Eat Shrink And Be Merry

One of the things my sister and I love the most about our jobs is hearing from our cookbooks’ readers. We love getting mail! Especially when it’s “happy mail”–heartfelt letters from our fans saying how our books have changed their lives, or helped them to lose 40, 50 or 60 pounds, or how they dramatically lowered their cholesterol, or how their finicky kids and even more finicky husbands are actually eating vegetables for the first time, thanks to our recipes. Getting feedback like that is very satisfying, and certainly drives us to keep doing what we’re doing.

Now that we have a TV show, too, we’re getting more mail than ever! And that’s great! (Did I mention that we love mail?) Anyway, the biggest surprise for us so far has been the number of kids who’ve written to us to say how much they like our show. Ten year-olds, 13 year-olds–even a shy seven year-old boy stopped us just yesterday in a grocery store in Calgary where we were filming an episode of our show, and with some prompting from his mom, told us that our show “rocked!” I recently received an email message from an 11-year-old girl named Amy who said that she downloads all the recipes from our show and makes them for her family (lucky family to have the future Martha Stewart in their household!), and she declared that Greta and I are “sooooo cooooool!” Well, I thought it was pretty cool that an 11 year-old would think I was cool! Another mother wrote to us to say her young daughter (in the first grade) would come from from school every day, pick up her copy of our cookbook, and walk around the house talking to the photo of Greta and I on the cover like we were her new best friends.

One of my all-time favourites was an email from a woman who said her five year-old boy loves watching our show, and goes running into the family room when he hears the theme song. We have a cute little jingle that’s sort of Partridge Family-ish/Brady-ish, and apparently, he likes to sing it out loud. But he doesn’t quite get the words right. Instead of singing ‘Eat, shrink and be merry, Eat, shrink and be merry,” he sings “Eat, shrink, you’ll get married, Eat, shrink, you’ll get married!” Oh well, let him think what he wants to think. (Actually, my ALL-TIME favourite email was from a 19 year-old college guy who announced he thought my sister and I were hot! I’m hangin’ on to that one for a while! Maybe forever!)

It’s funny. We didn’t intend our show to appeal to kids, but it’s great that it does (and I guess it also says something about our goofy senses of humour!) With all of the focus on childhood obesity and the rise of diabetes among kids, I’m really happy that our show can be a positive influence. If we can get more kids into the kitchen to take control of their own meals, rather than have them habitually turn to processed, convenient junk foods, they’re bound to turn out healthier. When you’re constantly eating out of packages, boxes and bags, you’re going to be loading up unsuspectingly on dietary villains like trans fat, sugar, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, MSG, high fructose corn syrup and tons of chemicals you can’t even pronounce. That’s a recipe for disaster for sure. But when you take control of preparing your own meals, you take control of what you’re putting in your body and ultimately, you take control of your own health. I truly believe that the more you cook for yourself, the healthier you’ll be. One of our goals is to convince people, in the words of my 11 year-old friend, Amy, that cooking “is soooooo coooool!”

I’m glad we can help get this message across to kids, unintentional as it may be, even if it means we have to use the corniest jokes imaginable to get their attention…

So this man walks into a bar, and he’s carrying a huge slab of ashphalt under his arm. He says to the bartender, “Gimme a drink…and one for the road!”