There’s a simple way to tell if your Nutella addiction has gotten out of control …
Repeat after us: There is no such thing as too much Nutella.
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Going gluten-free at breakfast doesn’t have to be a compromise. Sure most bread is off-limits, and muffins or pastries made with wheat flour are a no-go, but cutting these items out shouldn’t feel like a sacrifice when there are so many wonderful foods to eat instead.
Many favorite breakfast foods, like eggs and smoothies, are naturally gluten-free. For those that aren’t, there are a lot of rewarding ways around your wheat habit. Quinoa makes a great breakfast cereal, hot or cold. Gluten-free flours — like coconut, chickpea or almond — are the building blocks of flavorful baked goods that rival anything made with wheat flour. Quiches can go crustless, granola can go grainless, and leftover rice makes a great porridge.
For a killer morning sans gluten, look no further than the 19 recipes below. They’ll make you forget all about bagels — or at least make it easier to go without them.
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Photo credit: Getty Images/Johner RF
There’s a lot more to the grill than charring hot dogs and flipping hamburgers. Exquisite fish dinners can be prepared on the grates of a grill. Veggies get a welcome smokiness. And don’t even get us started on the wonderful things charcoal does to a steak.
If you’re going to be getting fancy with the grilling menu, it’s a good idea to make sure you have all the necessary equipment for delicious success. For example, a fish grilling basket keeps the tender filets intact. Or a rib rack, which cooks meat to perfection. Or even a whole new grill, because you deserve it.
Cook’s Illustrated put together a list of grilling gear they are crazy about, and it is spot on. Check out our three favorites below, then head over to Cook’s Illustrated for the complete list of must-have grilling products. Your summer will taste better because of it.
Read the rest of the list at Cook’s Illustrated.
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The 141st Kentucky Derby is this weekend, which can only mean one thing: plenty of hats and excess mint julep drinking will soon be upon us.
Over the years, the “Greatest Two Minutes In Sports” has attracted huge crowds both in the grandstands in Louisville and at bars all over the country. Attendees come dressed to the nines in their derby best, and from the looks of these shots from the ’80s and early ’90s, they’ve been doing so for quite some time.
From the good, to the bad, to the just plain excessive, the day is just as much about style as it is about horse racing. Check out the fashionable fun below.
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We here at The Huffington Post are still in awe of the Zac Posen dress Michelle Obama wore to the 2015 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. What really made the first lady’s sparkly ensemble shine was her shiny, curly hairdo.
We haven’t seen Obama with her hair styled in textured curls quite like this before, but it was a fitting choice for the star-studded affair. Deep burgundy lipstick and false eyelashes added the final touch to this sophisticated look.
Check out FLOTUS’ gorgeous curly hair below, and see which other celebrities made our best beauty look this week.
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Soup dumplings are a Chinese dish that combine two excellent foods — soup and dumplings — into one. The pillowy rounds resemble the ordinary dumpling in appearance, but in addition to a meat or veggie filling, they’re pumped with soup.
Iirena/Flickr
The steaming broth inside the dumpling keeps its filling moist, flavorful and hot. And that’s precisely why it can’t be eaten like a regular dumpling.
“They’re really difficult to eat,” Melissa Chan, a manager and owner of Brooklyn Wok Shop, told The Huffington Post. “They look like regular dumplings, so you pop it into your mouth, and then you get burned. … People don’t realize it’s supposed to be scorching hot.”
Chan explained that if you wait for the soup to cool, the dumpling skin doesn’t taste as good. You’re meant to eat them fresh, but they aren’t supposed to burn you.
There are a few steps to follow in order to successfully enjoy a soup dumpling burn free. Start by biting off a little piece of the dumpling to puncture a small opening. Then, drink the soup out of that opening. Once you’ve slurped up the liquid inside, pick up the dumpling with your chopsticks, dip it gently into its accommodating sauce, if available, and eat. If you’re more of a visual learner, check out Brooklyn Wok Shop’s guide below, which breaks down this delicious process step-by-step:
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This week, there were many stylish A-listers who made our best-dressed list. Not only did each celeb look divine, but they also taught us some important style lessons along the way.
Scarlett Johansson showed us how to wear white before Memorial Day, Brooklyn Decker played with proportions and Michelle Obama rocked prints like a pro.
