#I didn’t intend to eat too many calories but :((( chocolate :(((

[soft-twink]

Oops 🤭

He/They

[ddaenggtan]

Half-Baked Holiday | ksj | M

Granny Park’s Gossip:

That Seokjin, don’t get me started on him. He’s worked hard to open and run that bakery of his, you know, and I’m so proud that it’s so successful now. Wish he would find a nice person to settle down with, though, he deserves it, as long as he’s been on his own. Well, I guess you can’t really call it alone when he’s got that grump of a best friend always hanging around him. He really should be paying her, what with all the time she spends at the bakery with him. She’s always waking up on the wrong side of the bed, but she’s not so bad when she brings me some of those cookies of his, or just around Seokjin in general, if I’m honest. Too distracted by staring at that pretty face of his, I suppose, though who can blame her?

pairing } seokjin x reader

word count } 12.6K { also on ao3

genre } friends to lovers, idiots to lovers, bakery au, fluff, smut, literally the slightest bit of angst

warnings } fluff, fluff, fluff; jin is an idiot and so is the MC, like they’re genuinely both dumbasses but in different ways; pining; misunderstandings; masturbation, spanking, unprotected sex, oral sex - male receiving, exhibitionism a little, rolling pins are used in ways they are not intended to be used; several mentions of jins squeaky laugh and also his red ears bc they’re my favorite things in the world

{ The Snowball Effect Series Masterlist } 

a/n } whaddup i finally finished this thing barely on time so yEET i yet again maintain my status as queen of last minute deadlines!!!! HBH is my Baby, I love it, it’s my perfect shiny garbage baby, and if you like it, you should DEF check out the others!! They can be read as standalones, but it’s really really really really really really highly recommended that you read them all in order, as they all end up in the same place and there are a ton of little easter eggs and references and shoutouts woven into the entire series!!! Extra special shoutout to the authors of all the other stories, @fortunexkookie (ryn), @taehyungforreal (ashley), @stutterfly​ (kristi, who also made the incredible banners!!!) 

You're a good person. You pride yourself on being kind and giving. Every year you make donations to several charities. You help organize summer fundraisers so kids can eat. You buy the most ethically-sourced groceries possible. You leave your change in case someone else can use it. You always tip at least 20% when you go out to eat. Out of everything, though, of all the good deeds you try to do in your life, there's one thing that makes you a truly outstanding human being. 

You don't lose your fucking mind every time the urge hits you. 

"But how many calories are in the Holiday Donut?" The lady in front of you asks. You can feel your eye twitching and even the young guy behind the register is starting to falter in his bright grin. 

"Um, I'm not-"

"Look lady," You cut in. "You have heard about nearly every thing on the fucking menu. It's a donut, stuffed with strawberry creme and coated in colored frosting and sprinkles. How many calories do you think are in it? Just order the banana nut muffin like you always do, get your coffee, and leave, so the rest of us aren't stuck in a line for another hour." 

The lady looks scandalized as she turns to glare at you, but all it takes is a single cocked eyebrow to send her huffing out the door. She mutters a few choice words under her breath as she goes, but you pay them no mind. 

"Your usual is almost ready, Pumpkin." You level Jin with an unamused glare as he pushes his way through the kitchen doors with a steaming tray of scones in hand. 

"You know I hate that name, Spice," You remind him dryly. 

"You know I hate it when you run my customers off with that dark cloud you call a personality, and yet here we both are," he responds. He just smiles at your eyeroll and you do your best to ignore the fluttering in your stomach. Instead you make yourself comfortable on one of the barstools at the counter. 

Seokjin's bakery is as busy as it ever is; several of the tables are taken, either by students on their nth espresso or families doing holiday shopping or people just looking for a place to relax amidst the bustle of the streets. There's someone perched on the stool at the opposite end, close to the register, but you pay them no mind. You're too focused on the mug Jin slides in front of you - green and chipped on the handle, it's your favorite - and the steam wafting up from the cocoa inside. There's a thick layer of marshmallow on the top and a candy cane sticking out, just like you like it, and a Holiday Bagel on a small plate next to it. 

"Thanks. You're still an ass, though." He has the decency to look offended at your words, and you grit your teeth against the smile that threatens to split your face. He always looks so cute when he's huffy. 

"One of these days I'm going to make you start paying for your food like everyone else, and then you'll start treating me right."

"Sure," You agree in a monotone as you pull your phone out and start tapping away on it. "That'll be the same day that you stop asking me to do your books for you because you can't be bothered."

The sigh that expels itself from his lungs is almost as dramatic as the play he dragged you to the week before. 

"I am perfectly capable of doing my books myself, thank you. I let you do it to keep you busy."

"Mhm, sure, I believe that," You tell him. He scoffs again and you barely register the hand he shoots forward to steal your bagel before you're slapping it away. "You don't even like strawberries and kiwi, Seokjin, and you will lose a hand."

You don't look up from the emails you're sorting through on your phone, but you don't have to in order to know that he's got both elbows braced on either side of you. You've known him long enough to know that this is his Pout Stance, and you dare not look up because there's no denying him when he looks like that. 

"You're so mean to me, Pumpkin. All I do is spoil you with good food and perfect company," he whines, "And what do I get for it? Insults and mockery. You could at least give me a kiss every now and then."

You choke on your cocoa. It burns your nose as it starts to come up that way, and the dark liquid dances across your phone screen as it molds to every crack and crevice. 

"Goddamn it, Seokjin," You sputter. He's already holding a cloth out to you, apology written on his face even as you glare at him. You pat your phone dry as best you can before resigning yourself to the fact that it's just going to smell like warm chocolate and peppermint until the next time your best friend flusters you. 

"To be fair, I didn't expect you to be so opposed to the idea," Seokjin mutters. He continues under his breath as you wave off his attempt to help again, something about him being handsome enough, but you aren't listening. Because that's the only real problem between the two of you. 

You aren't opposed to the idea. It's all you can think about most days; in work meetings, while you're doing paperwork, in team briefings, while you watch TV, when you're asleep. What his pillow lips would feel like against your own occupies nearly every waking thought you have. The others are torn between fantasies of what being his would be like and memories of him in general, neither of which you're lacking in.

You've known Seokjin for years. You don't even know how long since you insist you met when you were twelve and Jin is just as insistent that you met when you were nine. All you remember is being alone on the side of a playground playing hopscotch by yourself and then giggling at something the nice boy had said and then the two of you were inseparable. You aren't even sure how long you've felt like this towards him. It could've been high school, when he was one of the most sought after boys in school and yet still made time to comfort you every time a boy rejected you. Maybe it was college, though, when he was further away than he'd ever been and yet always answered your calls and responded to your texts and you'd cancel dates because he had randomly driven up to see you. Maybe it was after, watching him run his own bakery and do what he loves every day with the brightest grin you've ever seen on his face. 

