In Which We Unapologetically Eat a Lot of Chocolate

In it’s pure dark form, chocolate has indeed been shown to be “heart smart,” with more antioxidants than black tea or red wine, as well as lots of magnesium, iron, and potassium (all vital to women’s health). It can also ease anxiety and depression, as it contains serotonin and theobromine, which act on brain receptors …


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A Trip to California for Your Mouth

I went to college in San Jose, California and for a while, I lived just a few blocks from the San Jose State University campus. The neighborhood was a hodgepodge of working class Chinese and Mexican families and students. It wasn’t unusual to see a truck unloading big sides of pork – whole pigs split …


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Fish Wednesday: Tasty Carbon Footprint Edition

My fondness for far away places means that my comfort foods are a bizarre smorgasbord of Indian and Asian style curries, European baked goods, taco truck carbohydrates, and mundane supermarket standards like Crackin’ Oat Bran (the crack cocaine of cereals), mac and cheese, and Snyder’s pretzels. Mr NEV, bless him, has come to embrace the …


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On BlogHer: Next Year in Kaliningrad Oblast

For about two years, I’ve blogged about travel for BlogHer, the women’s blogging network. I started as a volunteer writing about Europe while I was in Austria – I was bored and lonely, it seemed like a good use of my time. I tendered my resignation once, shortly after I’d returned to the US, but the landscape had shifted at BlogHer and the travel slot was open – I was excited to take it. Not long after I switched to writing about travel, BlogHer started paying their writers – a generous per post amount by the standards I’ve seen. While I’ve had random bouts of fatigue, in general, I’ve really enjoyed the gig. Not that long ago I dropped a line to the BlogHer founders thanking them for keeping me on, that’s how much I liked it. Writing about travel for BlogHer has been natural work, easy for me, and given my erratic work history, I’ve really appreciated the small but steady income stream. It’s been a great little gig.


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