Check out our favorite looks of the week and let us know if you agree with our picks.
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1. If you gain weight, some of it will go to your boobs.
2. After 50 it isn’t just your ears and nose that get bigger, so do some of your lady bits.
Last month five mariachi singers rushed to the table where my husband Henry and I dined. They tripped, fell and were never seen again.
I think they fell into my vagina.
I can’t be entirely sure because I didn’t feel a thing. But sometimes in the shower I hear the faint echo of “Quan tan ameda o sea Quan tan ameda.”
3. In your 50s you’ll take orgasms any way you can get them.
Let’s face it, people get very competitive about their orgasms, as if they were climbing Mount Everest.
Did you summit? Or did you only make it to base camp? Did you need an oxygen tank? Grappling hooks? A sherpa? Or were you able to summit barefoot reading Holy Sanskrits in Nirvanic Bliss?
My orgasms have always been like calculus. I have to stand on the big toe of my left foot, hips cantilevered toward Mecca, while singing peyote-inspired incantations over a burning sage bush as doves are released north-by-northwest into the Aurora Borealis.
These days I just don’t care about orgasms. If they happen great, if they don’t happen great. I GOT NOTHING LEFT TO PROVE, people!
4. After 50, sex is no longer as risky and may, in fact, keep us alive longer.
Unless we’re Susan Sarandon or on a hormone cocktail, it’s unlikely we’ll become teen mothers. And we’re more likely to die from heart arrhythmia than STDs.
At our age, sex pencils out cost-effective. It alleviates stress, boosts immunities and even lowers the risk of cancer.
And for those of us who are religious and having sex out of wedlock we don’t care if we’re going to burn in the everlasting fires of Hell, we just thank God we’re getting laid.
5. In your 50s, you should occasionally try something new to spice things up.
Like maybe having sex in the back of your minivan on Beverly Drive at 11 p.m. on a Thursday night.
Not that my husband and I did that. But if, hypothetically, we did do that, the police officer that shined his flashlight into the cargo hold would find two middle-aged people so flattered to be booked on lewd and lascivious behavior that he wouldn’t even bother.
It’s no fun busting people who need hair plugs and bite guards.
6. At our age, there’s no need to feel threatened by fantasies.
If you’re having sex in your 50s it might be with someone you’ve known a long time. Someone who loves you even though he’s seen you nurse your newborn on a toilet while trying to delicately deliver your first post-partum poop.
And it may be someone you love even though he’s always leaving his poop in the toilet because he’s so proud of it.
So if, from time-to-time, in your mind, you’re making love to Chris Hemsworth fully equipped with Thor’s Hammer or your partner tells you that Sofia Vergara just broke up with her boyfriend as he one-hands your bra clasp open, neither of you takes it personally.
7. After 50, sex is funny.
When I was younger, sex was serious business. It was very Melrose Place with intense gazes and catatonic Andrew Shue repartee. “Sydney, I want you. Oh, how I want you. But I’m troubled by my own beauty.”
God forbid you make a sexual faux pas. Hairy armpits, big, grey underwear, some ill-timed vaginal flatulence.
Last month, when my husband rolled me powerfully beneath him, we both fell off the bed. I’ll walk the rest of my life with a limp, but after we finished laughing we made love on the floor.
8. Finally, in your 50s it’s a good idea to go to bed naked if you wanna get lucky.
Now you’ve got arthritis, carpel tunnel syndrome, cauliflower ear and phlebitis. You can’t possibly expect to be able to shuck pajamas from a horizontal position.
And let’s not forget the magnitude of entropy in our lives. My husband and I have been together seventeen years.
We have two daughters we have to keep off the stripper pole. Two cats who might eat us should we nap too soundly. And a 10-year old mini-van that smells like Jimmy Hoffa’s corpse.
When we get into bed at night what we want to do is sleep. And if we’re not sleeping we want to watch hot people having sex on Outlander or TMZ celebrity cellulite.
So when the Marriage Maintenance egg timer goes off we get into bed without the expectation of sex, but with the mandate of a massage.
Then things evolve. This man who piqued my curiosity and passion seventeen years ago has his hands on my body.
And this body that has had children and various age-related ailments suddenly takes on dimension.
