Whenever somebody asks me when Jason and I are going to have children, I like to ask them about their anal warts. Because really, neither topic is appropriate. However, what I do wish people would ask me is how I come up with such fabulous dinners for two on a limited budget, considering that the supermarket is filled with anti-two person household portions. You know, "family size."

It takes some creativity to come up with tasty dinners in healthy portions for two. I'm pretty proud of some of the meals that I've come up with, and I'd like to share:

1.  Ben & Jerry's Bonanza: Take two spoons and one pint of Cherry Garcia's. (Any flavor may be substituted.) Voila! A healthy meal with all the food groups: dairy, fruit, and chocolate!

2.  Spaghetti Surprise: Cook one box of spaghetti and one jar of Paul Newman's Sockarooni spaghetti sauce. I know the portions turn out to be huge, but I sure do like my pasta. Surprise! You've gained five pounds in one sitting!

3. Eggs a la Betty C: Start with two eggs. Add flour, butter, unsweetened cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, vanilla extract, and bake at 350 for 50 minutes. You now have a fine chocolate cake—oops! quiche—that you and your dining partner can enjoy.

4. Taco Bell: It's just cheaper and easier to swing by Taco Bell on 89 cent taco night than to whip these up yourself, especially if it's just you, your hubby, and two sour-cream-stealing cats.

There you have it. It's not easy feeding a family of two adults, one Wednesday, and one Pugsley, but we manage. I only hope that some of my childless friends out there will find inspiration in these treasured recipes. Also, I wouldn't recommend any of these before a Weight Watchers meeting. On those nights, we eat rice cakes for supper.

244.

I nearly slapped my doctor when she told me my cholesterol was 244. Luckily for her, the fat in my blood slowed my killer reflexes, and all I managed was a limp wave. She thought I was trying to be friendly.
  
I honestly don’t understand how this has happened. I try very hard to eat healthy things. Why, just take a look at my meal plan during a typical day:

Breakfast: Oatmeal topped with bacon.
Lunch: Salad topped with ranch dressing, cheese, and bacon.
Dinner: Grilled tilapia wrapped in bacon, with a side of cheese smothered in sour cream.
 
See? Oatmeal, salad, fish … these are all healthy foods!

Since clearly my high cholesterol couldn’t possibly have been caused by something I ate, I decided it must be the result of genetics. I called my parents to yell at them for hardening my arteries.

My mother was sympathetic, until I noticed the way the conversation was heading. Wait a minute—was she actually bragging about her HDL levels? Show off! Although she did have a point—with numbers like that (I have to admit, she impressed me) it became abundantly clear that my father was the culprit.
 
“Hi, Dad. I’ve got a teeny, tiny bone to pick with you,” I seethed when he came to the phone.
 
My father admitted that my cholesterol woes were probably a direct result of being his child. He gave me some good advice, mostly on how to beat the cholesterol screening the next time I had to have one. It was kind of hard to hear him, though.

“Wait a minute! Dad, you’re eating potato chips right now!”

“No, I’m not,” he mumbled through a mouth full of potato chips.

“Yes you are! Those are Cape Cod chips, too. I can tell by the sound of their crunch!”

Dad was busted, so he gave the phone back to Mom. She assured me that there are a couple of light cheeses out on the market that tasted better than, say, boiled socks or dinosaur dung, but not much. I hung up the phone, heart sinking. I had to face the truth: my love affair with cheese was over.
 
I kissed my hunk of Gouda goodbye, and carved the block of cheddar in to the shape of a heart before throwing it out. I’ll admit, it was an emotional breakup. I chewed on a slab of raw bacon to soothe my broken soul. That helped a little.
 
I’m determined to control this thing without medication. I’ve decided to shed a few pounds, so I’m starting the Atkins diet tomorrow. I can’t wait to see my doctor’s face at my next cholesterol screening!

My shoe size has gone up; I keep shopping for long sweaters and baggy skirts; people no longer ask me if I’ve made a mistake when I accidentally wander into the “plus size” section.  It’s time to face the truth: I need to go on a diet (again).

I have heard of people who can eat whatever they want and never gain a pound.  I’m pretty sure these types of people don’t really exist, if only because the rest of us have hunted them down and locked them up in Hostess factories until they develop double chins and saddle bags.

I hate dieting.  HAAAATTTTEEE it!  (And that, for you aspiring writers out there, is how you translate whining to paper.) I hate the idea of eating LESS and exercising MORE.  None of that sounds like fun.  But, as I’ve spent the last four months eating more and exercising less (and lets face it, I was darn close to sedentary to begin with), I have managed to put on 9 pounds in four months.  This may not sound like much, but since I had already put on 7 pounds in six months before that, I’m up almost 20 pounds in less than a year.  

I’ve tried many diets.  I was a big fan of Atkins, since it allows me to eat lots of cheese and bacon, but when I was on it I found myself having dreams in which I would swim in seas of pasta, which just freaked me out.  Plus, my cholesterol shot through the roof, so Atkins is out.

