Priorities

I feel horrible. I only posted once last week and this is really not how I intended things to go. Despite the wedding planning, I wanted to keep up with my blogging because doing it makes me happy. Also, I know from my journalism/publishing experience that you can't just expect people to keep reading if you don't publish consistently – or at least more consistently than once a week.

And don't even get me started on my lack of progress on my goal to become one of those twitter converts.

I guess what I'm saying is please don't stop reading. Although I know posting three times a week isn't exactly prolific (I am acutely aware that daily blogging – or at least five to six times per week – is de rigueur for the best of the bloggers), I am hoping this week to get back up to posting three times per week.

There is definitely a long list of things that I'd really like to be doing if I wasn't organizing a wedding, but don't get me wrong, I am enjoying many aspects of it. The thought of buying a calligraphy pen and addressing envelopes all next weekend while watching some well-worn movies or TV box set episodes, actually, secretly (or not so secretly anymore) fills me with glee. Perhaps it indulges the arts & craft-y side of me from my childhood, when I actually did own a calligraphy set. Back when I used to do things like cross stitch and knitting and making paper dolls (apparently I was born in the late 19th century and am actually over 100 years old). Those are things that maybe will never be my priority anymore, but that doesn't mean I can't dabble from time to time.

We have to make the best of whatever our current circumstances are. But sometimes we kid ourselves that we have different priorities than we actually do. We can say that we want to be doing something, like writing, for example, but unless we actually make it a priority – either to find the time or the right medium, it then becomes a question of whether it actually is a priority. Also, there may be things we want to be doing, ideally, but they just can't be a priority at this exact moment.

And such is the case for cleaning out my clothes (particularly the summer ones which sit right there at the front of my closet mocking me), getting our first real Christmas tree (next year!) and making photo albums from our last few holidays, including shots from two very close friends' weddings.

But I refuse to put blogging in that relegation zone post-March. Just because I got a bit distracted last week, doesn't mean I can't get back on the horse starting now. Because if there's something that's important to you, you've just got to start doing the tasks that needs to be done, one by one – exactly like planning a wedding.

Related posts:

• More Parties, Please
• People Pleasing
• Upstaged By The Royals

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Is Cheese Evil?

There have been quite a few articles this past month about Domino's Pizza and Dairy Management (some pointed out to me because I mentioned Domino's a few weeks ago in my post on pizza).

You can read the whole New York Times story here, but in summary, Dairy Management is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture, which is promoting cheese consumption in an effort to sell more whole-milk products by working with fast-food chains such as Domino's and Taco Bell. The chains are offering new products packed with cheese, which is a food naturally high in fat.

This has sparked quite a bit of outrage from many Americans who believe that the agency is pushing healthy food choices (particularly with young people in schools) while at the same time promoting high-fat food.

Lobbying groups for food producers in America are nothing new. Every good American can remember the 'Got Milk' advertisements and regular TV slots promoting pork as the 'other white meat'. I'm not sure that's really the crux of the issue here, however.

The more I witness it, the more I believe that obesity is one of the big scapegoats of our time. It's OK to blame overweight people for eating 'unhealthy food', after all, being overweight is their fault, right?

Society is focused on the wrong issue – if you actually dig through the research it isn't weight itself causing bad health. People can be 'overweight' (by our random BMI standards) but still healthy, if they exercise and eat a variety of healthy food. People come in all shapes and sizes, and thin doesn't necessarily equate to healthy.

This is a really controversial view, however, and I know people are skeptical when I talk about it. But there are two great books out there that I highly recommend to anyone interested in the issue: Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and The Diet Myth by Paul Campos. They have really made me rethink the way that I view weight and body size.

But it's so much easier to blame cheese.

However, cheese isn't the enemy. Cheese and other high-fat foods are necessary in our diet. It's overeating any sort of food that causes us to carry excess weight (for our natural body size), not simply eating what society terms as 'unhealthy' food.

And so why aren't we more focused on the reasons why we overeat instead of blaming the type of food we eat? Well, it's much easier. To say that it was eating all that pizza that caused me to gain some weight when I hated my job is easy. To be honest and say that I ate all that pizza because I was unhappy and it made me feel better is a harder truth to face.

And the reality is that our bodies don't really fight overeating in a big way – for millions of years we didn't have the abundance of dense-calorie food that's now available. Our bodies think that they've hit the jackpot. We'll never starve again!