His hands follow the curves as he massages and suddenly I have hips and thighs and belly and breasts that are soft in places, and still firm in places and wholly human and corporeal for my brief time here on planet earth.
And for that time, regardless of my age or in-and-out-of-shapeness, I re-inhabit my body. I’m reminded that I exist. And This. Is. Sexy.
If you’d like to keep up with Shannon’s shenanigans OPT-IN to her NEWSLETTER HERE!
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
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To the blare of sounding brass and booming drums, some 800 activists and community organizers from around the country recently converged on Washington, DC. We are living, breathing proof, they announced, that if we can’t get change from our representatives in the capital, we’ll bring it to them, and work to make them hear what must be done.
It was the Populism2015 conference, organized by National People’s Action (NPA), Campaign for America’s Future, Alliance for a Just Society and USAction – although as populist commentator Jim Hightower noted at the opening session, “This not so much a conference but a construction crew for nothing less than democracy.”
For anyone dispirited by the malaise of powerlessness or disgusted by the dysfunction of mainstream politics, the gathering was a hopeful sign that in every part of the United States, people are taking matters into their own hands and demanding attention and respect. As the organizers wrote in their welcome to the attendees, “A new populist movement is rising in our country. Growing inequality, a sinking middle class and the increasing burdens on low-income people have been building for a long time. The difference now is that everyday people understand that this isn’t an accident or an act of nature. It is the result of rules that have been rigged to benefit the few – and we’re not willing to take it anymore.”
Pointing to Occupy Wall Street, the fight for a $15 minimum wage, #BlackLivesMatter, the campaign to stop global warming, and the elections of Senator Elizabeth Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio as positive signs of change, they continued, “Populism2015 will draw upon those movements and incorporate their spirit, power and energy. We will elevate, strengthen and amplify the leadership of our national progressive champions.”
Pouring into the ballroom and meeting spaces of DC’s Shoreham Hotel, such groups as Main Street Alliance, Take Action Minnesota, Keystone Project, Illinois Indiana Regional Organizing Network (IIRON), Montana Organizing Project and many others gathered for practical workshops and a flurry of speeches intended to energize and motivate, all of them dedicated to the idea of a national movement to take the country back. The theme: “Building a Movement for People and the Planet.” Along the way, “expose the big lie that corporate greed is good for everyone,” and encourage the ideal that the economy “should work for all of us.”
And so, Janice “Jay” Johnson, treasurer of Virginia Organizing/Alliance for a Just Society, described their fight against predatory payday lending. Jean Ross, co-president of National Nurses United, spoke of the perils of austerity – “Come into any emergency room; these policies kill people” — and called for passage of HR 1464, the Inclusive Prosperity Act. That’s the Robin Hood Tax that would collect fifty cents on every hundred dollars of stock trades. “Take that money back from the banksters,” she declared.
Vien Truong of California’s Greenlighting Institute told the story of their involvement in the successful effort to get $832 million in cap-and-trade agreements from polluters, money the state will spend on such programs as free bus passes for seniors and students, electric trucks and buses and affordable green housing. Eric Kennedy of the Washington Community Action Network outlined the campaign for a living wage in the Pacific Northwest and Bob Cook of PUSH Buffalo talked about their work for a green economy and the group’s involvement in the successful New York State ban on fracking.
George Goehl, executive director of National People’s Action, said, “America’s beauty has always come from how we react to injustice,” and stressed the need to rebalance the relationship between everyday people and corporate America, as well as the importance of seeking candidates with ideas and plans to address structural racism in America. He introduced Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Rep. Ellison talked about those “systematically trying to exclude people from the vote,” but also detected “a renaissance of democracy and civic engagement,” and urged the crowd not to give up on Capitol Hill: “Not everyone in Congress has sold out,” he said. “Eighty people in Congress are down with you” — presumably, the members of the progressive caucus plus a few friends. “Thirty-five are down with you on each and every issue.” It’s a start.