You can't be sure. All you know is one day you were washing dishes in the back after being his guinea pig for some new creation, and he told some dumb joke, and when you turned around to mock his squeaky laugh like usual, you couldn't. Because he had flour on his cheek and chocolate on his lip and you'd never wanted to kiss someone so bad in your life. 

And then it just devolved from there and now the butterflies in your stomach have just set up camp. It's been too long, but you can't risk your friendship with him over some stupid crush. He means too much to you. 

Your eyes don't leave his back as he disappears back into the kitchen, still complaining about something under his breath, and you suppress a sigh. 

Shopping is the worst. You aren't really sure why you're here, because you hate shopping and you hate crowds and you especially hate holiday shopping because it's like Satan himself smashed the two together. You get all your gifts online or early in the year, you don't go anywhere near a mall from October to March, and it works for you. You don't have to deal with holiday crowds. Ever. So why are you on hour five at the largest mall in driving distance with no breakfast, sore feet, and full bags hanging from every possible place they can?

"Does that really seem like something Taehyung would like, though? I got that jacket for him already, I know, but this seems so much more fitting. What do you think, Pumpkin?"

Oh. Right. Seokjin had showed up at Too Damn Early For A Saturday O'Clock and demanded you accompany him for his holiday shopping. 

"I think that if I don't eat something in the next ten minutes, I'm ripping your head off and eating that instead. And for dessert I'll demolish those fancy chocolates you got for Jimin." A passing mother gives you a horrified glance as she ushers her toddler along and you almost wish you gave a shit. It's the mall, she can't control what other people say in this hellhole. You probably could’ve done without the emphasis on Jimin, though; Jin knows how much you worship those chocolates, you’ve said countless times that they’re better than orgasms, and still, he got some for Jimin and not you. 

You aren’t bitter. Or petty. No. You’re an adult, and you’re not going to pout just because your crush got your mutual friends some sweets instead of you.

"If you touch those chocolates, you're going to march your ass right back to that store and replace them while I return all your gifts," Seokjin quips back. You glance over at him and wrinkle your nose at the two berets he has in each hand. 

"What the fuck are you doing, Spice?"

“Wondering when you’re going to listen when I talk to you,” He responds. He holds both of the berets up for you to view more clearly. “Now, which of these is more ‘Tae’ to you?” He doesn’t react to the blank glare you give him, long since immune to your powers of pessimism, and instead just wiggles the berets in each hand so you actually look at them. 

Neither are to your personal taste; one is diamond-encrusted in some kind of quilted pattern, with some kind of alternating animal print as well. The other is more understated, if you can call it that, with a faux-fur trim, a feathered poof in the center, and a truly obscene pink houndstooth pattern to it. You can’t help the wrinkled nose that the two options cause in you, and you ignore Seokjin’s huff of irritation in favor of looking past him to the rest of the options. You only have to look for a minute to find something better suited, which mostly means Jin wanted to give Tae something truly gaudy on purpose. 

“Here,” You say, stuffing the hat into his hands. He stops mid-rant - something about how you should be helping him more, though you aren’t sure why because he’s the one that dragged you here and is lucky you haven’t bailed yet - and focuses on what you’ve just given him. It’s not a pretty beret, by any means, and is by far the cheapest one there, but it’s got some kind of artful splatter across it in greyscale tones, with a pop of red around the rim to accent it. Seokjin just stares at it for a second before turning his gaze on you, and you shift uncomfortably. 

“What?” You eventually ask. 

“Nothing,” He says airily. “Just surprised.” 

“At what?”

“You paying attention to people and being able to buy good gifts.” He puts the other two back into place and heads towards the registers, ignoring your indignant squawk. 

“I get you perfect gifts every year!” You don’t miss his eyeroll, and it makes you want to strangle him a little. 

“I don’t count,” He tells you as he settles in behind some grandmother buying entirely too many things that have to be for her grandkid. “You know me better than anyone, and you have access to my Amazon wishlist.”

“Yeah, except none of that is on your fucking wishlist,” You mutter. He turns, eyebrow arched and ready to get more backtalk, but you just make a face at him. 

He drags you to five more stores after that and abandons you in the middle of Williams Sonoma. You’re on your third lap of the store, ready to disassemble the fancy grill they’ve got on display to see if he’s somehow in there, when he appears, probably from the ether or some shit. You’re still trying to figure out how he managed to phase through time and space and the massive shelf of Martha Stewart Collection Cookware without you noticing, and in the meantime he takes the massive amount of bags from your hands and deposits something in your palms instead. 

It takes you a minute to register the warmth, but the smell hits instantly and makes your stomach grumble loudly. You’d be embarrassed if you weren’t so fucking hungry. 

“Eat,” Seokjin commands. “We’ve got more shopping to do for the bakery.”

You can’t even argue because your mouth is stuffed full of pizza pretzel bites - the only real reason to come to the mall, in your opinion. You’ve inhaled one serving in record time, and Jin doesn’t even react when you bust into the second one in the middle of some tech store. Instead, he just holds out a hand and waits for you to plop a pretzel bite in his palm. 

It’s hours later, long after you’ve helped Seokjin drop off all the bakery supplies at the shop and carted the presents up to his apartment, that you realize you’re still holding on to the bag from the pretzel place. You’re about to toss it into your garbage when it registers that there’s too much weight for just garbage; curious, you open the bag up and dump the content onto your kitchen counter. 

Inside is a small box of chocolates, the same kind you’d threatened to eat earlier in the day, your favorite flavor and everything, with a small note atop it. 

These were supposed to be part of your gift, but you looked put out when you thought I wasn’t getting you any. Thanks for today. xxSpice

You resist the urge to smile; it’s only right that he give you sweets after the frankly absurd amount of time he’d made you spend at the mall. Still, you can’t deny your lip twitches along with your heart at the knowledge that he’d been planning on including them in your gift. 

And you might tuck the note away behind a postcard on your fridge, but you’re never going to admit to that. 

The next day when you get to the bakery, Seokjin doesn't hesitate to shove you into his small office and push you into his desk chair before he disappears back into the kitchen. The usually cluttered space is empty, devoid of the usual invoices and order forms and whatever the fuck else your best friend keeps on his desk. Even the picture frames have been moved, placed haphazardly atop a filing cabinet. Something flutters in your chest when you notice the one directly facing his chair is one of the two of you.