But we're all responsible for our own relationships with food. We can pay attention to whether or not we're eating more than our bodies actually need. I like cheese and I eat it quite a bit. If there's more cheese on Domino's pizza, will I eat more of it? Maybe, if I'm not paying attention. But these days I find that most of the time, at least (it's still a journey), I'm eating until I feel full. So if something is really super rich I'll have a few bites and stop. If it's less calorie-packed I'll eat more. Dairy Management isn't able to mess around with my stomach's satiation point.

I get really frustrated when I read these types of articles. All this emphasis on being thin and eating a 'healthy low-fat' diet is only going to unleash more eating disorders in the end, particularly in vulnerable young people. And don't take my word for it. Read any book on intuitive eating and you'll see that serial dieting can be one of the root causes of disordered eating and full-blown eating disorders.

Related posts:

• Food Is The New Religion
• The Ideal Body
• Guilt And Marshmallows
• Four Meals A Day -- And Why Not?

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Upstaged By The Royals

As I've said before, planning a wedding is an interesting process. Luckily I'm actually a good project manager, so as I've actually got going on the tasks, it seems more controllable and less stressful than I thought it would be. And I do love a bit of Excel. Give me some spreadsheets to play with and I'm very happy (and wedding planning spreadsheets don't involve too many calculations, or scary things like macros).

I'm still waiting for tantrums from family members or big fights, but so far, so good (I know, I'm jinxing it!). Even Future Hub and I haven't had too many words over it recently – although he tried not to let me register for a gravy boat last Saturday at Debenhams, which could have got very ugly (he conceded).

Perhaps getting married at a later age (ripe old 34) has made the whole thing a bit easier. I think I'm better at getting things done and more level-headed about the importance of decisions like the colors or the kind of cake we want. Despite the fact that the head of food at the catering company gave us the hairy eyeball when we chose poultry for both our courses (duck and chicken), I have been able to get on with my life.

The thing I'm enjoying most about the wedding planning process is the fact that I am talking (or emailing) with my friends and family back home in the States a lot more than usual. Even if it's just negotiations over hotel rooms or my Mom asking how it will be possible for guests to buy us presents that will be delivered in England (newsflash – they do have department stores in the UK that will accept US credit cards), I'm getting a lot more time with everyone.

Case in point was the email I received from my aunt in Wisconsin this morning asking if we could possible postpone our wedding to coincide with Kate and Will's Royal one? She has been a long-time follower of the Royals, reading about them in the papers while eating her breakfast cereal for years. It was the big joke when she first met Future Hub. We took her to Windsor Castle which included a little stroll through Eton where the princes went to school. She proceeded to exclaim, "I always though it was so mean that the princes were sent off to boarding school – but turns out they were right down the road from their Grandmother's house!"

I'm sure there will be many more stressful moments. I'm still sweating over the guest list, worried about who will be upset if I can't invite them and if we're actually going to be able to fit everyone into the venue. I'm certainly not looking forward to the seating chart. But the flip side is that because people are important to me, it's also the best part of planning the wedding. It's fun – and it allows our families, including our extended families, to take part in our lives like they haven't been able to before. Because I'm convinced more and more that this wedding isn't as much about us as much as it is about us and the people who matter to us, who will provide our support network throughout the years – which I think every marriage needs.

P.S. I can't believe Kate and Wills are upstaging us like this!

Related Posts:

• More Parties, Please
• People Pleasing

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Vulnerability: Being Broken Isn't So Bad

When I started this blog one of the things I talked about with Future Hub was how I felt about opening up a part of myself to for all the world to see (or at least my first few readers, including my Mom). Not everyone wants to put their thoughts and feelings out there and I have to admit that sometimes I feel stripped bare.

But then again, there's a reason I started to write in a public fashion. Well, a few reasons, including the fact that I felt I had a story to tell about a pretty tough time in my life when my body was broken. I learned quite a bit from my humbling experience – when I was frankly very vulnerable – and I thought that if I could help even just one other person it would be worth it. (If you're new to my blog, see the About This Blog section for some links that will tell you the whole story about how I wrestled with RSI/Muscular Imbalance.)

Turns out, being broken isn't so bad. In fact, I think that it's a starting point that we all need to have at some point in our lives to make us realize that what we fear most can certainly be painful and difficult but it's not the end and it's not insurmountable.

Vulnerability is what makes us human. And the one thing I've learned over the years that's been the absolutely most helpful is how vulnerable every single creature on this planet is, even when they seem 'fine' or 'perfect' or in fact, downright mean. No matter how tough and strong everyone else seems, you just have to flip them over to see that they've got soft, vulnerable underbellies just like you and me. (I don't actually recommend doing this in a literal sense, of course.)

