This is a user created food network that allows you to trade and search recipes, create a profile, add favorite recipes to your favorite recipes book and even create a shopping list based on the recipe(s) you choose. I wish I could make a simple statement like “this is the facebook of food lovers”, but it is not really like that. Your personal profile on Food Connect is not as important, socially, as the recipes you upload. So while this is a social networking tool in a sense, it is more like social collaboration and exchange. Food Connect is more a tool, than social networking. Creating a profile helps you connect to other people’s recipes and keep them bookmarked and handy. It also creates a custom shopping list based on the recipes you choose, which some could find handy. However, it does not necessarily help you find a date to feed all this home cooked food to! Food connect really connects you to food, and leaves it up to the user to find someone to feed it to.

So the DatingSOS.com verdict is easy:

www.foodconnect.com is the ultimate tool for every foodie.

What makes foodconnect.com so great? These and many other features:

- Free nutritional analysis, for all recipes on the site and every recipe you submit.
- Share your recipes with your friends and other foodies.
- Discuss recipe ideas and techniques.
- Plan your meal and easily print off your shopping list.
- Create the perfect dinner party

All of this and much more and best of all its all free. Get to foodconnecct.com to get started today.

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Anyhow, without spoiling too much more of the plot, 27 dresses may be a great date movie if you are seeing it with a girlfriend, or an extremely metro-sexual or gay friend. Definitely keep the jock away from this one, and enjoy it like chocolate: in all it’s chick-flick glory just like you enjoy your other guilty pleasures.

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The first free hug campaign was in Aberdeen. Whoever claims that “the youth today” doesn’t care the way previous generations did may just have to eat their worlds. The free hug movement was started by teenagers who believe there is too much disconnectivity between people, and a lack of human contact.

This is likely very true. After all, unspoken rules govern our social and professional lives. You’re probably not likely to hug a co-worker today, much less your boss. Perhaps that’s ok: physical contact in the workplace opens the door to all sorts of misunderstandings, but there is no need to stay business-like in our private lives too, is there?

The fact that we need to make hugging into a campaign to draw attention to the state of our modern lives is a sad eye-opener.

The saddest thing is that we are forcing our kids to estrange themselves from hugging from a very young age: a few years ago stories started popping up about schools that ban hugging. What has the world come to? One reason is cited to be that kids have to “learn proper manners”. Excuse me, but these kids were not having sex in the hallways, they were giving each other a HUG. Really…what’s wrong with a hug? How can we expect these kids, who are banned from all physical contact, to grow up and become loving and affectionate adults? Some people have to learn that by removing everything that is human from schools, such as physical contact or even cleaning out all traces of religion, will not create a better environment. It will create a stale, sterile and empty place without any warmth, stimulation or discussion.

If even hugging is offensive, then I can also see why there are people campaigning to remove all mentions of the word “God” from all textbooks, TV and other media sources. Are they so afraid that they need these concepts not to exist? What is their view for our world then, a world without hugging that will spiral into something resembling the most extreme science-fiction societies?

Hugging should be allowed and embraced everywhere. It’s fun, and it’s good for you. Don’t just hug in hard or good times, hug someone today… just because!

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However, very tall ladies stock up on flats: legs that are 10% longer than the average is considered as less attractive. Perhaps it gives us too much of a flamingo-like look. Works well on birds, but seeing a girl who seems to be all legs and head… is really not that sexy.

Next time you want to dress to impress on a date, consider adding just a few inches (that’s what the extra 5% practically translates to) to your height. Or… next time you need an excuse to shop for new Manolo’s or Louboutin’s (my guilty secret wish), do it in the name of beauty!

Imagine: “I need my beauty-shoe-shopping-trip” could replace the “I need my beauty sleep” excuse.

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The Harbourfront Centre’s World Routes, of which this celebration is a part, accentuates some of the diverse cultures Toronto is made up of. Specially for the Hot & Spicy festival local and international chefs will come out and cook up a range of tasty treats. As a side dish there will be some Brazilian music served up with fused Korean drumming and some dance.

