Chatelaine

Use this easy technique to get rid of the peel and eyes of a pineapple while creating a corkscrew pattern on it.

We just launched our Summer Cookbook, so I decided to make one of my favourite desserts from it.

One of my best friends is leaving me for the summer. This makes me very sad. I hate to admit it, but I’m also jealous of her. I hate being jealous of friends. I feel that not being happy for your friends is a bad character trait, so I can’t believe that I feel this way now. But my best friend is leaving me – for overnight camp.

Achieving a goal involves a strange mixture of elation and questioning. For nine months, I trained toward completing a triathlon. On Sunday, the day of reckoning arrived, and the race proceeded almost as I'd imagined it in my dreams: I didn't drown in the lake; I didn't have to change a flat tire by the side of the road; and my legs (and mind) held up during the run.

Kiehl’s is celebrating their 160th anniversary this year and in honour of this milestone, 100 per cent of the sales during the 160-minute-long event today only, from 12pm (EST) to 2:40pm, will be donated to various organizations associated with the Canadian Association of Pediatric Oncology Camps.

Today, I took the nuclear iodine for my thyroid scan tomorrow. I guess that I'm officially radioactive.

Five great drinkware options perfect for the poolside, a picnic or patio

Unlike some of my friends, I’m not a regular Costco shopper. I find the sheer size of the place overwhelming — you can’t quickly stop in on the way home from work to pick up milk. You also have to buy a membership, at $55. The other major drawback to Costco for me is that every time I go in, I’m hit by an inexplicable urge to buy large quantities of things I don’t really need — like a massive box of meatballs that won’t fit in my freezer or a huge store-sized package of Swedish berries.

On Monday of this week, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information released a joint 62-page report on obesity in Canada (PDF). Dr. Arya Sharma is an internationally-renowned Canadian obesity researcher who referred to this report as “thoughtful, insightful, and thorough...” I’ve been reading Dr. Sharma’s blogs for a while, and this is a guy who doesn’t pull punches. He had largely good things to say about the report, but criticised the way the media covered it.

If one cancer charity gets its way, the distinctive buzz of tanning beds could soon become harder for Ontario teens to hear. With melanoma becoming increasingly common in Canadians aged 15 to 29, the Canadian Cancer Society is asking Ontario to ban teens under 18 years old from using indoor tanning beds in the province. Nova Scotia and the city of Victoria already have similar bans in place, and Sarnia is considering one. Should this one be left to personal and parental discretion, or is it time to change the rules?

This week Mark and I had a health scare with Sydney. She is okay and she will be fine. Nothing that cannot be managed and it's nothing that is affecting her daily activities. But, when we were in the throes of the crisis...I just cannot describe the fear that I felt. Everything else fell aside. Nothing else really mattered. If any harm should come to my child, my only child, what would I do?