As a young child in Sunday school, I never really understood the Beatitudes. How could I really, growing up in 1980s America? Blessed are the poor in spirit? Blessed are the meek? Being meek isn't a trait exactly valued in America generally, so I was puzzled how the meek were the ones who would inherit the Earth (not fair!).

Doing a quick Internet search (always reliable) this morning I got a sense of how widely interpreted the Beatitudes are, but for some reason when I thought about writing about vulnerability they sprang to mind – perhaps 12 years of Sunday school does leave much ingrained in the subconscious.

Being vulnerable and poor in spirit and meek opens you up to things. It always seems that when I admit something I am scared to share or write a post in which I feel particularly vulnerable, that I get the most positive reactions. I think the key is that vulnerability is what connects us. It is competition and the perception of others' success as well as the veneer of everything being 'OK' and 'alright' for everyone (but us) that separates us.

Sometimes we are broken. But we are definitely not alone.

This post was written as part of the Self-Discovery Series, Word by Word. Karen from Before & After: A Real Life Story came up with the word vulnerability for this month, click here to read more about the series.

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Life Is Messy

I don't like things messy. I'm sure my Mother will beg to differ on this as when I was a kid she used to compare me to Oscar the Grouch. However, I think that maybe had more to do with my pack-rat tendencies as I liked to keep just about everything.

But as an adult, mess stresses me out. I've found one thing that helps me when I'm procrastinating is to clean up – my work area, my house, a specific room. I think that's because mess makes me feel overwhelmed, like there's just too much to do. A veritable mountain to climb. If I have more space, my head feels clearer and I can get on with things.

That's all great, but there's more to this fear of messiness, I'm afraid.

I hate admitting to being a perfectionist because the perfectionist in me is afraid that people will think: She's a perfectionist? But she's no where near perfect!

But I am a perfectionist and it's not a helpful trait. It encourages procrastination and frustration. When things get really hard there's a yucky lump that suddenly appears in my throat, reminding me of how I always felt like crying when I couldn't quite understand my math homework.

There's a very good book on perfectionism, written by Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., who taught one of the most popular classes at Harvard on happiness, called The Pursuit of Perfect. He discusses research done by Carol Dweck, a social psychologist and professor at Stanford University, on fixed versus growth mindsets.

A fixed mindset is the belief that our capabilities are largely set in stone and cannot be changed. For this type of person (in his definition, a perfectionist) hard work is threatening as it means that these abilities are limited. "After all, if she were gifted and talented, then she wouldn't need to work. Not wanting to appear deficient, and given her belief that nothing can be done to remedy a deficiency, she constantly feels the pressure to prove to herself and to others how smart, competent, and perfect she already is," Ben-Shahar explains.

This contrasts with a growth mindset. Instead of believing that abilities are fixed and unchangeable, a person with a growth mindset believes that we are born with certain abilities but that these are only starting points – success requires application and a great deal of effort.

Dweck did research on this concept dividing fifth graders into two groups and giving them a test of 10 fairly difficult questions. Both groups did well but were praised in different ways – the first were told something along of the lines of 'they must be really smart', but the second were told that 'they must have worked really hard'.

Then, in the second round of the study, they were asked to choose between taking a second test that was difficult, from which they would learn, and an easy test, quite similar to the one they had just taken. Ninety percent of the students who were praised for their effort chose the more difficult test, while the majority of those praised for their intelligence chose the easier one.

It gets better. In the third round, both groups were given a test that was too hard for them to solve. Those who had been told they were 'smart' found this miserable while the students who were praised for their effort actually enjoyed themselves – and performed 30% better than they had before, while the other group performed about 20% worse than in the first round.

I found this absolutely shocking. The difference that mindset can make is mind boggling (and a very good thing to know if I'm ever a parent). I'm not blaming anyone for this, but I was always told I was smart. And to this day, I have a good deal of this fixed mindset lingering around. I have this fear of being found out – the 'imposter' syndrome, I believe it's called. If I'm actually not smart like people have said to me, then what value do I have?

I do work hard, and sometimes it's for the right reasons and sometimes the wrong ones. As Ben-Shahar says, "there are, of course, people with a fixed mindset who work hard, but they are usually driven by the need to prove to themselves and to others how smart they are. It is a heavy burden to carry."

