Good Morning and welcome to the middle of the week!

Have you ever noticed just how perfect is a cupcake?
It's compact, so you can carry it out the door in the morning. It's small enough to satisfy and you don't feel bad about having a second (or third). Most of all, it's fun.
Who doesn't think of smiling and laughing while eating a cupcake?
I've lucked out having an expert baker in the house who likes to experiment with different things. We've had peanut-butter cookies, oatmeal-peanut butter cookies, chocolate cakes, vanilla cakes, german chocolate cakes, peppermint cakes, name it, we've eaten it (and eaten it and eaten it).
Now, it's on to cupcakes. Just this week, we've been treated to vanilla with buttercream frosting and lidsor tort with jelly in the middle and chocolate ganache on top.
Needless to say, they didn't last a day. Now there is a promise of new ones tonight.
It can't get here fast enough.

Good Morning and welcome to a new week!

A couple of years ago, I was talked into getting two pugs from the Pug Rescue.
For the most part, they've been fine. The children like them. They lick mom's leg. They lie around most of the time despite being jumped on, kicked and pulled.
There have been a couple of emergency trips to the vet (expensive) and the normal upkeep of a pet. It's annoying when they leave 'gifts' at various times, but it's forgotten after being cleaned.
When we picked up the pugs, they were huge. The normal weight for a pug is about 13-18 pounds. These two, Sky and Nabisco, were pushing 35 pounds each. They were obviously being fed a lot by former owners and didn't get much exercise.
Well, a couple of years later they are back to 'normal' weight. That, though, brings a big problem.
Now they can jump up on chairs then on tables, which means any bit of food left on said table will disappear quickly.
That brings us to Saturday. After bringing home about seven bagels to use for breakfast the next few days, they were left on the table.
Now, I thought the chairs were pushed in enough the pugs couldn't get up there. I was wrong.
A few hours later, I found a chewed-through bag and no bagels on the floor.
Uh, Oh.
The pugs were moving slow, after all, imagine if you ate seven bagels in about 10 minutes. Getting off the couch would be a chore.
So, that night, they left plenty of 'gifts' in the boys' room. ALL over the boys' room. Then all over the living room. Then all over the dining room.
Nothing like waking up to a lazy, rainy Sunday to a major cleanup job.
What I've come to learn is dogs have no conscious when it comes to food. They just eat and eat until there is nothing left.
Now, we have to hide not only the cookies, but absolutely everything else.
Whoopeee!

Good Morning and welcome back to the Internet!

So, there's a report out this morning that we in America eat too much sugar.
Now, this smacks as one of those studies like the one where the sun comes up every day. No kidding. Anybody who doesn't think we eat too much sugar also believes government death panels are coming down the pike.
Uh, never mind.
Anyway, I can tell you right now there is a big sugar conspiracy out there. It's a death panel of another sort.
We are inundated with sugar. It is put into everything (or so it seems). Soda (the leader of the sugar dump), french fries, bread, juice (although all that natural sugar should be enough) and butter.
Let's not even get into high fructose corn syrup, that's a death panel of another kind.
Anyway, last year we went sugar-free for a couple of months.
The withdraw from the stuff by one 7-year old boy was probably akin to heroin withdrawal. There were mood swings. Yelling. Throwing. Fighting.
By the end of two months, though, it wasn't even missed.
Of course, asking somebody to give up sugar would be like asking them to keep an open mind about health care reform.
'This is America, dammit, and I'll keep piling it on if I want. Besides, I'm getting a diet coke with my Big Mac."
All right, maybe we can't eliminate it, but we can limit the stuff. Right?