Taken years and years ago, back when you were first moving into your college dorm, when you were both tired from carrying boxes up the seven flights of stairs to your room. You still remember how irritated you had been when Jin's parents insisted they get a picture of the two of you in your matching university hoodies. You don't remember what it was, but you remember Seokjin cracked some dumb joke or said something ridiculous. He must have, because in the picture, you're looking at him with a softness in your face that isn't present any other time.

Seokjin reappears with a steaming mug and a hand behind his back. The familiar scent of warm chocolate and peppermint hits you, followed closely by the warm-butter sharp-mint honey-glaze smell that you remember taste-testing for him so many times that you're almost positive it’s going to linger on your gravestone.

"That's mistledough." You narrow your eyes, and he rolls his own. His hand pulls out from behind his back to reveal the treat he'd concocted in college and perfected not long after. Shaped like a sprig of mistletoe and a warm honey brown color, the mistledough is easily the best selling product that Seokjin has.

And it's only on sale from Black Friday to the first day of January.

You don't even know what's in it. He's never told you, hasn't let you watch him make it; he'd just show up randomly and shove a weird-shaped treat under your nose and tell you to eat it. And of course you did, because you've been whipped for him since the first day he made you smile on that playground.

It's not important, really. What's important is that he's brought you cocoa and mistledough, which means he's bribing you for something important.

"No," You tell him.

"Please," He pouts. "You don't even know what it is yet." You huff and look anywhere else. His pout is dangerous for you and you know it, and you refuse to be bought for some cocoa and bread.

In an attempt to avoid the puppy dog eyes he no doubt is wearing, your eyes flit around the room. They eventually settle on the mass of shopping bags to your right. You turn, seeing the collection of various wrapping papers on the left and the collection of tape beside them.

"No," You repeat, turning your glare on him. "Wrap your own damn presents, Spice, I'm not doing it for you this year."

"But you do it so much better than I do!" He steps forward, setting his bribes in front of you so the scent wafts towards you that much more. "Your corners are always perfect, Pumpkin, and the edges are so well matched, and you get the pattern to line up perfectly, and-"

"No, Jin," You tell him, already standing. "I told you last year that it was the last time I'd be doing it for you, and that was only because you left it to the day before - again - and had to be in the bakery. I already wrapped all my presents, I'm not doing yours too."

He doesn't even say anything. He just widens his eyes a little and looks down at the scuffed tile floor, kicking his shoe dejectedly against the foot of the desk. There's utter silence in the room, only broken by the muffled chatter of customers and the beep of one of the ovens every few minutes.

You last for a solid ten minutes. You know because the smell of more mistledough fills the air, and you know Seokjin wouldn't try to bribe you with anything that wasn't the freshest batch.

"Why can't you do it?" You grumble, already sitting back down and picking through the wrapping paper.

"I've got like a hundred orders to fill today. That's not even really an exaggeration, either. Soobin's been on cake duty all day so that I can get to work on the mistledough orders and still have time to finish Tae's cake before we leave." You sigh and turn to look at him.

He looks stressed; that's not unusual for this time of year, but it still makes your chest clench. You want to pull him close, run your hands along the furrow between his brows until it's smooth again. Smother him with kisses until he's giggling and happy and remembers that he's a badass culinary god and that he can handle this and that you love him.

"I wish you would tell people no sometimes," You say instead. You slide one of the biodegradable rolls onto the desk and start looking through the drawers for the massive ruler you know is tucked away somewhere. "You can't fill every order. Let people pine for their fancy bread, they don't deserve it anyway."

"You know I can't do that, Pumpkin," He says, breaking off a piece of your bribe and leaning against the tattered desk. "We only just got to where we're steadily in the black, and the seasonal stuff brings in a lot of money. I've got to milk that for as much as I can."

"Yes, because you being overworked and stressed like this is a much better alternative. I'm pretty sure your eyebags have eyebags." You wait for the dramatic gasp, but it doesn't come.

Instead when you look up at him from where you're digging through presents, he's staring at the picture of the two of you. Whatever he's seeing is beyond that, though, invisible to anyone but himself. It's not rare that he gets introspective and quiet; it's actually fairly common when it's just the two of you. You don't know why. You don't want to know why. You just take the moments when they come and wait for him to say whatever he's going to say.

"You're my best friend," is what he eventually says. Your hand stutters where it's slicing paper, mimicking the pang of heartbreak that shoots through your veins. You love being his best friend.

You just wish you were more than that.

"Yeah," You say offhandedly, "No one else wanted the gig, so I guess I'm stuck here." You can feel his eyeroll, but he pats your shoulder as he heads back into the kitchen. When he reappears a while later with fresh cocoa and a bagel, you pretend to be mad that he steals a bite of it until he laughs at your grumbling.

When you leave his smile feels lighter, and you tell yourself you're imagining his eyes lingering on your back as you go.

You’re gonna kill him. You really are. You’re going to absolutely skin him alive, you don’t give a fuck how cute his face is or how hard he makes your heart beat. There’s not a single fucking thing he could say or do that would make up for this. 

Maybe if you hadn’t been out here waiting for nearly twenty minutes. Maybe if your phone showed that he had even opened the last six texts you had sent him. Maybe if it wasn’t Seokjin who insisted on leaving at like ten in the morning to being with, even though you had plenty of time to get there because you didn’t even need to run by the bakery because he’d already put Soobin and Yeonjun through what probably counted as actual military training in order to prepare them for today. Frankly, it’s a miracle Seokjin is even leaving them on their own today, considering how hectic it gets. You’re entirely sure that it’s only because Soobin has worked there since the bakery opened and Yeonjun joined not long after so they both know the ropes as well as they possibly can. And because Seokjin was likely up until an ungodly hour preparing and baking an enormous amount of mistledough for today.

In fact, he’s probably still passed out up there, you decide as you climb out of your truck and head into your best friend’s apartment building. You’re cursing under your breath the entire way, paying no mind to the scandalized elderly gentleman that shoots you a Look. You really are gonna kill him, you decide as you shove the key he made you into the lock and jiggle the handle slightly so it’ll actually turn. You’re going to drag him out of his stupidly comfortable bed and probably try to shove him down the garbage disposal or something. His shoulders may present a challenge, but you are up for it. 

Your mind is so made up that you don’t even register the bags he’s got ready by the door, or the coolers full of groceries that are packed and ready beside them. You just sidestep it all entirely and head down the hall. You don’t even register the faint sounds, muffled by the door to his room, and by the time it all finally reaches your brain, it’s too late. You’ve already thrown the door open as wide as it will go, which means you get a perfect, unobstructed view, even as Seokjin startles and yelps. 

