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Now, I realize despite Pinterest 's total addictive quality to a certain type of woman that not everyone knows what it is. The Brooklyn Museum Shop is on there, and when I tried explaining to our shop manager what the site could do and why she should get on there too, it didn't go very well. "Strangers can discover a cake I made last July and 300 people read the post in one afternoon!" Now that is power. But I read on Jezebel yesterday that not all the Pinterest power is being used for good. This is not surprising since I saw pro-anorexia videos on YouTube years ago. Maybe Instagram is next . What is interesting is all the backlash on the site itself. Here are some good ones . And a story on Business Insider . Another story on Jezebel . A selection of some of the pins . And finally, Huffington Post . More of the anti-pins here . My favorite was this one: Now, you can't police the internet. I wrote about pressures to lose weight while I was planning my...

Today I went to see Joy the Baker at her book signing at Brooklyn Kitchen in Greenpoint. It was ridiculously fun. Check us out: Check out her adorable message signed inside my book: I love her. I was on the fence whether to go or not, and I happened to watch the video on her about page again. I have got to say - the story about her dad and the pie crust gets me every time! Also "I hope you like it - I made it for you!" Ahhh! I just wanted to go so bad! I met some elderly women on the train who couldn't understand why I was on a trip by myself ( perhaps that is a generational difference ) and also could not understand me traveling a few hours to see a food blogger. "She has a blog." Then they said "Is she on PBS?" "No." "The Food Network?" "No, there is a blog." "So this is her first book?" "Yes" "But it is all desserts!" "That's not true, there are a couple of smoothies....

I've been talking a bit about the Pioneer Woman lately. I met her in NYC and I made her doughnuts . Here is a really interesting article about her from the New York Times magazine .  I love all this talk of "Real Housewives" and peeling open the plastic on the tapioca pudding as a huge contrast to Ree Drummond's life: " It takes only a few minutes of voyeuristically perusing Drummond’s pastoral pleasuredome, with its gorgeous photographs of Drummond cooking dinner for her rugged cowboy husband or home-schooling her four towheaded children, before you realize that you are a failure. Gazing at photos of Drummond’s kids riding their horses under a cloud-dappled Maxfield Parrish sky, you can see that, in comparison, you fail your brood every day. Because as you grumble and boil mac and cheese from a box and your kids beg to watch the latest Katy Perry video on your laptop, this woman fries chicken and teaches her children algebra and shakes her luscious ...

Now for a break from our regularly scheduled programming I'd like to take some time to defend my girl Taylor Swift's good name. For fun, go take a listen to this interview here . Check out what our friend Amanda has to say about it . Here is Irin Carmon, the woman who was on the radio with Caitlin Flanagan, and what she has to say about it . Now, it is clear to me that there are many, many things wrong with Flanagan's arguments. She clearly doesn't pay much attention to facts. But two things that she did hold up to support her arguments were Taylor Swift and Disney Princess movies. I might argue that those princess movies don't even send very constructive messages to young girls. Belle in "Beauty and the Beast" has to leave her community and family to be locked in a cell by a beast that growls at her, and then in the end when she decides to stay there because he turns better looking, and we are all supposed to cheer. I feel a lot of my friends pick ...

Just for fun I'd like to talk about some foods that sound gross to me. So I am out here dogsitting in Massachusetts, and my coworker cooks almost exclusively with mixes. As a person who cooks from scratch frequently with actual ingredients,  I didn't even know half of these mixes existed. Call me crazy - but I didn't know you could have a box of dry ingredients that makes a dish of scalloped potatoes if you just add water! How, exactly does that work? She has tons and tons of slow cooker mixes, but I am not going to judge those because they just seem like packets of seasonings. I shouldn't make fun. Her doctor is always telling her to eat healthier, and we are always trying to come up with healthy foods that she may like. But she really seems to be the type of person who judges whether foods are good or not based on what is not in them (spices, vinegar, anything mushy), than what they contain (healthy ingredients with actual nutrients). When I was over here on my...

 This weekend we saw the movie Young Adult . I enjoyed it much more and laughed much harder than I probably should have. I'm turning 30 next month, and to me this character really hit home in that she sounded like half of my friends (of course if you ignore the whole over-the-top-crazy thing). Some people come up with names for their future children when they are 8 years old, get married right out of college at age 22, and don't understand at all people who don't want kids. Some people, on the other hand, are well into their 30s, wear Hello Kitty shirts, gulp Maker's Mark, and refer to babies as "it". The first group of people think that the second group just need to meet the right person, have a couple of kids and settle down, but the truth is that if this character (as a member of the second group) had a kid she would probably treat it as negligently as she treats that poor little dog of hers. I thought that it was interesting the way food was treated i...

