Eat to lose

Weight-loss wisecracks that work

Don’t eat anything white (unless it’s a raw fruit or vegetable).
Don’t eat anything served in styrofoam.
Don’t eat anything you can swallow without chewing.
Don’t eat anything with a crust.
Don’t eat anything that melts.
Don’t eat when it’s dark out.

If the house were on fire, these are the kitchen tools I’d take:

• My teeny, tiny mini-whisk (great for small jobs such as beating one egg, making a bit of cornstarch slurry, attacking a stray flour clump in a sauce).
• The olive-wood slotted spatula (strong but easy on nonstick surfaces).
The Le Crueset Dutch oven (roomy enough for anything from a crawfish bowl to a pot of soup, excellent heat conduction).
• Kitchen parchment (never scrub a cookie sheet again; oven-steam packets of fish and vegetables).
• The flat strainer my friend Marylene gave me and the cup-shaped one I bought myself (whisking scum from atop boiling soups and stews, fishing out that last bit of pasta that doesn’t want to cooperate, straining without losing the cooking water).
My grandmother’s wooden spoon made from some iron-like hardwood, with a deep bowl and an extra-long handle.
My nesting crockery mixing bowls from Portugal, in gorgeous blue (they gently hold the heat in rising bread or mashed potatoes and are pretty to look at).