For anyone living near the waterfront this is a real treat, for the rest of us it’s certainly worth traveling to!

When?:
Aug 10-12th 2007

Where?:
Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay W., Toronto Ontario, M5J 2G8
Phone: (416) 973-4000
Fax: (416) 954-0366

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It’s not sexy to act like you have a small package instead. If you want to impress your date/girlfriend/wife, try this…

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Use your inner competitor to your advantage to keep track of your progress. Whether you are exercising, finding a new job or changing multiple areas in your life like me. Keeping a record of what you’ve done will help you “out do” yourself and achieve more, in less time.

Because exercise and health are big topics on my list this year, I am keeping track of my fitness progress using the “Body by Glamour” program. I’m motivated to exercise more than I did last week and see an upward trend in the graphs the site automatically creates. Although I’m currently only running, the website also offers a number of different free exercise plans and eating tips. You can also invite buddies to participate and motivate. My buddy list is actually empty, but if any of you are going to be using the site, drop me a line and I’ll be happy to add you to my list.

If getting your heart rate up is not part of your ambitions this year, but you are hoping to achieve other things, consider writing a blog about your daily or weekly accomplishments. Whether anyone reads it (you can keep it private!) is irrelevant. Writing down goals and then writing about the steps you are taking to come closer to them works as positive reinforcement. By doing this, you make yourself accountable for your success.

Other column entries in this series:
[postsincategory#15]

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Today I came to a stunning discovery that healed me from my previous excuses not to run/exercise: the feeling that I “cannot run”. The proof I was drawing from to support this often-used-comment is the fact that when I start running, I can’t finish a song (i.e. run for more than 3 min) without walking to catch my breath. Now, I think that aside from my heart having to keep up there was more to my problem than just my level of fitness: it was a psychological block.

How did I solve the problem? I kept running! Certain songs on my iPod made me not think, and thus in a sense forget that I already should have been tired and walking. I think I was so used to thinking I “can’t” run, that I would stop and walk even when my heart rate was fine and my breathing was in check.

Having said that, I do have the run-walk-run-walk pattern when I first start out. This is perhaps also the reason I previously gave up; I couldn’t run far without feeling like my heart was going crazy. Today I discovered that after “warming up” I just keep on running. I don’t go very fast, but at least I managed to run almost constantly on my return trip (only stopped for a light once!).

Running stats for the day:
- 4.16 miles
- 450 calories burned, approximately (I think this assumes I ran a constant speed, which I did not…)

Want to track your own run? Map it here. There is a neat saving function that allows you to save the map and your stats, make sure you copy the URL though, because there is no way to go back to it otherwise.

Here is a map of my run today, half of it was in walk-run-walk mode, but the other half was constant running:

All “Best Year of my Life” Columns:
[postsincategory#15]

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However, although lunch-with-a-friend may not immediately seem like something I would do as part of this “Best Year of my Life” plan, it actually is: previously, I went through a few years without a vacation, hardly ever saw my friends and was generally miserable. Now, within the past year this has changed, but part of this whole new me I am creating is the sensibility to prioritize what is important to me. What adds value to my life? In this case, seeing my friend made me happy. It did add value, and the fact that I resisted choosing the pizza on the menu and opted for a grilled chicken panini instead also made me proud. Clearly, the fact that the lactic acid hasn’t worked itself out of my system yet worked as a reminder and helped me made the “right” choice there.

I am also curious to see whether eating healthier, without going hungry, will make a difference in combination with the running. Fact is: I love food. I love to eat it more than I love to prepare it, but I cannot go on conventional starvation diets because of this. Today, the massive burst of protein and salad I ate kept me so full I only had a small bite for dinner.

Although professionally speaking I didn’t get a whole lot done today, I did formulate plans as to what I want to do within the next couple of days and updated my iPod running playlist with the free songs
I downloaded yesterday.

Here is my quick tip for success: change the way you talk to yourself! I almost just wrote “things I need to do”, but there is really no need to speak of. I want to do them. For me, only.

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