Introduced were three activists who have themselves sought public office: Gina Melaragno of Maine People’s Alliance became a state representative when she grew fed up with the incumbent’s indifference to the needs of his constituents; Carlos Ramirez-Rosa is a gay Latino just elected as an alderman in Chicago’s 35th Ward, part of the progressive coalition that sought to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel and forced him into a runoff with Jesus “Chuy” Garcia; and Jim Keady of the New Jersey Organizing Project is running for the state assembly. He’s the guy Governor Chris Christie told to “sit down and shut up” last fall when Keady had the temerity to challenge Christie’s mishandling of aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
As Congressman Ellison pointed out, “Politicians see the light when they start to feel the heat.” He was talking about public pressure to prevent passage of fast track legislation to grease the way for approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. And in fact, the Populism2015 conference ended with a protest rally and march against TPP led by Senator Bernie Sanders from the Washington headquarters of the AFL-CIO to the offices of the Chamber of Commerce and the US Trade representative.
But not before the conference crowd unanimously approved a 12-point platform for the next four decades: “A national strategic vision,” is how Campaign for America’s Future’s Robert Borosage described it, “backed by thousands of organizers on the ground. It is the standard by which every candidate, Democrat and Republican, can be measured.”
The entire platform is online. Among its headlines: Rebuild America for the 21st Century and Create Jobs for All, Guarantee Women’s Economic Equality, Provide a High-Quality Education to Every Child, and Change Priorities to Address Real Security Needs.
But all twelve can be boiled down to one simple, bumper sticker notion that tells our elected officials to stop kowtowing to the plutocrats, to stop making decisions that affect our lives without listening and acting upon our behalf instead of the one percent’s. It’s a slogan that’s been popular in the disabled rights movement yet applies to everyone struggling to be heard. You could hear it all around the Populism2015 conference:
“Nothing about us without us.”
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WASHINGTON — In Indiana these days, no one, including the GOP, is happy with Gov. Mike Pence (R).
On April 2, Pence signed a revised version of Indiana’s widely denounced “religious freedom” law, closing the door on a controversy that had brought national scorn to his state and cost local economies valuable tourism dollars.
“It didn’t do our brand any good, for sure. One, it didn’t do the state brand any good. Two, it didn’t do the Indiana Republican Party brand any good. And three, it didn’t do Mike any good. And that’s pretty obvious,” said former Indiana GOP Chair Jim Kittle.
Since that time, Pence has kept his head down and largely stayed out of the spotlight. But behind the scenes in Indiana, many Republicans are still seething and looking for ways to retake control of the party’s direction. And the results of those discussions are likely to become more public in the coming days, now that the Indiana General Assembly has wrapped up its legislative session.
One Republican operative in the state, who declined to be named in order to speak openly, said the Religious Freedom Restoration Act controversy brought to the forefront “a simmering disconnect between the [former Gov.] Mitch Daniels-era people and the Mike Pence people.” Others took issue with that description, saying the real divide is broader: between Pence and, essentially, the rest of the state Republican Party.
Daniels, who served from 2005 to 2013 and is now the president of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, still inspires intense loyalty among many Republicans in the state. He helped bring the state party out of the wilderness after 16 years of Democratic governors. Daniels made fiscal issues his focus, declaring a “truce” on social issues (although he did sign a bill defunding Planned Parenthood in 2011).
Pence, on the other hand, was known as a strong social conservative in Congress, where he served from 2001 to 2013. When Pence ran for governor, he followed in Daniels’ footsteps and largely stayed away from social issues. But the RFRA controversy has seemingly confirmed many people’s lingering fears that Pence would revert back to his old self and steer the party, and the state, far to the right.
“There’s always been kind of, in the back of people’s heads, a concern about what Mike Pence could end up doing to hurt [the successful state GOP] brand,” the Republican operative told The Huffington Post.
RFRA was not on Pence’s agenda. Rather, it was pushed by the GOP leaders who control the state legislature. But Pence essentially became the face of the bill — and, for many in the country, the face of discrimination in Indiana.
On March 29, Pence went on ABC’s “This Week” to try and mitigate the growing controversy over the law he’d recently signed. He repeatedly refused to answer the question of whether the measure would allow businesses to deny service to same-sex couples, and his evasion turned the simmering controversy into a full-blown mess. (Pence later said he didn’t believe the measure would allow for that, although he acknowledged that the law had to be clarified to make that explicit.)
But the damage was done. Organizations pulled their conferences from the state, musicians canceled concerts and businesses said they would give Indiana a wide berth.