The trouble with life is that anything worth having is messy. Achievement doesn't come in a straight, linear path. Getting better from my posture/muscular imbalance problems was a lot of two-steps-forward, one-step-back. Or sometimes many steps back.

Such is true with most things in life. But hard work doesn't have to be horrible. If you view it as a journey, a process to enjoy, in which learning and developing are the main goals, it means you can have a totally different experience of it.

I still have a lot to learn and a lot of messiness to get used to.

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Give Me An Inch...

I have now gone to Bikram yoga three times in the last three weeks. And although I'm stiff, I'm mostly sore in the right places (aka the muscles that should be working). My back is holding up fine, my shoulders and neck are doing well, so what's there not to be happy about?

This is where I may need to revisit some ideas about gratitude.

I found myself sitting in the yoga class last week plotting about how I could possibly fit in two yoga classes a week. Hold on a second there, missy. Was it not so long ago that all you wanted was to just be able to go once a week?

The main thing that has really sunk in for me during my years in physiotherapy is that my body is not a machine. I need to treat it well in order for it to actually work properly. And that means moderation of every sort.

With the wedding coming up it is so easy to get sucked into the idea that if only I could do my yoga class twice a week it would be an insurance policy that I look fabulous in my white dress. After all, there will be relatives coming from all parts of the world who haven't seen me in a while and we will be paying someone a good chunk of change to take lots of pictures that we will of course need to display in coffee table books, on the walls, and in Hello magazine (joke).

But I keep reminding myself that I am exercising now not because of some pre-wedding madness, but as part of a long-term struggle to get my body back in working order – and because I want to exercise. I have my body back these days (mostly) and I can finally do the exercise I like to deal with the stress of everyday life and to take care of all those amazing systems we learned about in ninth-grade biology. And I generally feel better about myself and my body when I am exercising, regardless of how I look to the outside world.

Also there's the enjoyment factor. Enjoyment? Gasp.

I don't know if it's being American, with our long history of embracing the puritanical work ethic or if it's just our society's current obsession with perfection as the new 'good'. A New York therapist once told me that her clients were no longer worried about morality or being perceived as 'good' by others. Instead, achieving 'perfection' was the new gold standard.

But what about enjoying life and being in the moment? This is where gratitude comes back in. I wrote a few weeks ago about my take on gratitude, as part of the Self-Discovery, Word by Word series (click here to read about November's word and participate). But gratitude is not just for one blog post.

It's easy to forget how not so long ago I was often shedding tears, feeling sorry for myself about how my body was not working properly and pain that would follow me around everywhere. I am genuinely thankful for being able to go to yoga again, to take my weekly tap dancing class. It's easy to forget about balance.

But I'm not the person I used to be – I am much more sane about what I can handle these days. It's just that every once in a while I get carried away. And who doesn't?

P.S. You can actually mail your wedding photos into Hello magazine. If you've done it, I want to hear about it.

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Beware The Flu

It's that time of year again. An email has gone out to all the employees of my company asking if we'd like a 'flu jab' (what they call an influenza shot in the UK). I was probably the first person to respond, requesting one straight away.

A few Christmases ago I got the flu. Let's get one thing straight. The flu is not a cold. It's not even a bad cold – you know, the kind where you are running a slight fever and snot is running out of your nose like it's a tap and you feel near death. You should definitely stay home from work in those circumstances, but it's not actually the flu.

The flu is when you can barely get out of bed to go to the bathroom and you're shaking with fever and chills and if someone asked you if you wanted a free vacation to Hawaii at that very moment you would just blink your eyes at them wondering why anyone would even think of going on a holiday – ever – and then ask for a cold washcloth (flannel) instead. It's just that bad.

When I came down with it (my first adult bout) it was very upsetting because I had actually taken three days off from work in the run up to the Sunday I was scheduled to fly home for Christmas. So I could actually be organized (for once) and have my Christmas shopping done. I literally woke up on my first day off unable to move. I only have a thermometer that tells temperature in Celsius, so when I took my temperature later that day (who knows why I waited that long, it probably took me all day to crawl to the bathroom to get it), I had to then crawl to my computer to do the conversion to Fahrenheit. Imagine my surprise when it read 104 degrees!

Luckily, acetaminophen (paracetamol) got it down to a more reasonable level. When I realized how high it was in a sheer panic I called my friend who is training to be a doctor. She told me I would need to go to the hospital if it didn't go down, to prevent my brain from starting to simmer.

