Anne Fitzgerald, Elastic Waist’s Blog

It always comes back to the chili, this time of year. Warm, warming, the kind of food that's perfect for a cold and dark night. One pot, cooks up quick, leaves a ton of leftovers that get better and better as the days go by. I collect chili recipes the way I collect shoes--indiscriminately and with glee, to be sorted out later when cooler heads prevail. But this recipe Read More »

After lunch, I crave non-specific sweet things. I believe they call it "dessert" in some circles. Annoying magazine articles that reveal the secret diet tips that will change your life (and your butt!) suggest that you will go to heck if you have dessert, and instead, you should finish off your meal with a burst of nutrition by grabbing a fabulous apple! To neutralize those pesky cravings! And I have always hated that because a banana goes nowhere near the spot that needs hitting, and oh my god, chocolate is not the devil, people, and sometimes, I am going to eat cake and I will love it.

You probably never use the words delicious, dessert and diet-friendly in the same sentence. But you will, once you try these spa sweets. Read More »

I always love recipes that not only promise lightning fast results, but give you a very specific time frame in which they will be completed: you will have a steaming hot dish on your table in exactly 20 minutes! they say. And I always wonder, do they take into account how long it takes to assemble your ingredients? To figure out where the heck you left your mustard powder, which you haven't used since the Clinton administration, to find a clean knife, to eye all your bowls and very carefully and with great deliberation select the correct size? Read More »

I like Playboy. It's got really good articles and fiction to lie about reading, and it is generally classy, as far as magazines whose main purpose and point of existing is to showcase pictures of naked women lounging around and waiting to be rodgered by someone as virile as you. The Playboy bunny appears to me to be as impossibly genetically blessed and idealized as any woman in the media is, except that unlike so many "celebrities"and models, they've got flesh on their bodies. I don't recall ever seeing a visible ribcage on a Playboy model, and they are the living embodiment of t*ts and ass, a testament to the idea that maybe men really don't actually want scary-scrawny size 0 women--maybe they're willing to go as high as a size 4 or 6! As long as you've got legs for miles and boobs like buoys.
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This year I did all my holiday shopping online, over the course of just a few hours. Some time in front of the computer, a couple of clicks of the mouse, and I've got the whole thing wrapped up and ready to go, with no fuss and no muss. A week later, though, I'm realizing--I miss the fuss. I miss the muss. I put a lot of thought into what I bought everyone, chose everything carefully, sent it of with a lot of love and the best intentions, but Read More »

You know who probably has some inkling of how to really watch your grocery dollars, some good advice regarding shopping smart and cooking well and healthily with a budget in mind? My guess would be a good, old-fashioned home economist. The Times Online is running a series in which two food experts examine a household's food and cooking habits, budget and spending patterns, and then entirely revamp and renew their menus, nutritional profiles and cash layout. And in the end Read More »

You guys! I am some kind of pioneer, or psychic, or something! I said hey, we should come up with exciting new ways to exercise because the old routines are boring and everyone needs the old shot in the arm sometimes, am I right? Of course I am. Read More »