“We continue to be stunned by just how wide and deep the animosity is — in Republican strongholds — against Governor Mike Pence (R) and the Republican Party, in that order,” wrote Ed Feigenbaum, who covers the ins and outs of Indiana state politics, in the April 13 edition of the newsletter Indiana Legislative Insight. “While undoubtedly there is a different narrative in out-state rural areas that were not subject to the same intense media coverage and social network squawking as in Central Indiana, urban areas, and college towns, the big takeaway is that the Governor and his party are in deep trouble.”
That trouble shows in the polls. A recent Howey Politics Indiana (HPI) poll shows Pence’s favorable rating at just 35 percent, and his unfavorable rating at 38 percent. And in a recent poll from the Human Rights Campaign, 53 percent of Indiana voters said that Pence’s signing of RFRA made them feel unfavorably toward the governor. Only 38 percent said they felt favorably.
“I’ve been covering Indiana politics for three decades, and I don’t recall a sitting governor experiencing that kind of decline over this short period of time like we’ve seen here,” said Brian Howey, publisher of HPI.
The dissatisfaction with Pence spilled into public view on April 15, when Bill Oesterle, the CEO of Indianapolis-based Angie’s List, announced his resignation and his intention to return to politics. Oesterle ran Daniels’ 2004 gubernatorial campaign, is a major donor in the party and was a vociferous critic of RFRA.
Immediately, speculation in Indiana centered around whether Oesterle would challenge Pence in a primary, presenting a pro-LGBT candidate who would no doubt have strong appeal — and fundraising potential — in the business community.
Oesterle is still figuring out his plans, but he recently told Indianapolis Star political columnist Matthew Tully that he may instead look to shape the party from the outside, with a new political organization to counter the influence of social conservatives.
“The primary chatter underestimates the work that is needed,” he said. “It diminishes the magnitude of the work that has to [be] done. That’s the work of putting the party in a position once again in which it has the support of the majority of the voters in this state. We have, because of what has been done, the very real risk of permanently alienating a large bloc of Hoosiers. That’s going to be hard to overcome.”
Kittle called Oesterle “a fabulous guy” and “a good friend.” He said Oesterle could have an impact on the Indiana GOP by perhaps serving “as a conduit for some folks who, at this point, think this party has gone too far to the right.”
But it’s not just the moderate wing that’s mad at Pence — he has managed to anger the right as well. Many conservatives who supported RFRA were incensed when the governor agreed to the legislative “fix” that prevents businesses from denying services to same-sex couples.
Twenty religious leaders, including a pastor who had literally stood behind Pence at his private signing ceremony for RFRA, held a rally this week, where they rebuked the governor for his “betrayal” of them. And there is speculation that Pence could even face a primary challenge from the right when he’s up for re-election in 2016.
“I think it would be very hard for anyone — assuming Mike’s going to run, and I’m virtually positive he is — so assuming he runs, I think it would be very difficult to win a primary [against him],” said Kittle. “I don’t think it would be helpful, either, because it could then put the Republican Party at an even further disadvantage [in the general election]. We didn’t win by a landslide last time.”
Neither Pence’s campaign nor the Indiana GOP returned requests for comment.
On Thursday, Pence received his first Democratic challenger: former Indiana state House Speaker John Gregg, who narrowly lost to Pence in 2012. In his announcement, Gregg said that under Pence, “Indiana has been given a bad name.”
In the meantime, Pence is picking up the pieces. The state recently spent $2 million to bring in a public relations firm to help rebuild Indiana’s image in the wake of the RFRA fiasco. Feigenbaum told HuffPost it was a good sign that Pence recently hired Matt Lloyd, his communications director from his time in Congress, to run his press shop in Indianapolis.
“Matt is a big-time, big-picture guy who knows how to maneuver Pence around petty politics and through serious politics,” said Feigenbaum. “[He] understands the politics of policy, unlike some other Pence aides.”
“I think Mike’s really going to have to reach out to diverse communities, whether it’s the business community, which has been very supportive of him up to now, or it’s the LGBT community,” said Kittle. “I think he does understand that this was not the right time and the right thing to do. It was a mistake. I believe he feels that way. I think he’ll have to express that.”
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