Because of course - of course - he isn’t sleeping or showering or packing. No, instead he’s got his fist wrapped around his cock and is thrusting shallowly into the warmth of his palm. The universe loves to torment you entirely too much, clearly. Why else would it offer you such an unhindered look at the love of your life’s dick?

It’s a nice dick, too. Long and the perfect thickness, a pretty dusky pink head. You can’t lie and say you’ve never imagined what Seokjin’s dick looks like - you basically grew up with him and the others, and young boys talk about their dicks. A lot. Plus, you’ve had a crush on him for several years now. 

You just never could have imagined that it’s so absolutely gorgeous that you can feel your mouth water. It’s impossible to tear your eyes away from it, in fact, until Seokjin gets over his initial shock and shoves his blanket over his lap. 

“What, uh,” He starts, throat rough. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh...you asked me to pick you up, remember? Because your car doesn’t have four wheel drive like the truck.” You learned a long time ago how to avoid being embarrassed around Seokjin, but even that can’t stop the burn in your cheeks as you force yourself to make eye contact with your best friend. It’s a struggle to focus on anything that isn’t the planes of his naked chest, broad and tanned despite the winter weather, but you manage. 

Barely. 

“Right, yeah, but...uh, weren’t you supposed to call? And aren’t you early?” The tips of his ears are as red as your face feels. The contrast between the current situation and his obvious shyness is so endearingly distracting, it takes you a full minute to focus back in on what he’s saying. “--at this point, I mean, I know that we apparently aren’t there yet, but really, I don’t mind-”

“Wait,” You interrupt, “I’m still stuck on how I called you four times, both before I left and en route and once I got here, waited another ten minutes since I got here early because I know you like to be early, and yet somehow this is my fault.”

“Well...you should have knocked! Why wouldn’t you knock when coming into someone else’s apartment or bedroom?”

“Why didn’t you hear me coming? The floor in your hallway is a million years old, it squeaks constantly, how did you miss that?”

“Well, I was a little preoccupied.”

“Clearly.”

“You still should have knocked.”

“Why did you give me a key if you wanted me to knock? And when have you ever knocked on my door when you show up randomly? Besides, I figured you were asleep and didn’t want to wake you up while I took all your shit out to the truck.” His face softens a little, and a shy smile teases at his lips. 

“Thanks, Pumpkin,” he says quietly. Your stomach flips violently at the look on his face and you roll your eyes at it. 

“Yeah, whatever.” You pick up the clothes he already has laid out and throw them at his chest. “Get dressed, you’re buying me breakfast on the way to the cabin.”

He doesn’t protest as you leave him and gather his bags up, balancing them atop the coolers of groceries and snacks he’s no doubt made for everyone. It only takes a little finagling, but you manage to get it all downstairs and into the backseat of your truck. Fat white flakes are falling from the grey sky by the time you’re finished, and Seokjin’s nose and ears are still pink when he eventually gets in as well. You turn the heat up, just in case it’s not residual embarrassment heating his face. 

He doesn’t even say anything except a muffled thanks. After a few minutes, you’ve almost resigned yourself to an awkwardly silent car ride. 

“So…” Seokjin eventually says in a too-casual tone. “About earlier-”

“No,” You hiss before he can continue. “No we are absolutely not talking about what happened.”

“Oh, come on,” He implores as you turn into the first drive-through you can find. “It was bound to happen eventually, considering-”

“We really don’t need to talk about it,” you insist. 

“I’m just saying that I know you aren’t really one for...y’know, sexual activity,” He ignores your open-mouthed gape and continues, “But I have my own needs, and self-satisfaction is the best balance between the two that I’ve found. That said, I’m sorry you had to see it, I know it probably made you uncomfortable. Because. Y’know. Dicks.”

You’re still gawking as he finishes his spiel, and you feel a little like a fish. You surely must look like one, with your mouth hanging open in shock, your eyes as wide as saucers, and the general air of befuddlement that surrounds you. There are so many things you want to say, questions you have, all of them colliding in your brain.

“I like sexual activity just fine!” is what makes it out, just as the speaker beside your window crackles to life. There’s a long, pregnant pause in which you and Seokjin just stare at each other. 

“So...what can I get for you today?” The worker says through the speaker. You want to die, just a little, as you rattle off your order and Seokjin’s to him; the universe hates you, obviously, that’s the only real explanation here. 

“We are not talking about this,” You tell Seokjin firmly as you pull away from the speaker. Your face is still burning, but you refuse to acknowledge it. “You are paying and then we are heading to the cabin and we are not ever speaking of this again.”

He holds his hands up in defeat. You almost believe that he’s dropped the subject, but unfortunately you know him too well for that. Which is why you shoot him a warning look as you pull up to the window and he starts to say something. 

“All I was going to say is that my parents asked about you the other day. They’re mad that you haven’t been by lately.”

“I’ve been busy,” You say as you hand Seokjin’s card to the kid in the window. “I haven’t had time to visit.”

“You visit Jimin’s grandma like twice a week.”

“Yeah, well, Granny Park and I are friends. Not to mention I still have to unseat her as the reigning go champion.” You don’t mention that you’re sneaking her mistledough and cookies so that she won’t blab about the fact that you’re in love with Seokjin. Or that every time you go to his parents’ house, they end up talking about weddings and asking when you’re getting married. You can’t deal with that, not when you factor in your feelings for their son. 

“I’m just saying. You’re like a daughter to them. They miss you. I’m going by there after we get back from the cabin, and I think they’d like it if you tagged along.”

All you give him is a noncommittal grunt and several bags of fast food. You love his parents, you really do. You just wish they didn’t come with the constant reminder that Jin only sees you as a sister.

He lets you eat in silence, though, content to munch on your fries and pretend most of the morning never happened. He sings along to every song that plays on the radio, and it isn’t until you’re about thirty minutes away from the city and doing your best to navigate the roads in the worsening snow that you get suspicious. 

“When you say you like sexual activity just fine-"

“I thought we dropped this!” He sends you a look that just says ‘really?’ and continues. 

“I just want to know what you mean. Because obviously we’re on two different pages.”

“I mean that I like it just fine. I enjoy it, it’s fun, I would like to continue having it in the future. What of that is strange to you?”

“No, I just...I was under the impression that you weren’t interested in that. You never really talk about it, and you’ve never mentioned any...partners, or anything so…”

“I didn’t realize I was supposed to inform you of every person I’ve ever slept with.” You glance over at him, astounded, and are shocked to see that his lips are pursed in a frown and his brows are drawn together. You resist the urge to reach out and smooth the lines on his face. “Wait, are you actually upset about this?”

