your blessings and give thanks.

Personally, I'm thankful that I no longer need to worry about spilling egg nog on my shoes.

Let them eat cake

World leaders are meeting in Washington, D.C., to try to solve the worldwide economic crisis. Here's what they're eating at tonight's White House dinner: smoked quail, rack of lamb, an endive salad with baked brie and walnuts, quinoa risotto and a pear torte. One of the wines goes for $300 a bottle.

Think of them tonight as you're enjoying your Top Ramen and Kool-Aid.

Full menu, er, story here.

Holy scramboli, it's dinnertime

Parenting experts universally praise the traditional "family dinner" -- everyone gathered around the table to share the evening meal and news of the day.

Such dinners help families stay close despite their busy lives, the experts say, and help parents keep tabs on their children's day-to-day travails without the direct intervention of the authorities.

Unlike much parenting advice, which at our house is met with hooting derision and thoughts of "they've never met our kids," we've always embraced the family dinner concept.

Throughout our two sons' lives, one thing they could count on was that at dinnertime, the whole family would gather around the table to share food and fellowship.

It was at the family dinner that the boys learned some semblance of table manners. Dinner was where they told us of the Shakespearean conspiring and backbiting of the playground. It was where they saw that adults could gossip and carp, too. It was at dinner where plans were made and plots were hatched and the beans were spilled.

We kept up the family dinner tradition against great odds. Work schedules sometimes threatened to tear it apart. When ours sons were very small, they tended to throw and spill so much food, we parents wanted to be nowhere nearby. (We eventually had to get a dog to do clean-up duty.) Even dining styles conspired against us: one son eats so fast, he's done before the rest of us are finished passing the salt; the other ate so slowly that we all ended up drumming our fingers and forcing smiles while he finished. Still, we stuck with it because we recognized the value of that time with our kids.

Those days, I'm sad to say, are over. Our sons are teen-agers now, and they're constantly on the go. Now, we're lucky to dine together a couple of times a week.

The main culprit is something all modern families can understand -- the microwave oven. Why wait around for the whole family to share the traditional meat-and-potatoes meal when a pizza can be had in mere minutes? Why make something fresh when you can reheat leftovers? Surely, warmed-up Chinese food will taste better than whatever Dad has planned.

Now, at our house, most dinners are a sort of kitchen dance, with each of us taking our turn at the zapper, hovering and crinkling and beeping, then wolfing our food and hurrying away to our respective destinations.

We've even coined a name for such haphazard evening meals. We call it "scramboli," as in, "Are we all sitting down to the dinner tonight, or is it scramboli?"

"Scramboli" means "eat whatever you can scavenge." One person will reheat leftover spaghetti, another will nuke a pot pie, and yet another (usually Dad) will settle for a hot sandwich with melted cheese.

We parents rationalize that "scramboli" will, in the long run, be as beneficial as the family dinner. We're teaching the boys to fend for themselves. We're teaching them how to heat and eat. When they go off on their own, the one thing that won't worry us is whether they're starving.

As long as they have microwaves.

Fast food

If you need proof that we're all too danged busy, consider this item from USA Today: This year, the average American will eat 32 restaurant-purchased meals in a car, up from 19 such meals in 1985.

When you consider that some Americans (like me) almost never eat in vehicles and that many don't even have cars, that works out to -- let's see, 32 meals into 52 weeks a year, carry the 2, minus Big Gulps, which aren't officially "food" -- to, um, one heckuva lot of meals on wheels.

I recently saw a fellow motorist who was weaving so much that I assumed he was drunk. As I nervously hurried past, I saw he was eating a big, drippy burger while also talking on his cell phone. Steering with his knees rather than miss a bite of burger or a juicy tidbit of telephone gossip. Both activities apparently were more important than the fact he was endangering lives. Did I mention this was on the freeway?

You who spend a lot of time commuting and/or eating in your vehicle probably are thinking about now: So what? We do what we have to do to make the most of every minute of every day. If it means dripping "special sauce" into our laps at 75 mph, then so be it.

Automakers strive to equip vehicles for full-speed dining. My minivan, the Soccer Mom Special, comes equipped with (and I'm not making this up) 13 cupholders. Thirteen. Since you can only fit seven people in this vehicle, the automaker apparently assumed that each passenger needs two drinks going at any given time. In which case, shouldn't the van also be equipped with a bathroom?

