Our four-day fundraiser begins tonight!

Less than a few hours are left until the charity fundraising event for the family of Anousone "Ped" Phanthavong begins! Angel2Diva Boutique will be taking over the party room and will be offering designer jeans, shirts, purses and accessories for sale, with 20% of all sales going to the family.

If you are not into designer clothes, there will be envelopes and a box so you can still make a donation if you like. Anyone making a purchase or donation will get to try some free sesame ball appetizers.

The fundraiser begins tonight, Thursday, November 3, from 5 pm until 9 pm, and will continue each night through Sunday, November 6. We hope you can make it, and we hope you find something you like.

Confessions of a recovering sugar junkie

I thought I heard on the radio that today was Anti-Sugar Day. Since Halloween is tomorrow, that seemed to make sense to me but further research showed that the Internet has not heard of National Anti-Sugar Day, although there is a growing anti-sugar movement. The Internet instead says that tomorrow is National Candy Corn Day. I think the Internet is pro-sugar, especially since Friday was National Chocolate Day, this Friday is National Candy Day, Saturday is National Doughnut Day and Monday, November 7, is National Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day.

I'm guessing the Bittersweet Chocolate day is to help Halloween candy junkies come down slowly.

I used to be a sugar junkie. I blame the Indians because they were the first to turn sugarcane juice into edible crystalline carbohydrates (i.e., sucrose, lactose and fructose).

When I was a sugar junkie, I would drink regular Coke (one ounce of sugar per bottle), and every meal was followed by dessert, usually pie or ice cream. I knew the best bakeries for cakes and pies, and, not surprisingly, I weighed half again as much as I do now.

I gave up sugar when I started working out. Ped was very good about cooking healthy meals for me with lots of protein, healthy fat and vegetables. (Hmm, sounds a lot like Thai cooking!) Eating right didn't make me lose weight, but eating right made sure that the weight I burned off through exercise stayed off.

Enjoy your Halloween week sugar binge, but when the sugar rush wears off, give some thought to restricting your sugar intake. The connection between excessive sugar intake and obesity, diabetes and other health problems is well established, but it takes will power to avoid getting too much sugar in your diet, especially since National Vanilla Cupcake, Indian Pudding, Spicy Hermit Cookie, Peanut Butter Fudge, Parfait, Cake, Bavarian Cream Pie, Chocolates, and Mousse Days are all coming up in November! (Trust me, you do not want to know about December's scheduled sugar.)