“It’s just...I’ve told you about every person I’ve slept with.” You wince a little because he’s right. You’ve heard about every single one of his sexual encounters, some of them in great detail, and you do your best not to think about them. “If I had known that you were interested, then-”

“What? You would’ve set me up with one of your friends?”

“Who was the last person?”

“What?”

“Who was the last person you had sex with?”

You look at him again, a quick glance to try to figure out if he’s being serious or not. His face is hard, an emotion you can’t place clear in the set of his jaw and the steel in his eyes. 

“I’m pretty sure there’s an actual blizzard starting around us, and you want to know who I fucked recently?”

“Yeah, I do. Fair’s fair, Pumpkin.” Something in his voice raises alarms in your head. You could insist that you don’t want to talk about it; he’d respect it if you were really serious, you know he would. There’s an edge to him right now, though, one you haven’t seen in a very long time, and you don’t like it. You want to smooth it out, sand it back into the gentle lilt you love.

“Fuck, Spice, I don’t know. That guy from the bar that one night?”

“What night? What bar?”

“I don’t fucking remember, okay? It was like...fuck, years ago, I don’t even remember what he looked like, let alone his name or what bar it was. Are you happy now? For fuck’s sake, I didn’t think I had to report to you every time I wanted to get laid. You’re my best friend, not my keeper. I didn’t think it was any of your business.”

He mumbles something under his breath that you don’t catch; between the sound of the heater going full blast and the Christmas carols he’s got blaring through your truck’s sound system, it’s hard to hear anything. Still, when you glance over at him again, something dark sits in his expression, and you’ve got a gut feeling it’s your fault. 

Things remain tense even after you arrive at the cabin. Seokjin doesn’t wait for you to help him, just loads all of his stuff into his arms and wobbles his way inside while you’re still slinging your overnight bag over your shoulder. The door slams behind you as you enter, caught by the wind of the growing storm outside, and you send what you hope is an apologetic wave to where Taehyung and Star - his girlfriend of forever and one of your closest friends - sit in the den. 

You immediately make your way to the kitchen, swiping a tin of cookies and making hot chocolate, all while ignoring the overly aggressive chopping your best friend is doing behind you. You’re sure Star and Tae aren’t surprised when you flee to the room that you’ve unofficially claimed over the years. 

You stay there for most of the day. The door stays open, just in case someone actually wants to come talk to you; you have no doubt that everyone can hear you cursing at the dog show you’re watching, and at one point you’re pretty sure you hear Namjoon’s voice steer someone away, but you can’t be sure. You don’t even want to be sure. All you really want is to know what the fuck you did to piss your best friend off and get him back to normal. 

You can’t just ask him, though, because he’ll no doubt get even angrier that you don’t already know, despite the fact that you have no way of knowing unless he actually tells you. 

Frustrated, you pick up your phone and flip uselessly through the chat you have with him, trying to find literally any explanation for how he’s acting. The group chat with all the boys plus Star and Cat has been quiet most of the day, only the offhanded comment about someone leaving now or going to be a little late. 

Your chat with just Cat and Star is almost as quiet. There’s a featured video of Seokjin blowing up at Jeongguk a bit too harshly considering the younger had just nabbed some kimchi before dinner, but that’s essentially it. You’re tempted to ask Star to get Seokjin to tell her what’s going on, but not only do you not want to drag her into whatever this is, you also know better. He wouldn’t tell her anything. She isn’t his best friend. 

As much as you’re looking forward to the rest of the night, there’s a sense of dread deep in your bones when you eventually emerge from your room. You only do so because you’re out of hot chocolate and you know that you’ll be dinner if you’re late to eat. 

You wave off Star’s curious look when she sees you; you don’t need her worrying about you, not when she’s got so much else to focus on, if the crutches leaned nearby are any indication. Hobi and Cat haven’t arrived yet, which only adds to the sinking feeling in your gut, but you brush it off. They would call if they had trouble. You know they would. Besides, Cat said they’d probably be leaving late. 

Seokjin doesn’t even look at you as you pass him to get to the dining table, and that hurts more than you’d like to admit. The real sucker punch comes once you sit down, however, when you see a mug of hot cocoa with your signature candy cane placed just to the right of your plate, only to realize that Seokjin’s mug of special coffee he loves so much is placed at the other end of the table. 

Away from you. 

Air catches in your lungs, and it sounds silly that you’re tearing up over your best friend not sitting beside you, but he always sits beside you. Always. No matter what the two of you have been fighting about, he’s always sat beside you because he likes to laugh at the faces you make about the conversations going on, and he feeds you the best bits of meat while you act annoyed about it but secretly love it. 

You knew Seokjin was upset, but you hadn’t realized he was this upset. 

Jimin sits beside you and introduces you to his neighbor, but you don’t even catch her name, just that he keeps calling her Snow and she looks at him like he’s the meal and that there’s a massive purple bruise along Jimin’s neck that you have a sneaking suspicion is her handiwork. She looks vaguely familiar, but you can’t be bothered to place her, not when Seokjin is laughing about something Star is saying and looks entirely too at home down there. 

On your other side, Namjoon and his roommate are talking about a science something or other that they’ve been working on. They’re both so invested in the conversation that neither notice Namjoon dumping the extra spicy sauce over his rice instead of the mild that he prefers. You can’t even bear to listen as he starts complaining to Seokjin that he made the food too spicy and the resulting tirade from the eldest. 

If anyone notices your sour mood, they don’t say anything. It’s not surprising, when you think about it; you’ve long been established as the grump of the group, and you don’t expect that to change, even with the girl Jeongguk brought along that seems torn between whether she actually likes him or not. 

Yoongi catches your eye at one point and you just cock a brow at him. 

“Where’s Jisoo?” You mouth at him across the table. He looks to Peaches, the girlfriend of his that you’ve only ever met once in passing, and looks back at you. You way your eyebrows at him halfheartedly and Yoongi rolls his eyes. It’s disappointing that Jisoo isn’t here. She always provides some sort of entertainment.

If nothing else, she usually provides some semblance of distraction. 

By the time dinner ends, you’re fairly positive no one knows about your spat with Seokjin, or the strange tension between the two of you. You’re sure no one noticed how you didn’t eat much of anything; everyone was too wrapped up in their own conversations and relationships to pay much attention to little old you. 

You really should know better by now.

