food – Page 2 – Life and Lims

Brilliant! no, barmy. no, lovely. Ah, cheers.

So I’ve been vacationing in England for three days with my husband, and we’re getting the biggest kick out of British English and our lack of understanding of it, being American and all. You’d think that being somewhat of an Anglophile (I love reading books set in England; I watch foreign films, indies, what-have-you), I’d be a bit better prepared for the difference in vocabulary, let alone the accent. I mean, I already knew that “biscuit” really means “cookie” and that “crisps” are “chips” (and “chips” are french fries).

But it honestly takes us a couple of “excuse me”s to understand people’s meaning around here. The accent and dropped letters make it hard to clearly understand the meaning of words we actually do share, and then different words entirely make it extra-challenging.

We have observed that “brilliant” is a lovely all-purpose word to say that any service was great. Dinner? Brilliant. Sights? Brilliant. And the all-purpose word for anything else? Cheers. Hanging up? Cheers. Buy something? Cheers. Not sure what else to say to anything? Cheers.

Guess what these are. You'll never guess. Really. (Brits, no cheating.) — Guess what these are. You’ll never guess. Really. (Brits, no cheating.)

Food has been fun. I thought that it was a little challenging choosing food from the menu in Paris when we went there 9 years ago. But it’s been just as foreign ordering from British menus. Baps? Queenies? Bangers? And I finally had to ask, What the heck is treacle? I’ve read about treacle tarts for years. Then we went to a pub that served treacle bread. It was just a nice wheaty bread. Hm. What could treacle be if it’s in regular bread and tarts? The answer: it’s a sugary syrup of some kind. Huh. Okay. Then I bought a little collection of chocolates on the Isle of Man, and one was toffee that had treacle in it. My husband and I finally figured out what treacle really is when we popped the toffee in our mouths: it’s molasses, or something darn near like it. Huh. Molasses bread: fine. Molasses toffee: eh. Molasses tart? I’m not gonna try it.

Last of my observations: the Brits can sure conjure up some hilarious-sounding phrases. The one I’ve loved the best so far I saw on a sign in a train station: “lovely jubbly.” Lovely jubbly to you all, fair readers. Cheers.

‘Salt Sugar Fat’: A fascinating look at ‘how the food giants hooked’ consumers

So I’ve considered myself to be better informed than the average consumer about not just what’s in processed foods but also about marketing principles in general. So I can’t say that much of what Michael Moss describes in his fascinating book Salt Sugar Fat surprised me, but it certainly did get my attention nonetheless. Just reading so many details about how food companies and their scientists have so carefully engineered their processed foods for optimal “crave-ability” and sell-ability still blew my mind.

Moss makes clear that he’s trying to show that it’s nearly impossible for the food companies to stop using such high amounts (and the most “addictive” combinations) of these three ingredients, for a variety of reasons. As the back cover says, “the industry itself would cease to exist without salt, sugar and fat.”

I’m not a vegetarian, a vegan, a raw-foodie, or any other kind of “specialty” eater or food-preparer. I do, however, make a lot of my family’s meals from scratch, which in this day and age does make me somewhat of an outlier, an exception to the rule. I don’t buy a lot of pre-packaged or pre-prepared foods. Therefore, I suppose that our family eats a lot less processed food than most of America. Unfortunately, just reading all the information in this book made me realize (not for the first time) that even the amount I do buy is far more than I would like. The food companies have perfected their ability to make “food” (I use that word loosely here) easy to buy and serve to our families, with convenience as the highest priority. But convenience has done a number on our health.

I’m not sure what the solution is. The reality is that many families have busy parents who both work (if there are two parents; those with single parents have even more challenges) and are just trying to get their children fed and cared for and out the door for their busy days. I know it’s a huge job shopping for healthier, less-processed foods, and then preparing them. But something’s gotta happen in our society to change this dynamic, because our health is paying the price. Our children’s health is paying the price.

Read this book. Think about it and figure out what you can do to get un-hooked. For a more detailed overview of the book, read my review on Rated Reads.

Live life like a potluck

Most people have probably at one time or another been to a potluck: a delicious event in which there are tables full of food brought by all the participants. The variety of gustatory pleasures can be almost overwhelming. If done right, there’s plenty for everyone. The basic rule is this: bring enough for yourself (or your family/group) and a few more.

