MeSoFun Blog

It looks something like this. The call went out at work a few weeks ago, as it occasionally does, for stories. Tell us the stories behind your Thanksgiving recipes, our food editor implored. My first response: Pick a food item and I'll give you the story. Mom's stuffing goes back to when she lived in Pennsylvania and her home-cookin' neighbor shared a recipe, likely off a box of Saltines, that is equal parts delicious and terrible for your health. The stuffing has a stick and a half of butter in it. It's a miracle I'm not on medications. Turkeys? How about the time I bought five of them in Utah because they were $5 apiece. We ate turkey dinner once a month until May. The Wife introduced me to cooking turkey in a plastic bag. I am forever grateful. But the gravy story is the best because gravy is sentimental to me. Yes, I'm a male blogger who gets sentimental about gravy. Now you've seen it all. Grandma was a pragmatic woman. She was quick to laugh at a good

*trod, trod, trod, plod, trod* I have an obsession. Not the good kind, and certainly not the cologne®. Like many good Americans, I have some form of fitness tracker. Put bluntly, my phone tells me how many steps I've taken in a day. What good is this? Plenty, if you are obsessive. You'd think I'm not obsessive. Laid-back is a term that has been used to describe me since I was in my mother's womb, taking over a week longer than predicted to be born (woo hoo! Geminis rule!). If only I'd had a smartphone. That's a whole week I could have been getting extra steps. For the past two years, I've been using a Samsung® app that tells me how many steps I've taken. This app also tells me how many steps I've taken in a month. What would be a reasonable number? People often hear they should take 10,000 steps per day (t hough there is evidence that number should be much higher ), but the average American takes something like 5,000 steps per day. How many should yo