Jimin doesn’t move from his spot beside you, even as the others begin gathering dishes and your best friend disappears into the kitchen with the promise of cookies and chocolate-covered treats in an hour or two. Snow disappears, no doubt after a silent conversation between her and Jimin, and you roll your eyes at how he watches her disappear into the room they’ve claimed. 

The two of you sit in silence; it’s a game of wits, almost. You know he knows something is up, but you also know that he knows you aren’t one to just offer up your thoughts. But he knows that you know that, and he knows you know he isn’t going to let it go because he can tell something is actually bothering you this time. 

“So are we going to talk about why Seokjin has been so pissy all day and how there’s been a notable lack of Pumpkin by his side, or are we going to continue to pretend that everything’s fine like we did through dinner?”

You wish you were better able to resist him. Maybe your time with his grandmother has weakened you to him, and maybe you should work on being less transparent with him, but either way, you slump in your chair and set your empty mug of hot chocolate down with a thump. You still send him a glare that he smiles through and make a mental note to tell Granny Park that there’s a reason for his sudden need for scarves that she should ask him about. 

“We had a fight.” You eventually grumble, eyes darting to where Seokjin stands over in the kitchen, dipping marshmallows, pretzels, and other treats into melted chocolate. “I think.”

“You think?”

It doesn’t take very long for you to recount the day’s events to him. You even tell him about The Incident from that morning that you walked in on, because once you start talking you can’t seem to stop until he knows it all. 

“And now he’s pissed, I think at me, but I can’t figure out why. I mean, it wasn’t any of his business, but you know how I am with him, so it’s not like I could just not tell him, but I don’t understand why it pissed him off.” You huff a little. The frustration with everything that rolls in your stomach collides with the hurt you feel over Seokjin snubbing you, and it’s so distracting that you almost miss Jimin’s careful whisper of your name. 

“Have you ever considered just asking him?” Jimin says softly. “I’m pretty sure having an actual conversation with him would fix this whole thing.”

“But…” You hesitate, twisting a stray thread from your sweater between your fingers. “Jimin, what if he hates me?” 

There’s a vulnerability to your voice that you hate, one that only Seokjin, Jimin, and Granny Park have ever seen. It’s rare, mostly because you hate feeling vulnerable, but it makes Jimin’s eyes soften ever so slightly even as he bursts into a fit of giggles so powerful that he almost falls out of his chair. 

“This is not helping!” You hiss, shooting a look at where Seokjin is rolling out chocolate chip cookie dough. He doesn’t look up at Jimin’s outburst, but his lips twitch ever so slightly into a frown and the crease between his brows deepens. 

You know that look, too well. It’s his ‘I Do Not Care Even Though I Actually Do But I Don’t Want You To Know I Care” look. You saw it frequently when he first went off to college, when he was constantly worrying about all the boys he left behind in that little cul-de-sac. You really hoped it wouldn’t ever come back. 

“I’m sorry,” Jimin says eventually, wiping a tear away from one eye. “I really am, I promise, I’m just. Oh, I think I might lose a bet.”

“What? How is that helpful, Jimin? Y’know what, where’s that dumb dog thing Yoongi made you, I need to smush its face until I feel better--”

“What you need,” Jimin says as he places a gentle hand on your shoulder to sit you back down in your chair, “Is to stop abusing my lovingly crafted plushies and actually talk to Seokjin.”

“I can’t tell him how I feel, you know this Chim-”

“Did I say confess?” Jimin asks as he stands, eyes flickering to where his neighbor-slash-girlfriend(?) is in their room. “Just talk to him. I mean really talk to him, okay, about why he’s upset. I think you’ll be surprised.”

Jimin doesn’t give you a chance to protest; he’s gone and disappeared down the hallway before you can blink, and you don’t want to know what’s happening in that room. 

Eventually you meander over to where Seokjin is sliding cookies out of the oven, each perfectly placed to allow for the perfect bake. You putter around for a minute or two, opening and closing cabinet doors at random. You aren’t finding anything interesting, certainly not the strength to have this conversation, which is why you’re startled when someone says, “It’s all the way to the left.”

You turn, and Seokjin is absently stirring leftover melted chocolate. When you fail to move, too busy staring at him in confusion, he turns and points to a cabinet beside you. “The cocoa,” He says, “It’s all the way to the left.”

“Thanks,” You mumble as you move toward it. Inside is a box of candy canes and a weathered tin that you recognize from Seokjin’s apartment. Its twin sits in the bakery, right beside the register so that it’s close at hand for when you inevitably come thundering in with a storm cloud above your head. Each holds the special cocoa recipe that Seokjin learned from his grandfather, who learned it from his grandfather. 

You chance a glance at your best friend; he knows how much you love that cocoa. The people in this cabin right now are the only people he’ll make it for - save for Hoseok and Cat, who still haven’t arrived. Seokjin’s ears are burning red, and a weaker person - or at least one less accustomed to him - may have cooed at the sight. But you’ve spent too long building up the walls so that he’ll never find out just what you keep tucked away in your heart. 

“I’m-”

“Sorry.” He finishes for you. “I know you are. And...I forgive you.” You nod at his words; you couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what had actually upset him, but you’re glad he’s forgiven you for it. Still, it nags at you, because what if it happens again? Unlikely, considering you haven’t been able to get laid in actual years because you’re too smitten with the man standing across from you, but still. 

“Are you going to tell me why you were upset, or are you just going to play with chocolate all night?” You eventually ask. He sighs, heavy and long, and turn to lean back on the counter beside you. He’s wearing his ridiculous alpaca apron that you got him for his birthday, and that only makes him more beautiful as he considers what he wants to say. 

Your heart lurches painfully in your chest. He’s everything you’ve ever wanted, and it almost feels like he’s close enough to touch, but you just can’t seem to let your hand reach out to do so. You think if you could, you might be able to grab him and hold on forever, but something deep in your gut stills you. 

The fear of losing him, of losing everything that you have with him right now - late nights at the bakery, shopping for birthday presents, the quiet moments in a chaotic world where you find peace in each other. As much as it hurts to love him, as hard as it is to speak around the words that strangle in your throat that speak truth to every feeling you’ve ever locked in the recesses of your heart, you can’t risk telling him. Because this pining and loving and eventually watching him grow old with someone he loves?

That’s enough for you. 

“I just got jealous, I suppose,” Seokjin eventually says. “I always thought that you weren’t interested in sex, y’know? You mentioned it once in college that you’d tried it, but your little half-frown was there, so I knew you didn’t like it, because you get the same one every time you eat gingerbread because you hate it but you don’t want me to get disappointed that you aren’t eating the houses I make. I just thought it wasn’t something you wanted in life.”

“Um.”