What a great rule! Lots of people can eat as long as pretty much everyone who comes brings just a little more than they need. This can take care of those who can’t bring something for one reason or another.

What if everyone lived life by this philosophy? Take care of yourself and your immediate family and then reach out to help just a few others. Watch out for them and their needs; check in on them regularly, be friends, make sure they have food and shelter and someone to lean on. I’ve already written about how it can be overwhelming to think about all the needy “out there” and how it’s simply not possible to help them all. But it is possible to just help one at a time, starfish-style. I’ve also written about my church’s home- and visiting-teaching programs, in which pairs of people are assigned to take care of a few others. It’s just a few. When ‘most everyone steps in and takes a list of people to help, everyone has an automatic pair of friends to turn to when some need arises, whether it’s more “practical” or just a listening ear. It’s a simple but beautiful system.

I’m not discounting the work of a lot of great organizations in the world that help those who are needy in one way or another, but life would certainly be happier and more comfortable for everyone if all who were able did their share plus just a little bit more. Yes, let’s all adopt the potluck philosophy.

There’s more lying on Pinterest than in any political campaign

So I have enjoyed Pinterest quite a bit since I decided to sign up and start using it earlier this year. It’s definitely handy-dandy for lots of things. My youngest even knows that if we’re trying a new recipe, it’s most likely from Pinterest. I think, like a lot of other Pinterest users, I use the site for recipes, laughs, and just useful ideas about all kinds of things.

Chocolate shake — Yes, it is delicious. But NOT 50 calories; no, it’s 500.

But what has really gotten my goat over the months is noticing how much of it is just blatantly false. This is the case with “no-calorie” recipes of various kinds and with “fitspiration” pins. A few examples: the 50-calorie shake. The photo shows a delectable-looking glass filled with a thick, creamy chocolate shake. It always says “50 calorie shake” underneath the photo. I have now seen this repinned by friends at least four or five times. Every time I can’t help but comment on it. Because the truth is that the shake (if the whole recipe is imbibed) is 496 calories. Nearly 500. Not 50. If one wanted to have a 50-calorie version of this shake, that person would have to get out a shot glass, because she’d only be able to drink about 2 ounces. The original site doesn’t say anything about it being “diet” or low-calorie; it’s just a healthier way to have a “shake” than going to an ice-cream shop.

There’s also the “no-calorie slushie.” The photo shows a glass with the final product, and there’s pictures of bananas and strawberries. If anyone were to think about it for just a second, she would know that bananas and strawberries HAVE CALORIES. The blogger admits that “her diet plan” doesn’t count fresh fruit or vegetables, but for those of us who do count everything (which I certainly think is a wise move), it’s about 250 calories. I’m thinking there’s a big difference between NO calories and 250. In fact, if one were to drink that no-calorie slushie every day without changing her diet in other ways, she’d gain half a pound a week.

I think I’ve already mentioned the “fitspiration” pins. Beauty Redefined writes a fab blog post about those. Here’s the thing: it’s great to motivate yourself if you’re trying to take better care of your body by eating better and exercising. But the pins that show a ridiculously thin naked midsection with hip bones protruding, for example, are not going to help anybody. They tend to say “all you have to do to get these abs is follow this plan….” Honestly, I don’t care how much I worked my abs, I would never look like that. I’d also have to cut my calories to less than 1000 per day (not healthy) and get plastic surgery to get rid of the extra skin and the stretch marks to look like that. Can we sit back for a moment here and say, OK, I’d like to get healthier, but repinning this ridiculous photo isn’t going to help me or anyone?

Yep. All lies. Why is it that we perpetuate them? I personally don’t repin these. I just don’t. If the recipe looks tasty and I’d like to try it, then I’ll repin it and give it an accurate title and caption: “fruity slushie,” for instance, or “protein-packed shake.” And even if I would like the tips for exercise, I just flatly refuse to repin those photos of tiny midsections. I’m not gonna do it. I don’t want to send the message out to my friends that image is paramount and flat abs are a holy grail. I don’t want my wonderfully normal friends to feel worried about their abs. Why should they? I also tend to make comments when friends pin some of these, just to correct the erroneous notions that are being sent along via the ever-so-simple pin. I imagine they are annoyed by me. Oh well.

