I earned my boss’s undying enmity for not going to a department party. I’m a diabetic and was not yet on medication at that time, and had to be very careful what I ate. Going to a restaurant where the set menu (picked by the boss) was an overload of grease, sugar and salt was just not possible. I didn’t want to sit…

Penzeys Sunny Paris (if you don’t want to add salt) or Sandwich Sprinkle (if you do).

My dad did the same. And when my brothers and I would stir the rock hard ice cream till it got soft, it drove him nuts.

Christopher Kimball always insisted that Cook’s Illustrated recipes didn’t need nutrition information because they tasted so good.

I am one of the few people I know who got through childhood and never learned to like peanut butter. So when my husband puts the peanut butter jar in the fridge it’s HIS problem.

I don’t find the idea of an imaginary gift-giver offensive or creepy. But I don’t like the notion that anyone thinks these imaginary gift-givers are real.

My mother-in-law made ham loaf (like meatloaf only with ham). Not long ago my husband asked if I could find a recipe for it. I dug out an ancient cookbook put together by his parents’ church ladies and lo and behold there was my mother-in-law’s ham loaf recipe.

Since when is Santa Christian?

My parents went to great lengths to keep my brothers and me believing in Santa. And I did, till I was about 8 and a friend spilled the beans. I felt incredibly betrayed. My parents had LIED to me.

My parents were rigid on the subject of curfews when I was a teen. I had to be home at 11pm. Period. It did me no good to explain that when I went to dances with my friends, that meant I got there at 9 and had to leave at 10:30 in order to walk home on time. (Different world, small town, walking home alone at that…

There used to be a BK across the street from a Mickey D’s not far from my house. Unfortunately the BK closed down and the building is now inhabited by Chase bank.

My husband’s father was a bully. It caused all kinds of lingering problems.

My dad, born in 1922, absolutely insisted that butter would “go rancid” if it were left out of the fridge long enough to get soft. My brothers and I spent our childhods tearing up toast by trying to scrape rock hard butter onto it.

When my husband and I were in the early years of our marriage we would always wait till Christmas Eve afternoon to buy a tree. There was always at least one that wasn’t too bad. And it helps that we weren’t picky.

Thank you! Unfortuately the seller only ships within the UK. But now I know what it is that I’m looking for.

Which research? I and other gifted kids reveled in being smart and younger than the others and nothing made us feel “stupid.” We knew we could figure it out. And, by the way, I got straight A’s in math.

If you have cats who view the toilet bowl as a drinking fountain and you don’t like to sit on wet kitty prints, yes indeed, the lid should be down.

Martian burrito wrapper. Move along.

I did the first and second grade’s work in the same year in private school (a shared classroom) and the nuns strongly recommended that I skip the second grade. My parents refused. As it turned out, I matured physically a year ahead of my classmates and was miserable. I wish my parents had let me skip that grade so…

My parents faced this issue circa 1956 and 1959. My birthday’s at the end of November and my oldest brother’s is near the end of October. The school district had an Oct 1 cutoff date.