I can see why people die from the flu every year. According to the NHS (UK's National Health Service) website, about 600 people a year die from seasonal flu in the UK. This rises to around 13,000 during an epidemic. Most people's immune systems are able to fight off the flu bug with symptoms peaking after two to three days and patients starting to feel better within five to eight days.

I did start to feel better for my flight home, but suffered badly for a long time from the after affects – it took months to clear my lungs of all the fluid (I know, gross) with a horrible hacking cough. I also was constantly freezing. I remember walking around my grandmother's house at Christmas with a wooly sweater on but also one of her knitted blankets wrapped around my shoulders.

And I, after having my tonsils out earlier that year, was actually a very healthy 32-year-old, with an immune system that was no longer busy fighting off chronic sore throats and infections. The NHS website warns that elderly people or those with certain medical conditions (which include diabetes, severe asthma or a weakened immune system) may develop complications, such as a chest infection, which can lead to serious illness and can be life-threatening.

I think that the more people who can get flu shots the better. Even if you're not in a vulnerable group, if you can afford to get one or if it's offered to you at work, why not? The one less person who gets the virus means there's one less person who can spread it, reducing the risk for everyone, including the vulnerable.

For some odd reason people generally seem fearful of vaccines, as reflected in the scare which occurred in England starting in 1998 when Andrew Wakefield from the Royal Free Hospital in London published a research paper in the Lancet, linking the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism and bowel disease. (Wakefield was this year struck off the medical register after the UK's General Medical Council (GMC) ruled that he was guilty of serious professional misconduct.)

Ben Goldacre, in his book Bad Science, details the facts of the scare and gives his take on why the blame in this case actually does not lie with one single man but with the "hundreds of journalists, columnists, editors and executives who drove this story cynically, irrationally, and willfully onto the front pages for nine solid years." It's a fascinating read. Pick up the book if you're interested in health and science and also if you'd like to be able to identify when the media gets research wrong.

Goldacre also points out that vaccine scares are nothing new. He quotes an article from Scientific American in 1888 which says:

The success of the anti-vaccinationists has been aptly shown by the results in Zurich, Switzerland, where for a number of years, until 1883, a compulsory vaccination law obtained, and small-pox was wholly prevented – not a single case occurred in 1882. This result was seized upon the following year by the anti-vaccinationists and used against the necessity for any such law, and it seems they had sufficient influence to cause its repeal. The death returns that year (1883) showed that for every 1,000 deaths two were caused by smallpox; In 1884 there were three; in 1885, 17, and in the first quarter of 1886, 85.

What is it about vaccinations that people find so scary? Is it the idea of putting a live virus into our systems, like it's a sure-fire way to end up ill?

It might have to do more with the fears that drive conspiracy theorists – in a world that is scary and unexplained, vaccines can be an easy target. As Goldacre, speaking about the MMR and autism scare puts it so well, "it's a universal programme, in conflict with modern ideas of 'individualised care'; it's bound up with government; it involved needles going into children; and it offers the opportunity to blame someone, or something, for a dreadful tragedy."

Although he was speaking about the MMR scare specifically, that idea could be applied to immunization programs generally. Society is big on scapegoats. When you have a scapegoat, you never have to either look at what you are doing to cause a problem or accept the often unfair and arbitrary nature of the universe.

But what you can do is go get a flu shot. It aches for a day or so, but believe me, you don't want the flu.

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A Happier Immune System?

Sometimes I am just amazed. I was feeling exhausted today, run down, like I'm coming down with something, so I left work right at five with the full intention of lying on the sofa with feet up to rest and recharge (and of course catch up on scintillating Professional MasterChef episodes). And then I saw my little net book just sitting there on the table. On the train ride home I had been thinking about a posting on the flu that I've been working on recently and the little laptop just called out to me… do some writing! And not in a bossy, horrible way. In an enticing, appealing way.

Wonders never cease. I've always wanted to be a writer, ever since I can remember. And I suppose I am. The majority of my day job involves writing, although I certainly don't write about anything close to my Mind, Body & Scroll topics.

The past few years I had been looking for a non-work creative writing outlet, but was struggling (it certainly didn't help that I had to spend so much time focused on my physiotherapy treatment). Two summers ago I took a narrative non-fiction writing class that I absolutely loved and even wrote a book proposal as a result of it. But afterwards I still couldn't get going on daily or even weekly writing sessions.

For example, I would get home on days like today and not even think about writing. I was tired and lethargic and really couldn't face doing anything but lying down and watching MasterChef. Don't get me wrong, I didn't have too many days where this happened – I was out doing other things. But still. There was not a lot of energy around for writing.