So I ask: if you’re a Pinterest user, are you going to breezily send the lies along for hundreds of other pinners to see, or are you going to stop them in their tracks? When you see a claim that seems “too good to be true,” it most likely is. Think about it for a second. Do some quick calculations. Go to the original post. Do something, but just don’t send it on!

Many thanks to my kitchen doodads

Since I wrote about my Kindle earlier this week, I thought I should follow up with an ode to the other gadgets that get me through each day. I do a few things often and well: I read, I write and edit, and I cook and bake. That leaves me either sitting on a couch or reclining in bed (reading), sweating on an elliptical machine (reading), sitting at the computer (writing and editing), or standing in the kitchen (cooking, cooking, cooking and baking). Add in running errands, shopping, picking up kids and sleeping, and that covers a good deal of my life.

I cook most meals for my family. I like to bake muffins for breakfast or throw some pancakes on the griddle; I usually make up some quesadillas, hot dogs or sandwiches for lunches, and for dinner… well, the possibilities are endless. Thanks to my fairly recently added account on Pinterest, I’ve added on all kinds of new items for dinners. And while still on the topic of my Kindle, it has made it really easy to just take my Pinterest recipes straight in to the kitchen for test purposes, without even having to print anything out. (I always wanted all my recipes in some kind of easily accessible electronic format, and while this isn’t quite that, the Kindle has moved me a step closer to it.)

For dinners, almost any cuisine makes its way to my kitchen. I’m very lucky that my girls are all pretty good about eating almost anything I make (exceptions: none of them like scallops, the youngest doesn’t particularly like asparagus, and they don’t like any kind of ethnic fare to be too spicy), so they have eaten Thai-inspired cuisine, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Filipino… you name it. Much of what I make involves a fair amount of prep work, mostly chopping and slicing of vegetables. (We go through a lot of onions and garlic, and during the winter — soup and stew season — a lot of carrots and celery too.) I bake bread loaves and make all kinds of bread products, whether they be “quick” or yeast-based.

Without the proper tools, the prep work involved in every night’s meals could be overwhelming, potentially leading me to just stop cooking and resort to fast food or mostly prepared food from the supermarket. Since I don’t like those options for the basic reasons of expense and health, I have stocked up on gadgets to make my work easier over the years. This week, for instance, my husband has two occasions to shop for me: Mother’s Day and birthday. I’ve made it a little simpler for him over time by requesting kitchen doodads for gifts. My most recent acquisition was my mandoline (Valentine’s Day: isn’t it romantic?). Sure, I have choppers, and a Cuisinart food processor, but none could slice potatoes or other vegetables nice and thin. So it was time to get a good mandoline.

I did a little looking around at reviews other buyers wrote about mandolines, looking first at Williams-Sonoma, and found that a simple Oxo $40 model was preferred by many of them. That’s amazingly what my husband brought home for me from Bed, Bath and Beyond.

I use it primarily for potatoes. It’s perfect for making gratins and just perfectly thin-sliced potatoes for frying on the stovetop. It’s also great for cutting french fries. In my three months of owning it, that’s been my big use, but I’ve also used it for slicing up a bunch of vegetables for a salad. It supposedly juliennes, but I haven’t had the success I’d like to see in julienning carrots. But most of the time, I don’t do much julienning, just shredding, which leads me to …

My Cuisinart.

I didn’t get this until just a couple of years ago. The main reason for that is I was able to find a very nice mini processor 15 years earlier for only $20 that fit my budget much better than the Cuisinart. That mini processor shredded and chopped pretty nicely, and I was very happy with it. Unfortunately, it finally bit the dust and I went out in search of a replacement. I found this Black & Decker, which had not just the chopping capability (most of the mini processors I found were merely mini choppers) but also shredding capacity. But when I got it home, I found that the shredding setup was lousy and it never worked right.

So I don’t recommend this one. In fact, right now I can’t recommend a particular mini processor that both chops and shreds. I just miss the old one that died after a pretty decent life span of 15 years (which is an eternity in this day and age of electronics). At any rate, I kept it because I think I couldn’t find the box or receipt or something. And it does work very nicely for quick chopping of items like nuts, onions, garlic and celery. In fact, I think it’s much more effective than my big Cuisinart.