Ditto for South Beach, mostly because their frozen meals taste like cardboard topped with chunky vomit.  Dr. Phil’s diet is also off the table, because he requires you to work hard, make fresh meals every day, and hold yourself accountable for your failures.  That sounds likehard work.  I already am not happy with my weight – why do I want to feel bad about my life choices, too?  No thanks, Phil.  

I’ve decided to return to Weight Watchers, since I’ve done it before and I know it works.  I signed up online this morning, and immediately found that the points system I’d had memorized is completely obsolete.  They’ve completely revamped their program.  AND the coffee with non-dairy creamer (1 PointsPlus for the creamer) and handful of brazil nuts (30 PointsPlus, 5 points for each nut) I’d already eaten this morning had caused me to burn through my entire points allowance for the day, plus some.  Sigh.

The good news is that all fruits are now zero points in value.  Which is very good news for me and my beloved Hostess fruit pies! See, dieting can be fun if you just get a little creative with it…

When you suddenly lose the use of one of your knees due to your misplaced confidence in your ice skating abilities, you gain a whole new outlook on life.  Personally, I now have a healthy appreciation for the fragility of the human body, and have already vowed to live my life a little more carefully.  Sure, I was never one to run a marathon pre-injury, but in the past, Ihad been known to sprint through the grocery store when Ben & Jerry's pints were announced as the manager's special sale of the day.  In the future, I will be sure to walk, not run, to thefrozen food aisle.  It will not be the end of the world if I get there too late to clean them out of Cherry Garcia.  I will simply buy up all of the Chunky Monkey instead and be happy with that.  And I vow to be nice to all of the rabid ladies who ignored the "slippery when wet" signs who will surely be crying as they writhe on the floor, clutching their twisted knees along with their pints of Chubby Hubby.  Smug self-righteousness is no excuse for losing one's ability to empathize, I always say.
Don't judge me.  Ever since being hobbled, I dream about things like ice cream sales a lot.  I have a great deal of time on my hands, and not much to do with it.  For instance, I took a couple of hours the other day to come up with this list of things I miss doing:
1.  Shaving my legs
2.  Standing upright unassisted
3.  Putting on shoes all by my self
4.  Painting my toenails
5.  Wearing pants that fit and look nice, not all loose and 'leg brace lumpy'
6.  Driving a car
7.  Watching a hockey game without wincing or screaming "Slow down before you hurt yourself, for the love of God!" at the television
8.  Going to the bathroom alone
9.  Cooking a meal (this, of course, requires me to be able to do item #2 on this list)
10. Make it through the day without weeping

So for all of you out there who are feeling superior because you have two good knees that bend at will, take this column as a warning: danger lurks where you least expect it.  That innocent-looking treadmill could be an agent of doom.  Walking down the driveway to get the mail could be dangerous and a horrible risk to your well-being. In fact, any sort of exercise is hazardous to your health.  If you really want to be healthy, my best advice is to stay in bed and enjoy a pint of Ben & Jerry'sin the safety of your own home.  The frozen yogurt variety, of course - we are on a health kick here, after all!

 Everybody wants to lose weight, except for that really skinny witch from high school with the freakishly high metabolism.  You know, the one you would sit on every day because you hated her.  I hated her.  I was the one next to you holding her down and force-feeding her a Ho Ho.
The problem with losing weight is that it's hard, and it requires self-discipline.  Neither hard tasks nor tasks that require self-discipline are fun, which is why most people don't do well trying to lose weight.  
I have personally tried every diet out there.  The  Atkins Diet worked for a while, but I began having vivid dreams of giant bowls of pasta begging me to eat them.  Some would have found their little fettuccine mouths squeaking "You know you want me!" alarming, but I found them to be a perfect formation of buttery Parmesan goodness.  My Atkins days were done for.
The South Beach Diet was a little better, because it occasionally allowed for a carb or two.  However, one of the side effects of South Beach is atrociously bad breath, and I found that the cats would urinate spontaneously whenever I tried to lean in for a fuzzy feline kiss.  My boss asked me if I would consider a work-from-home program.  And the reality was, a fresh Hostess fruit pie had never given me halitosis.
Weight Watchers, that old tried and true, tends to work, as long as you count your points religiously.  After a while, I became an expert at reading the calories, fat, and fiber content on the nutritional information label of any food item and calculating the points value in my head. (That Hostess fruit pie?  11 points!  That's almost half a day's worth of food!  So long fruit pie, hello clementine--half a point each.)  
The problem with Weight Watchers is that the higher the fiber count, the lower the points, and I became a fiber fanatic.  Fiber One yogurt (zero points!) and 1/4 cup Fiber One cereal (also zero points) for breakfast, fresh vegetables in vinegar for lunch (zee-ro!), a Vita Top muffin for snack (one point) ... the effect of all this fiber on my system was distressing, to say the least.  I couldn't walk without experiencing excessive flatulence, and my boss asked me if I wanted to consider a work-from-the-bathroom program.  It was just too embarrassing to continue with all this healthy eating.
Sadly, it turns out that there is no miracle solution for losing weight.  It requires eating less and exercising more, no matter which way you cut it.  You just have to resign yourself to working hard at counting calories, avoiding the Hostess outlet, and joining a gym and then actually going to it.

Or abusing laxatives.  That works too.