And then I discovered blogging.

Sometimes we know what we want but we don't know how to get there. It can take some persistence for the path to come clear. But when we are doing something we truly enjoy and are passionate about, even for a small tiny fraction of every day, I think we benefit both body and mind.

For example, and this may be a huge coincidence, but I have not been truly ill since I've started this blog. True, I had my tonsils out in February 2008, which has helped substantially with my general health. I'm also no longer in severe muscular pain – also a big plus. And I listen to my body more and more, spending time with feet up when I need to, helping my body to fight off those viruses. I have felt run down, definitely, but these blips don't tend to turn into full-blown illness as much anymore.

I can't help but wonder if my immune system may have benefited a teeny tiny bit from having a creative outlet for which I've been searching for ages. Anyone who knows me personally is aware that I used to be constantly sick. Not seriously sick, but constant colds and sore throats. Again, I think a big bulk of this is down to my lack of tonsils (they were chronically infected, which is a whole other story for another time). However, Future Hub did have a monster of a cold before we set off to San Francisco in September and I didn't catch it, which was short of a miracle.

The consensus seems to be that stress can weaken people's immune systems by raising their levels of cortisol and making them more susceptible to colds and flu. So if stress can weaken people's immune systems who's to say that doing something you enjoy can't strengthen it?

After writing this chirpy post, I'll probably come down with a stinker of a cold tomorrow. So probably safer to slink off to the couch for what they used to call at summer camp FOB (flat-on-back) time. To make sure that whatever is making me feel icky is nipped in the bud. I wouldn't want to break my illness-free streak and look like a fool.

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The Perfect Pizza

The gauntlet has been thrown down. I occasionally get suggestions from friends for blog topics and so far I've been able to work in marshmallows and pumpkin pie, Irish pubs, tap dancing, MasterChef and crying. But pizza? It's already been mentioned three times, but I certainly haven't given it the focus it deserves with a full post.

Ah, pizza – my favorite food. People may think they're being clever asking me to write about pizza in a 'health' blog, as if pizza doesn't play a part in good health. If you don't know already, I'm very against demonizing any particular food. In fact, I believe that one should be able to eat whatever they like when they are hungry. I think this is one of the keys to actually having a healthy relationship with food, which is not always easy these days with all the hysteria and scapegoating about 'unhealthy' food and weight. (If you're interested in a post specifically on my views on eating, take a gander at any of my food posts.)

So back to pizza. I'm not sure why I love pizza so much, but I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that one of my fondest memories of my Dad was making pizza with him in the kitchen as a little kid. We used to make it in a square pan and I remember him teaching me how to spoon out the sauce and spread it around in a circular motion.

But I'm not the only one with a love for pizza. My impression is that it is widely appreciated because most big cities globally seem to have plenty of pizza on offer. My friend who is from Pakistan told me that when Pizza Hut opened there for the first time it was considered such a delicacy that people lined up for ages to get a table.

Although universal loved, people have very strong – but varying – views on it. Take Americans. In cities such as Chicago, deep-pan style pizza is considered the 'real' pizza, whereas in New York it's got to have a thinner crust and be referred to as a 'pie'. As a chiled when we visited my Mom's family in Wisconsin we went to pizza places where round pizzas were cut into squares (it's shocking, I know).

I am constantly amused by the differences between pizza in England and the U.S. When you go to most good Italian pizzerias here (run by actual Italians, mind you), you must buy your own pizza – they are for the individual, no matter how massive. And they are pre-determined pizzas, the Margarita (cheese), the Diavola (spicy pepperoni), La Reine (ham, olives and mushrooms), the Fiorentina (with spinach and usually egg).

As an American I balk at being told what to have on my pizza. I often go 'off menu' so to speak, starting with a Margarita and building my own, as if I was at the local pizzeria in my home town (in the suburbs of New York, in case you wanted to place my geographic pizza preferences). I think this may reflect a real cultural difference – the English are OK with being told how to eat, but Americans like to have it 'their way'. At least this American does.

When we are getting pizza at home it's always a tussle over where to order from. Future Hub wants to order the fancy stuff from the Italian take-away place, but I always want Domino's. Although I love the good Italian pizzas, I crave Domino's as it seems like 'real' pizza, reminding me of home. Ironically though, I'd probably never eat it if I was living in the States!

Pizza is one of those things that people are passionate about. Just ask anyone. I'd be quite interested to hear your pizza views, in fact. I'm sure you have some.

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