So since the mini chopper didn’t work for shredding, and sometimes I just really need to shred large quantities of carrots or cheese, I got the Cuisinart. I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit for those uses, and it’s been nice to finally have a full-size food processor that can puree/blend. It’s been great for a number of uses I just had to do by hand or figure out how to do with some other gadget before I had it. Note: don’t try to chop in the Cuisinart. It simply doesn’t work. When I first got it, I made a nice Mexican layer dip with beans and guacamole and salsa, and I tried to “chop” my garlic and onion in there for the guacamole. What I got was pureed onion, not chopped. And it was far too much for the avocado to handle. It was like onion dip instead of avocado dip. Nasty. But I’ve made some recipes that are based on quinoa or beans instead of wheat (for gluten-free friends or just for a kick), and pureeing the beans or cooked quinoa in there, along with the other items in the recipe, has worked fantastically. It’s made for that. I’ve also used it to puree the plums from our tree to make jam. Perfect.

I also had a little non-electric chopper I use kind of alternately with the electric mini processor. This one’s an Oxo; before I had a model from Pampered Chef. Both work fine. The PC one just broke after a while, and this one, while still working after a couple years, won’t adjust to lock so I can clean it more easily anymore. So it’s a pain to wash.

It is very effective on the same kinds of things: onion, celery, garlic, nuts. Main difference is how it’s set up and that it uses hand power (if you’re feeling aggressive or annoyed, just bang on that a few times and you’ll have gotten out your anger AND chopped your food very finely). It also allows you to chop right on a cutting board rather than having to pick up the items and put them inside of a machine’s bowl.

Now, the workhorse of my kitchen counter is my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

I was very fortunate to get this one for only about $140. I got a basic model at Wal-Mart, and my mom worked there at the time, and at Christmas she would get 20% off one item. She let me use that discount to buy this, so after its initial reasonable price and the discount, I was only out $140. But it’s definitely worth $200. I use this every day. Before I had this, I thought I’d always be content with a hand mixer, but then one day I tried an amazing recipe for a decadent chocolate cake I found in the Oprah magazine. The buttercream filling requires beating for 10 minutes, and drizzling a sugar syrup into the filling while it’s being beaten. It’s very tiring with a hand mixer. That was kind of the last selling point for me to get that Kitchen Aid, and I’ve loved it ever since. I use it for cookies, cakes, and doughs. It’s very handy for making pizza dough. The recipe I use requires kneading for 5 or 10 minutes, so I just get it going and let it knead while doing other stuff. (I will say that I never use this for my homemade bread. It just needs real hands working it hard. But this is one of the few things I do knead by hand still.)

You can probably tell just how fond I am of these gadgets. And I have more … I just won’t go into detail about every last one of them. (The ice cream makers probably deserve a post of their own.) In this age of busy-ness, and the stage of my life in which I have four children at home, who are off to different places and activities, and in which I have all kinds of projects of my own on top of that, having these amazing time-savers is wonderful. It means a lot to me to serve healthy, yummy, homemade meals to my family, and these electronic helpers are my little kitchen elves.

The complex intersection of health, fitness and self-image

I never felt particularly pretty or slim when I was growing up. I always felt like I was a little chubby. When I was about 11 or 12 I actually went on a diet, and at this point I don’t feel I can accurately recall whose idea it was: mine or my mother’s. I cut out sweets, mainly, and ate a little less. My younger sister was taller and slimmer than I and just somehow charismatic and attractive, and I always felt kind of dumpy next to her. When we went on family vacations on occasion, such as the one we made to Florida (Disney World and Daytona Beach) when I was 17, my 15-year-old sister is the one who snagged the attention and admiring looks of the guys. I was just there and along for the ride. It wasn’t until a little later that I came to feel that I was attractive.

My father also had a bad habit of commenting on people’s looks. I adored my dad, and his death in October 2009 was devastating to me, but he did have his quirks and plenty of imperfections, and this obsession with judging others’ outward appearance was one of those. I finally told him the year before he died that it was time he stopped making comments about how people looked. It surely contributed to my constant worry about my own appearance. One of Dad’s infamously terrible remarks happened when I was somewhere around 12 or 13 years old, and we were all listening to music in our living room. My mother was dancing around the room, and my dad observed that she looked like “one of the dancing hippos from ‘Fantasia.'” Silence. I knew it was a bad idea to compare my mom to a hippo, even if it was a very cute animated one, and my mom to this day will sometimes remark about how much it hurt her.