Creative auto engineers could come up with more ways to outfit our wheeled restaurants. They could:

--Add lap tables that fold out of the armrests, like the ones on airlines. Probably not safe in a crash, but tables would enable drivers to keep their hands free for driving, at least part of the time.

--Replace that "new car smell" with the aroma of stale French fries. Going to happen sooner or later. Might as well cut to the chase.

--Offer upholstery in colors that would hide anticipated spills: Hot Coffee, Old Ketchup, Dried Mustard, Radioactive Red Slurpee.

Fast food purveyors could help, too. How about packaging food in "feed bags" like horses use? Drivers could keep their hands on the wheel, while munching away at the food strapped to their heads.

More roadside cafes could offer "astronaut food," pureed items in plastic tubes. We could squeeze our meals into our mouths and skip all that inconvenient chewing.

Restaurants should also offer more food items "on a stick," so each motorist might have one hand free for steering. Burger on a stick. Chicken on a stick. Fish kebabs. Condiments could be in "dipping tubs" designed to fit in our many cupholders.

I'm sure creative food packagers are searching for such innovations. But, for my money, the best service concept could be summed up in one word:

Bibs.

Urp

The reigning hotdog-eating champ took another title over the weekend by eating 45 slices of pizza in 10 minutes.

Joey Chestnut, 24, of San Jose, CA, said he fasted for a day to prepare for Sunday's pizza-eating contest in New York's Times Square.

On July 4, Chestnut ate 59 hotdogs in 10 minutes to win the annual contest on Coney Island. Last month, he won a contest in Tennessee by eating 93 Krystal burgers in eight minutes.

Only in America could we make a sport out of eating.

Full story here.

Bargain buys = big bucks

I went to the supermarket for a gallon of milk and spent $90.

How does this happen? Why does every trip to the market result in huge expenditures of money and time?

Here's how it went that day: I announced to my family that I was headed to the store for milk. I asked (and here was my first mistake) whether anybody needed anything while I was there.

Everyone shouted at once. They needed ice cream. They needed toiletries. We were out of the favorite brand of sugary cereal. We had syrup, but no waffles. Mom needed items (olive oil!) that Dad never remembers.

It was too much too fast. I had to make a list. But I sternly kept it short. This wasn't the weekly shopping trip that always results in an overflowing shopping cart and exultant cheers from the checkout clerks. No, this was a quickie store run. Just milk. And a few other items. But mostly milk.

One look at the list told me I'd need a shopping cart (my second mistake). Soon I was rolling up and down the aisles, searching for the items on the list.

Which is exactly what the supermarkets want us to do. Go up and down each aisle. Take our time. Browse. See something omitted from the list. Spot a special on strawberries. Discover that a favorite brand of coffee is on sale.

Pretty soon, my cart was full. Not piled-up full, not so full that I'm leaving a trail of dropped Pop-Tarts in my wake. But pretty danged full. Ninety dollars full.

All because we were running out of milk.

What is it about supermarkets that cause this behavior? The impulse buys. The stockpiling. Something about all that brightly packaged bounty prompts us to spend, spend, spend.

We wouldn’t do other shopping this way. For instance, you wouldn't go out shopping for a new car and bring home a yacht and a Sherman tank. (Picture telling your spouse: "Sure, hon, we don't really need a tank, but they never spoil, and they were on sale.")

When it comes to food, we feel entitled to stock up, particularly if there are teens in the household. It'll all get eaten eventually, we tell ourselves, and you can never have too much microwave popcorn at hand.

This stockpiling mentality is the fuel behind the success of giant warehouse stores like Costco. Buy in bulk, this philosophy goes, and save money. Sure, you've got enough toilet paper to last until 2037, but what the heck, it's on sale.

I refuse to shop at Costco and its imitators. My feeling is: You should never go impulse shopping in a place where there are forklifts. If you find yourself buying a "bargain" that's so large it won't fit in a standard shopping cart, then you should reconsider.

Who's got that kind of storage space? Every Costco shopper I know has stuff stacked to the rafters in their homes. Yes, you can save money by buying 200 rolls of paper towels at once, but if you have to rent a warehouse to hold them, you've reached the point of diminishing returns.

To buy nothing more than a gallon of milk, it might be safest to the take the opposite route -- go to a convenience store. Run in, run out, avoid the temptations of the supermarket.

But have you seen how much they're charging for milk at convenience stores? (Not $90, but too much.) And there's still the problem of impulse buys.

How much beef jerky does one family need?