“Which is obviously fine, sex isn’t for everyone, asexual people exist and are valid, as are those that are sex-repulsed, y’know? And I decided a long time ago when I first looked into it all that I didn’t care about sex in a relationship. That’s not the important thing to being partners with someone. But apparently sex is a thing for you, and I just wish I had known that because all this time I could’ve-”

“What, set me up with your friends?” 

“No, definitely not. It’s just that we...I could have...it just hurts to know that you’ll have sex with other people but not with me, even though I respect that it’s your decision to make.”

“What.”

“But I just...I know I’m not entitled to an explanation, but I can’t lie, I would really appreciate one if you can give it. I mean...I dunno, I know that I had sex with other people, but we had that whole conversation in college about it, and you seemed alright with it, so I did. And I always told you about them, because communication and openness is important, and I wanted you to know that I was respecting your boundaries with that while also satisfying my own needs. But it really did feel weird, because...y’know, so I stopped. And I guess I assumed that if you weren’t fucking me, you weren’t fucking anyone.”

“What.”

“I just really care about you, Pumpkin, and I know I know don’t really say it a lot because I’m more of a ‘showing it’ kind of guy, but...I just would have appreciated knowing that. Especially since I’ve always been more than willing to love you like that.”

“Spice,” You say slowly, being careful to keep your face blank. “What the actual fuck are you talking about?”

Seokjin blinks at you owlishly. “What do you mean ‘what am I talking about,’ I thought I was pretty clear. I mean...yeah, I’d love it if you would have sex with me, but that’s your decision, and I’m curious as to your reasoning and logic. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, which is why I forgave you, because as much as it stings, it’s your choice. And I love you, as you know, so-”

“How would I possibly know that?” Your voice catches a little on the words, probably because you’re having a little trouble actually breathing. Everything is fuzzy and the words ‘I’d love it if you would have sex with me’ and ‘I love you’ are playing on a loop in your brain. Your entire world has just shifted on its axis, and yet Seokjin looks completely unbothered. 

“Maybe because I’ve put up with you so long?” He teases with a fond smile. “I mean, I know we aren’t the type to say the words very often, but c’mon Pumpkin. We’ve been dating since you were twelve, not many would last that long without even a kiss.”

“We haven’t been together since I was twelve, though.” He raises a brow at your confused tone. 

“Okay, thirteen, then.” He says. The confusion on your face must be apparent, because it begins to bleed into his, the beautiful features morphing to mirror your own. 

“Seokjin, I don’t know what you’re talking about. We aren’t dating.”

His expression only gets more confused. 

“Uh, yes we are?”

“Uh, no we aren’t? When the fuck did that happen?”

“When you were twelve, as I said. I asked you to be my girlfriend.”

“I feel like I would have remembered that happening.”

“Then you should go to a doctor, because it definitely did. It was the best day of my life. We were sitting on the playground, it was recess, you were upset.”

“I remember none of that.”

“You cannot possibly have forgotten this!” Seokjin exclaims. “I cheered you up and offered you my cookie, which you ate in like two bites even though I had made it with salt instead of sugar and it had to be disgusting, because some girl had knocked your cupcake into the dirt-”

“Park Sooyoung, that bitch, I remember that-”

“And then,” Seokjin continues, ignoring your outburst, “I was so deeply honored that you ate that disgusting thing that I offered you the equal honor of being my girlfriend. And you nodded and I kissed your cheek and then you punched me in the arm - which hurt, I might add, for days - and then I watched you play Pokemon Sapphire on your Gameboy Advance.”

The memory rushes in, though not exactly how he remembers it. Park Sooyoung had knocked your cupcake out of your hands and into the dirt, and you had been so mad about it that you’d started to cry. Seokjin found you, curled under a tree away from everyone else, and when he eventually learned what upset you, he’d told Sooyoung off like no one had ever seen. And then he’d handed you the best cookie you’ve ever eaten.

You think maybe that was when you first started falling for Seokjin. With the salty cookie that masked the taste of your own tears, and the angry tirade he had gone on despite the two of you not having known each other for very long, with the wide smile and squeaky laugh and ears so red and cute that you couldn’t focus on whatever he was saying and just nodded along to it. 

“Well...why didn’t you say anything since then?” A thought crosses your mind, and it so horror-filled that you have to ask. “Do the guys know?”

“If they do, it’s not because I told them,” Seokjin answers easily. “When you introduced yourself as my friend, I figured you were just a very private person and didn’t want to rub it in their faces or something.”

“Is that why you always drag me along when you, Hobi, Tae, Cat, and Star go out for karaoke?”

“Obviously,” He scoffs. “What could be better than a triple date with your two best friends?”

“Literally anything! Hobi and Cat sing each other the most raunchy things I’ve ever heard, and Tae does all those weepy ballads or indie songs nobody recognizes, and Star’s got those dopey love eyes all night, it’s revolting.”

“You mean like those faces you make at me when you think I won’t notice?”

“I-” You huff, at a loss. “Well what about the other day, with that girl at Mistledough you were flirting with, who was flirting back and-” Realization hits you. “And she’s Jimin’s neighbor girlfriend lady!”

“Pumpkin. Are you serious right now?” He gives you a dry look, but there’s amusement written all over it. “You’ve heard my sales pitch a hundred times. You’ve given my sales pitch a hundred times, albeit with a little more of a monotone and general ‘I’ll kill you’ vibe to it. It was just so she’d buy all the treats I could possibly sell her.”

You make a small ‘hmph’ noise that you aren’t exactly proud of, but makes Seokjin laugh. He pulls you into a warm hug, wrapping his arms around your waist to keep you there. It’s a little awkward, because your arms are still crossed over your chest, but he doesn’t seem to mind and despite all the muttered complaints you give him, there’s nowhere else you’d rather be. 

“So…” Jin says in a too-casual tone after a few minutes. You muffle a groan into his chest, already preparing for the worst. “What kind of sex are you into?”

“Oh my god,” You mumble.

“Wait, you’re right, I’m getting ahead of myself.” He clears his throat and stands to his full height. When he looks at you again, his eyes are full of something you can’t place exactly, but it makes your heart skip nonetheless when he says your full name. “Will you do me the honor of officially becoming my girlfriend? Again?”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes and nod. The grin takes over his face is blinding, worth all the trouble from the day, as is the soft kiss he presses to your cheek. You can’t help but huff when he pulls away from it, even, and he raises an amused brow at it. 

“Does this mean I can finally kiss you the way I’ve been dreaming of forever?” 