My dad had gotten overweight when he was in his mid-20s and decided to do something about it, so he went on a diet and started running. After that, he stayed super-trim and always exercised and ate healthy foods, even obsessively so. I am sure that his own experience feeling overweight contributed to how he saw things, or the other way around, or both, but it certainly affected my self-image.

We always ate fairly healthy foods when I was growing up, with my mom making homemade wheat bread and putting wheat in every baked good she made. We ate vegetables and fruits in reasonable quantities, and rarely had soda or ate out. So we took care of ourselves pretty well. I never was an athlete, but I did start running my freshman year at college because I was “forced” to in a required fitness class I took my first semester. I dedicated myself to doing it and then just never stopped. Over the past 23 years, I’ve always gone to the gym to work out or gone running or walking, and I’ve only had a hiatus of a year or so total over that time, I think. I just enjoy the feeling of having a good workout, and for a long time, it helped me stay reasonably trim.

At college, too, I didn’t have a car, and my campus was large, so I did a LOT of walking. I could eat all I wanted at my cafeteria and have ice cream galore (I am a fool for ice cream), and with all that exercise, I probably lost a few pounds when I went off to college, rather than gained any. I actually felt pretty good about how I looked, and I felt confident in my attractiveness to all the members of the opposite sex I had the opportunity to meet at that large school.

When I married, graduated college, and got a desk job, however, I quickly put on 20 to 30 pounds. I wasn’t pleased with that and I started eating lower-fat foods and lost a little of it. But I still had most of that extra weight when I got pregnant the first time. After putting on almost 40 pounds with that pregnancy, I left the hospital just under 200 pounds and was shocked at how I looked in the mirror. That was all I needed to limit my calorie intake (I started counting calories for the first time in my life, and I kept it to 1800 since I was nursing), and I managed to take off all the pregnancy pounds plus some. After my second pregnancy, during which I still put on almost 40 pounds, I took off all of that weight and got down to a good size again. I did it again after my third pregnancy, gaining the same amount but getting it all back off 6 months after. I was 32 at that point, and I looked the best I had since I was in college 10-plus years earlier. I was pleased with how I looked, with my good eating habits, with my commitment to exercise, and being able to do all that after three babies.

About five years later, however, I had some pretty stressful experiences and put on about 10 or 15 pounds because I was eating too many sweets. I have always eaten chocolate and ice cream to my heart’s content, so either I started getting a little too old to burn off those calories, or I just ate too much, more than before. I wasn’t pleased with that extra weight and thought I looked chubby in photos. But try as I might, I couldn’t get those 10 or 15 pounds off; all I was able to do was take off maybe 4 pounds and that was all. Two years later, we went through a cross-country move, couldn’t sell our first house (and had lots of financial worries), tried to settle into a new and more stressful life and get to know entirely new people (and miss the old friends where we’d lived for 10 years), lived three months in a house with family (14 of us lived there in one house for that whole time) while we tried to find and buy a new house, and life really put the screws on. I ate and ate and ate. I packed on the pounds and suddenly was 40 pounds heavier. I hadn’t been that weight except right after that first pregnancy, and this time I’d done it without being pregnant, a really embarrassing feat.

As life settled in and eventually got a bit better, and I somehow got motivated, I was able a year later to focus on “dieting,” which for me meant eating fewer calories and cutting out sweets, a painful thing for me, and I lost 35 pounds over the course of months. I never got to where I wanted to be, but I felt much better about where I was. I tried to lose more but couldn’t, and as life became (and/or stayed) more stressful, I managed to put a few pounds back on.

About a year ago, my doctor told me my cholesterol had inched up. I told her I’d try to lose more weight and see how that affected the numbers; I really don’t want to be on medication that would need monitoring of my liver and have side effects, etc. So I worked really hard for more than a month and still didn’t manage to lose as much as I had anticipated. I was hungry all the time and super-cranky because of it and only lost something like 7 pounds. I didn’t feel I could keep going that way and lose any more, let alone maintain that kind of hungry feeling for very long. So I gave up. Then life got very stressful again in the fall (the long and the short of things is that I simply got far too heavily involved in far too many things), and I put that weight back on and more. I’m back to 10 pounds short of where I started 2 1/2 years ago.

So what is the point of all these details?

First, appearance. I’d like to be able to look in the mirror and not have my first thought be a mixture of shame, disgust, embarrassment, and self-hatred because I weigh more than I would like.

