Your ice cream’s lost weight.

There’s something squirrelly going on at the grocery store…and I think it’s despicable. I’m not blaming my grocer, mind you. But I’ve got a bone to pick with the slick marketing folks at some of the nation’s largest, and most trusted manufacturers.

As we struggle to deal with escalating food costs, we are beginning to see not only sharply higher prices, but smaller packages on items we typically buy week after week. We expected the price hikes, but not the slight of hand you would have expected from a common river boat gambler. (more…)

I went on line to order some shoes this morning and was shocked to see what’s hot and what’s not for the summer. Here’s what the well heeled sophisticate will be wearing:

I don’t think so. In my dreams maybe. And check out these little numbers. Huh?

How do these work and why? I hope they come with training wheels. Obviously some man designed both of the above.

Thank goodness I found something casual and tastefully comfortable. Here’s what I ordered and will be wearing throughout the summer months. I bought a bag to match that looks as though it was designed for the bowling alley.

I’ve been on a 50s and 60s kick lately - making “nostalgia food” like my grandmother used to make - honest to goodness comfort food like meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy. But the guilt that follows each trip down memory lane is excruciating.

Now I find a cookbook that takes these old favorites and makes them over. I ran across “Homestyle Cooking Made Healthy,” the other day. Authored by food editor Jeanne Jones, this is the roadmap I’d been looking for into the world of naughty comfort food without the guilt. (more…)

Picture this. She wakes up early in the morning. It is the 25th day of May - the day she takes her monthly osteoporosis medication, Fosamax.

Bleery-eyed, she stumbles into the bathroom and retrieves the pill from her medicine cabinet, rips it from its shrink wrapped cardboard and gulps it down with a glass of water. Satisfied she was done with that for another month, she starts her day, feeling strangely energized.

Two hours later, as she straightens up the bathroom, she finds an empty wrapper for her hearing aid battery on the sink beside her water glass.

Jumping jitters! She has swallowed her hearing aid battery instead of the pill! She rushes to the phone to call her doctor, thinking surgery might be in order. He tells her not to worry, it wouldn’t break down and metabolize, and all would be fine in a few days.

This is a true story. It happened to a friend of mine and we’ve gotten many a good laugh out of that episode. Don’t let this happen to you. You might want to store your batteries in your tool box instead of the medicine cabinet.

Olivia Portera’s original wall art at her home in Tuscaloosa

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Some people probably consider my yard and garden a bit “trashy,” but I don’t care. I love to find quirky objects as I stroll along city streets, and this time of the year is the best. People are cleaning out and throwing away things they consider junk and I come along and drag it home (one man’s junk is another girl’s treasure, don’t you know). (more…)