"cool" news and stories

If you have ever been to one of these ice cream parlors that allows you to "mix in" toppings with your ice cream, you know that it can be a great deal of fun to create your own blends and that fresh toppings make better additions than whatever already comes in packaged ice creams. Vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries, for example, is much more interesting than store-bought strawberry ice cream. There is no need to go out to make your own creations, though - you can do it at home! David Lebovitz's homemade rocky road ice cream, which was found on Flickr, is made simply by mixing mini marshmallows and almonds (though some of those nuts look suspiciously peanutty to me) into high quality chocolate ice cream. I have no doubt that this concoction tastes better than prepacked rocky road ice creams, which never seem to have quite enough marshmallows.

For something a little lighter, I like to mix things into frozen yogurt - like brownies. Yum!

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As though we don’t have enough dieting fads thrown at us from all directions, there is a new one which suggests that the color of your walls could be making you fat. According to dietician Lisa Dorfman, blues and greens will make you less hungry than warmer colors, like reds. Lighting is also important to dieters, as those who eat in dim light are more likely to binge.

Excuse me while I take a brief break to paint my kitchen. But what of the non-paintable surfaces? Does laminate make you feel full, or should you use a tile floor?

This is the most ridiculous dieting idea that we have seen yet. Changing the color scheme of your house in an attempt to alter your diet is like deciding to buy air freshener for you car after it's been in an accident: it doesn't really hurt anything, but it doesn't directly address the problem in the way that eating less food (or getting the car repaired) would. Putting aside the issue of actual color choice, there is one thing about painting your walls that will keep you out of the kitchen for a while: very few people actually enjoy the smell of wet paint and you certainly won't want to be eating in a freshly painted kitchen. Just try not to head for the nearest fast food place while you wait for your cool, calming kitchen to dry.

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Your son or daughter never eats bread crusts and refuses to tough either peas or pasta sauce. Picky eater, right? Maybe not. As children age they develop preferences about their food, based on flavor, texture and, eventually, political and nutritional preferences. Simply because a child refuses a food once, they are not necessarily a picky eater. Often, a food will have to be offered to a toddler or child from 5 to 10 times before they become accustomed to it. The kids who eat the foods are not really picky eaters. No child has been fooled into eating a carrot because it was crunchy like a potato chip – and any parent whose child was “tricked” into that had a child that wasn’t entirely averse to the carrot in the first place.

The really picky eaters are the ones who refuse to eat anything beyond boxed macaroni and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches well into their teens, possibly into adulthood. These eaters become more and more reluctant to try new foods.

But there is one thing that can convince them, even when parents cannot: the “cool factor.”