For some reason I am all of a sudden feeling very down on the holidays, and Jezebel informs me that it is ok for me to complain about it. Where to start? Every year I read the InStyle Magazine gift guide , and every year I wonder who it is meant for. Are there women in the world who spend $2,000 on a Louis Vuitton fur scarf for their friends? Is the gift guide meant for me to hand the magazine to my husband? Does he also want to read about Amy Adams's parenting philosophy and how to perfect the cat eye makeup look? If you want to give me a gift guide, InStyle magazine, here is what I am in the market for: something along the lines of tins of cookies, ornaments, or small, cheap fashion accessories for my coworkers, books or cds for our dads, maybe a reasonably priced piece of jewelry or lotion for our mothers, and something for my husband that hopefully will make the house cleaner like a wine rack or bookshelf. In fact, I can't remember in my life a girl friend of mine bu...

We have some freelance photographers at my job who come to shoot the art work who come all the way from Northampton, MA. They bring delicious pastries from Bread Euphoria . It is sort of ridiculous how much the Fruit and Nut scone from this place has over the last two years become a big highlight of my month. Today they brought them (as expected), and I was so excited.... except that my favorite scone seemed now to have the flavor of banana in it. I can't be sure, but that is pretty much the only food I hate. I guess you can't really taste bananas baked into things, but this faint suspicion really took away from the excitement of the scone for me. I HATE bananas to an irrational extent. In kindergarten I ate one and threw up immediately, and since then the mere scent of them can make me completely nauseous. The mushy, sticky texture, the way the smell of them takes over a room - who likes these things?? (Lots of people apparently, also they are apparently high in potassium, ...

"Somewhere between emaciation and obesity lies good health. And somewhere between those extremes there is also a definition of beauty that is inclusive, sound, and honest."-Robin Givhan My experience as a bride was marked with questioning the wide array of expectations associated with the experience. I was very against going on any kind of crazy diet .  What I didn't anticipate is that when you are super busy and slightly nervous you do happen to eat less and you can't help it. After the wedding I couldn't help but think that there was nothing more relaxing than not planning a wedding. Funny enough, I also found myself much more perceptive of food smells and felt much more excited about all the treats we normally have laying around in the office ( pastries! truffles! ) that I didn't even have time to notice while thinking about tablescapes and place cards (even as I tried to not be the person who cared much about those types of things). For the c...

I thought this article was very interesting. I remember when I was younger in the 1990s when being healthy meant eating processed foods that had the label "fat free" on the package. Of course, because people were thinking these items were fat free they ate larger portions than they would normally eat. Also, often more sugar (or corn syrup) was added to replace the fat. I remember Olestra and Snackwells , neither of which ever seemed that tasty or healthy. I am glad that according to that article people seem to be more focused on eating foods high in vitamins instead of just buying whatever has "fat free" on the label. Another problem when I was growing up seemed to be the label "reduced fat", as these items could still be relatively high in fat as long as they had less than the original version of the product. All around this article has good news, including: "Last year, more than half (55 percent) of grocery shoppers prepared more meals at home tha...

Today I would like to talk about "Brideorexia" as discussed in this article . According to this book "the way we marry is who we are". And I would like to think as a society we are better than expecting young women who are getting married to completely change themselves in many ways in order to make a commitment of love and unity, and to celebrate the merging of two families. This book makes the argument that modern brides freaking out about losing large amounts of weight is related to the much older traditions of bridal fasting (which can be found in several different religions and cultures), and cleansing , including the Jewish mikveh .  A woman simply has to change her facebook status to "engaged" to get only ads related to losing weight for a year. I am so used to these ads, that once when Scott was logged into facebook I noticed that he had no ads for losing weight, and I was shocked. I am told it is worse when you change your status to "marr...

I read an interesting article this weekend in the current issue of Every Day with Rachel Ray .  The article is called "What America Eats: The Lunch Edition". It discusses how half of Americans eat at their desks, but according to the magazine's polls one in two respondents eat homemade lunches every weekday, and the amount of women carrying in their own lunch has spiked 33 percent in 10 years. I would say that their polls are probably not that accurate because only a person who is already interested in food will buy a food magazine, but I think the sentiment is important to promote. The article mentions a shift in recent years from people thinking things are healthy simply because they are low in calories or low fat, to them actually becoming focused on the nutrients in healthy ingredients. The magazine polled readers and interviewed industry experts, and learned that respondents are bringing in more frequently fresh fruit, salads, and that men in particular are more li...