Second, health. Yes, I would like to be healthier, no question. I generally eat healthy food, but then I also eat ice cream and chocolate. I’d like to be able to eat less of the bad things, just to benefit my health and heart.

Third, fitness. I’d like to at least give myself a pat on the back that I have always worked out. I still go to the gym every day of the week except Sunday, with only occasional weeks where I miss another day or two for reasons of illness or vacations (even then, when I travel, I usually find a way to exercise). So this is my one high-five to myself that I am dedicated to fitness. I like how it feels. I like that time to myself that I have at the gym. It’s wonderful. I highly recommend it.

Fourth, mental health. This is the crucial key to my weight issues. I already mentioned how my father was obsessed with appearance. He would make remarks frequently about aging movie stars or singers (he loved Linda Ronstadt but was so disappointed she “let herself go” and got “fat” as she got older; he was sad that Julie Christie had aged when she had been so gorgeous when she was young; the list goes on and on); he would comment about complete strangers who just walked by; he would comment about friends or family members. Naturally, I couldn’t help but wonder what he thought of my heavier weight, though he never said anything to me. It was pretty likely he commented about it to someone else when I wasn’t around.

My mental health issues include my turning to food as a coping mechanism. It’s my drug, I think. My father’s family had a history of alcoholism. The men in my dad’s family drank themselves to death. Dad managed to escape that because he chose in his 20s to join our church, which discourages drinking any alcohol. So he stuck to that and never had another drink in his life, though his own father had given him a taste for beer when he was a toddler and he still missed it. I believe that there is such a thing as addictive personalities; either it is actually hard-wired in our genes or chemical makeup, or it’s a family pattern of behaving. My sister started using drugs and alcohol at a young age and was very likely self-medicating her own mental health issues. Since I also have grown up with the same faith as my father, I have never had a drink of alcohol or a puff of a cigarette, avoiding any possibility of becoming an addict. But I am quite sure I’m addicted to food. I am reasonable with my eating habits when I’m not stressed, but when the screws are on, I turn to the kitchen. Last fall, things were so hard that I literally felt I couldn’t stop eating. I wasn’t hungry; I didn’t even necessarily taste the food anymore; I just couldn’t STOP. And it scared me.

So my goals are twofold: I’d like to look in the mirror and love myself, not immediately see my physical flaws. I’d like to accept who I am, see ME, rather than a body that’s aging and not model-slim, or even slim like I was in my early 30s (I still have those size-6 super-cute dresses I wore a mere six years ago; they’re in a box). I want to love myself, whoever I am.

But I would also like to break my addiction. I would. I’d like to stop my bad habits. But the idea of stopping them scares me. It scares me to even think about not using chocolate or cookies or ice cream as a soothing mechanism. My life can often become so not-my-own (I have four daughters and plenty of other responsibilities) that the food I eat is my only easy fix. I am not proud of this, but at the same time, I am aware that this is not at all uncommon. Those who don’t have this problem think it’s easy to just substitute other soothing mechanisms for the food and those of us who do have this weakness would just be A-OK. It’s just not that simple. I have pretty good “willpower” when I’m not feeling super-stressed or tired, but when I am, I just cannot resist the food. It’s just too easy. I don’t take the easy way out in almost anything in my life. I have come to believe now, after all I’ve experienced and weathered, that I am strong, brave and resilient. I say the honest thing to people even when it’s the harder thing to do; I work hard to achieve my goals, which may sound a little extravagant. But I try. So the food weakness is one spot in which I just too often feel I don’t have the strength or will to resist, when everything else is so hard and I am not taking the easy way out.

I could probably write ad nauseam about this topic. And I will write more. But I’ll just say that weight loss and health can be very complex issues for many people, and there are no quick and easy answers. Again, those who don’t struggle with these things will THINK there are easy solutions, but there are not. I think with everything I address in this blog, this is the case. That is precisely why I’m writing in this blog. Because life can be very difficult, and every person has his or her own set of weaknesses and strengths. If one thing is a strength for one person, it’s a weakness for another, and the two will likely not understand each other’s views on that topic. I’d just like to be able to explore the complexities of life and communication and relationships here, and those who have thoughtful insights they’d like to contribute to the discussion are most welcome to do so. Sensitivity is most welcome, and thinking twice before writing a cliche or simple answer would also be a fine idea. What say all of you?