I've been sick with a cold, and it's Valentine's Day, and so what? I've had this cold so long I'm sick of writing about remedies. I want to address some things that many have come to me about, mainly, the secrets of getting a nice dinner squeezed into life between the time you go out after work to have a few drinks or go to a party and the time you go home and go to bed.

We all know the feeling of being out on a Valentine's Day date for a few drinks, and you start to get dizzy, and the hunger is affecting your ability to be glib. You are even starting to get angry, but mentioning food on the first date of "let's meet for coffee/a drink" seems so terribly vulgar. 

This is the age of the anorexic, when needing to eat all the time is a sign of weakness. There is nothing wrong with going out to eat of course, but being the one who suggests it, right before you pass out from hunger even though you've just had three bowls of popcorn at the bar, that's not cool. Nor is saying "Hope you don't mind if I go ahead and order something," and then trying to look sexy while scarfing down a giant cheeseburger, your eyes bulging out of your head as you try and fit a bite into your mouth.

If you want to order something at the bar, always get something that your partner can nibble on, i.e. finger food. Get the sort of thing black aproned caterers carry around on silver platters at wedding receptions: delicious puffy crab balls, beef satay in tamarind dipping sauce, chicken fingers, and -- the thing even the hard core anorexic loves -- French fries.

The ability to nibble is a key to romance. Love likes to starve itself, just as those not in love get food as a consolation (there's a similar trade off with luck at card-playing, see the cosmic forces are always keeping a tab, and love's the most expensive thing they got). That's why if you are alone on Valentine's Day you are not only encouraged, but commanded to eat lots of chocolate. If however you are madly in love with someone, you will know it since you won't be able to finish a single piece.

Love is the hoodia of emotions. Let's say you are in love with a girl named Violet. Perhaps you could eat something if it was violet flavored; maybe you could eat violets, or chew that violet chewing gum. If you were in love with a man named Charlie, maybe you could eat at Beefsteak Charlies, but chances are you'd just pick at some fries. Love isn't hungry, not the kind of love I'm talking about, that burn your stomach in knots kind of love; that kind of love is destructive, that kind of love makes you take up smoking again, it makes you drive off the cliff, Thelma and Louise-style. Did you notice how, in that movie, they never really ate much of anything? Thelma only drank those little airplane bottles of Wild Turkey; airplane bottles are the finger food of alcohols. Do you get the picture? Little bites means love; it's Pavlovian.

So the trick is, little bites. Finger food, and if you start to get hungry and don’t want to seem bestial or human, carry a food bar, such as the Odwalla super protein bar, around in your bag or glove compartment. When you have a spare second you can sneak off and power up. It's one of those things about first love that we don't want to expose the other person to our human frailties.

So you have your finger foods and you have your stashed food bar, there's only one thing missing from this fun night out without dinner and no hangover experience, and that's the drinks. All drinks are not made alike. Little things like mixers can make all the difference. So listen up:

Now everyone loves beer, or so I'm told, but beware of becoming a serious beer drinker and getting that puffy face and gut. The carb ingredients in beer are ultimately healthy, but drink a few beers and you've basically just devoured the equivalent of about an entire bread factory (I'm sick with a flu so excuse me if I don't take the time to fact check this). My brother, whose weight hovers around 300 pounds will gingerly remove to roll from his hamburger because of the Atkins diet, even as he downs three Heinekens as a dinner beverage. When I flap my arms in outrage and berate him (as is an older brothers right, mind you), he looks up through his heavy lidded eyes and--voice thick and gravelly as sludge--mutters, "you don't know what you're talking about."

juice. Cranberry is okay, but the cocktail mix is all sugar. The sugar in ginger ale or coke as a mixer will cause trouble too, when you bear in mind that liquor is almost all sugar. Alcohol is like sugar's homicidally psychotic cousin. Drink a couple of these and feel your blood sugar spike and then drop like a stone on an empty stomach. So what you want to do is drink your drinks with water or ice. Melted ice is just fine as a mixer. A dash of angostura bitters always makes things go down easy, too. Just drink slowly, eat slowly, keep your chin down, and you're gonna be just fine.