Foods to Eat When You Are Stressed

Ruth stresses, whether to crunch or to slurp? 

Are you the kind of stress eater that needs to chew to relieve stress? Do you reach for something to crunch when you munch? Or do you need the soothing melt in your mouth feeling? We are hot wired to satisfy our emotional needs through food. As we enter one of the most stressful times of year think about how to create healthy choices, and keep these suggestions in your cupboard.

Second Chances, Happy Endings and Free Stuff

Caryl adds: Plus everything you need to know about creative aging in 10 steps! 

Frieda is the leading lady (one might say diva dog) in Jon Kat'z  new book Second Chance Dog: A Love Story 

This is a dog story. It’s not my dog story. Mine is tragic. When my children were small, they campaigned for a dog. After much consideration and a written plea by my older daughter listing reasons why our family needed a dog and what kind of breed would meet her parents’ criteria—not too big, not too small, doesn’t shed etc.-- my husband and I gave in. Friday, a medium-size, non-shedding—(we forgot to mention no baying at the moon!) beagle with floppy ears, soulful eyes and a tail that stood up like a flag on the back of a bicycle, came to live with us. Fast forward a few years: my husband decides to take a job in Prague, and I am left with two children, a demanding job and an animal menagerie: a cat (Fritz), two birds (Feather and Sunshine), a hampster (Petey) and Friday, a dog that needed to be walked on the mean streets of New York late at night. I admit with shame, remorse and some embarrassment, I couldn’t handle it by myself. I couldn't leave my children alone to walk a dog no matter how persuasive were those soulful eyes. So Friday went to live with my in-laws in Cleveland where she enjoyed a fenced-in back yard, home-cooked meals and the adoration of empty-nesters.

But that’s not the dog story I am here to tell you.  The dog story I want to share is a happy one—and it’s about Frieda, the dog pictured above, and how she brought together two Second Lifers who learned about the resilience of love from a four-legged outcast who ran wild in the Adirondacks until she was rescued.