I’ve always had a sweet-tooth.  I much prefer sweet tasting foods and beverages over spicy-hot or bitter or sour.  So it would stand to reason that I prefer Pepsi-Cola over Coca-Cola; the taste is much sweeter.  I can remember quite a few years ago that Coca-Cola changed its recipe to be sweeter in order to compete better with Pepsi.  What an uproar it caused among loyal Coca-Cola drinkers!  I remember that for a time, to try to keep the consumers happy Coca-Cola then started selling both recipes, the original AND the new one; they marketed the original as “Coke Classic.”  To be honest, I DID like the new recipe better because it WAS sweeter and tasted much like Pepsi.  However, I now tend to drink the Pepsi-Free soda because it is caffeine free and I try to reduce my caffeine intake as much as possible.  That being said, when I drink a diet soda, (and I avoid diet sodas because they have a nasty aftertaste) I think that the diet Coke tastes better than the diet Pepsi!  The aftertaste is not as nasty.

Well, today is Valentine’s Day, and I hope everyone has a good one.  I bought little boxes of chocolates and Valentine’s day cards for my kids and my hubby and put them by their breakfast bowls for them to see when they came to the kitchen to eat.  I hope to eat dinner out tonight at Applebees!  We’ll have to leave early to beat the dinner rush because it’s a Saturday!

My family doesn’t eat a lot of fruit.  They tend to feel that it is “inconvenient” to have to deal with peels, seeds, slicing the fruit, juice running down your arm and pits.  (Sigh.)  So I try to make eating fruit easier by buying little gadgets that make it easier to deal with these things.  After all, fruit is a healthy snack, right?

So I recently bought several little gadgets that are called “orange peelers.”  They look a lot like a toothbrush, but have a sharp point that you use to score the orange peel to make it easier for the user to slide another part of the peeler under the peel to remove it.  I thought that these were portable enough to tuck into a lunch box with an orange, and simple and safe enough for even older children to use.  (By older I mean at least 12 years old.) 

Well, I had no idea how dangerous those little peelers can be!  In the past week both my husband and my adult son have sliced open their hands when they were using these little gadgets while trying to peel an orange!  So I want to caution people to be really careful when using these things; they are not as “safe” as they seem!  And if you are thinking about buying an orange peeler, please be very aware that they probably are NOT safe for young children, and may not even be safe for husbands!

If you have a big family, I suspect you know all too well the stress of hosting a big family gathering. Whether it is a sit down dinner for everyone or a buffet or a pot luck, getting ready to feed a large crowd takes a lot of planning and energy.Time to roll up our sleeves and get cooking.

We hope to have a few of the closer family members stop by this afternoon and then we’ll host another get-together on New Year’s Day for the other family members who can’t make it here on Christmas Day.

Here’s hoping our holidays are warm and bright. Merry Christmas!

Best wishes to you and your family for a wonderful day of feasting and thankfulness. Maybe a parade in the morning and some football in the afternoon would be nice, too. Or get up extremely early and go deer hunting. Whichever way you choose to take advantage of the holiday, I hope it works out well for you and that you enjoy your day.