As one who has tried virtually every diet ever invented - from the dubious delights of endless hard-boiled eggs and grapefruit to the cabbage soup guzzling challenge - one that particularly stands out in my memory is The Beverly Hills Diet. In the original book, Judy Mazel suggested many interesting ideas, one of which was eating only ONE thing at a time, then switching to something else and never never going back to the first thing that day. Each day of the week you were allowed to eat two different things. Yippie skip - finally, a food-combining program for unimaginative people. One of the days called for eating apples, followed by popcorn. She described popcorn as little brooms, the perfect intestinal sweeps. Ummmm….OK.

    Happily, despite all the apple and popcorn days I enjoyed (I use that word loosely) on her diet, I still love apples and popcorn; so when Foo mentioned that Roni over at Weight Watchen is holding a drawing with a year’s supply of Orville Redenbacher's new natural popcorn and a one-year subscription to Netflix as the prizes, I jumped on it with both feet. I love Roni’s blog anyway, and apparently she’s now passing out treats to some lucky winner along with her good advice and recipes.

    The catch is, I have to mention Roni and Orville in my blog before January 11^th to get in on the drawing.

    Please note how effortlessly I managed to fulfill both requirements. Yes. Very smooth. But hey, with any luck, I’ll be settled on the sofa cuddling a bag of Orville’s new Natural Buttery Salt & Cracked Pepper flavor while watching Clue in no time.