You do roll your eyes this time, but you let your fingers dance over his jaw and pull him into a gentle kiss. His lips are softer than they look, which you truly didn’t think was possible, and the way they mold and move with yours is warm and tender. You don’t even know how long you spend kissing Seokjin. Time isn’t real, not now, not with him pulling you closer and pressing warm against you like every single daydream you’ve let yourself have. 

Years of repressed urges and desire come out before you can stop them, though. Your hands move down to rest on Seokjin’s impossibly tiny waist, slipping behind his apron to tease at the waistband of his slacks. Why he insists everyone wear nice clothes to dinner, you couldn’t possibly say, but they make his ass look phenomenal so you never complain. 

The kisses become more heated, his tongue dipping out to taste your lips for a moment. Hands find their way to your ass and palm it greedily, and he tugs you flush against him. A hard length is pressing into you, and you don’t have to guess to know it's not the rolling pin. 

Images - memories - flash through your mind of that morning. Your mouth waters and you pull back from Seokjin. Panting, lips swollen from kisses, and half-lidded eyes, he's never looked better. 

"Can I suck your dick?"

He groans low in his throat and his eyes fall closed. "Fuck, Pumpkin, right here? Anyone could walk by." You drop to your knees as your hands undo the clasp on the pants. 

"Doubtful, they're probably having that post-dinner nap, or playing some game." Anxiety pools in your gut; you know quite a bit about what Seokjin likes in bed, but you've never been sure if exhibitionism is on that list. "Does it make you uncomfortable? I don't have to. I've just been thinking about it all day." 

Seokjin barks out a quick laugh and shakes his head. "No," He says, "I definitely would love for you to suck my dick in this kitchen if you want to."

"Good." You flip his apron to the side and tug his cock out of its confines. You don't bother dropping his pants all the way; there's no time, you're too impatient. "Let me know if anyone shows up." 

Whatever he's about to say gets cut off by a sharp intake of breath as you warp your lips around the head of him. One of his hands moves to grip the counter behind him and the other rests lightly on your crown; he doesn't pull or tug, just keeps his hand as a gentle pressure as you sink him deeper into your mouth.

As much as you've never been one for sucking dick, you're in heaven. There's no other explanation for why it feels this good to have him sitting heavy against your tongue as he hits the back of your throat. There are still two inches left so you wrap your hand around it and hollow your cheeks as you pull back. 

A strangled moan escapes him, and his fingers tighten ever so slightly in your hair. Heat floods to your core and you kick yourself internally because you could have been doing this for years. Your tongue darts out to slide teasingly along the underside of his cock and he reflexively thrusts into your mouth. 

You cough a little and pull back, wiping spit from your lips as you catch your breath, and Seokjin is already spewing apologies. 

“I’m fine,” You say as you sit back against the cabinet, tugging him to stand in front of you. His back is to most of the kitchen and your head rests against the hard wood behind you while you eye the hard wood in front of you. “I can take a little bit of roughness, Spice, don’t worry.”

He looks hesitant so you ghost your fingers along his length to tease him. His jaw clenches at the same time his eyes close and you resist the urge to smile. Tension bleeds out of his shoulders and when he opens his eyes again, he quirks a brow in a silent question and you nod. 

In seconds, he’s in your throat once more, thrusting himself in and out at a slow pace that makes you clench with the desire to feel it elsewhere. You hollow your cheeks and suck properly as he fucks your throat, and he muffles another moan.

“Fuck, Pumpkin, please don’t stop,” Seokjin whines quietly. You smile, just a little, and take him back into your throat for a few seconds before pulling back and repeating the process. Each time he hits the back of your throat, he lets out a muffled groan that only makes you wetter. His cock is thick and your jaw aches and you’re struggling to breathe just a little bit, but the fucked out expression on his face is more than worth it. 

Something clatters in the hallway and you freeze, Seokjin’s cock sheathed to the hilt in your throat. His ears turn red and he starts to pull back, but you stop him with a hand on his thigh. He looks down at you, surprised, and you chance a wink that makes him chuckle. 

Footsteps make their way past, giggles following close behind, and you hear the door leading to the hot tub open and close. After a few seconds of silence, Seokjin relaxes, pulling out of your throat. You take a few deep breaths and glance over to the door, curious. 

“Jimin and Snow,” He tells you, one hand absently stroking along your cheek. “We probably shouldn’t use the hot tub tonight.” 

You wrinkle your nose. “Why would I want to anyway? Have you heard Namjoon’s lecture on what could potentially grow in a hot tub if it isn’t sanitized regularly? It’s not a fun lecture.” Seokjin laughs, squeaky and adorable, and helps you to your feet. He doesn’t hesitate to pepper kisses along your cheeks, and you wrinkle your nose even as tilt your head so he can get the places he missed. 

“Now when you said that you can handle a little roughness…” Seokjin says, voice a soft murmur in your ear. You make a small hum of affirmation, encouraging him to continue. “Does that mean I can spank you for not finishing blowing me, or is that something you’d rather not do?”

“Fuck, Seokjin,” You hiss, rubbing your thighs together. “Now you have to do it.”

He’s got you turned around in an instant, your fancy dress pants on the ground a few seconds later. His hands mold to your ass, cupping the flesh briefly through your underwear before letting his hands fall away. 

It’s methodical and slow and torturous, how he peels away that last layer keeping him from your wetness. You know that the fabric is soaked through, it has been since you first got his dick in your mouth, and Seokjin groans at the sight. 

“Even better than I imagined,” He mutters. Your cheeks heat in a rare blush, and you drop your head down between where your forearms are braced against the countertop. His hand smacks against your ass, lightly, and you choke back a laugh. Is that really what he thinks a spank is?

Another slap hits you, no real force behind it, and you scoff under your breath. 

“What?” Seokjin asks. When you look back at him, he’s expectant, like he knows what you’re about to say. 

“Is that what you call a slap?” You ask. He rolls his eyes and pulls his hand back for another. It already looks unsatisfying, and you can’t help but push him a little further. “I always wondered why your dough doesn’t rise high enough. Guess I know now.”

His eyes darken and a chill comes over you. 

“Oh, is that how this is gonna be?” He asks. He gestures for you to face forward again and you do, curious as to the dark look in his eyes. 

Something hard and cold smacks into your ass, and you yelp in surprise. There’s a little more force behind it, enough to sting pleasantly but not enough to hurt. 

“Is that better, Pumpkin?” He asks. There’s a mocking tone to his voice, but when you look back, you can see the slant of his lips and tension in his jaw that shows he’s concerned. The rolling pin from earlier rests in his hands, and it flares something in your gut. 

“Much,” You tell him as you turn back around. He spanks you with it again, and again, and again, and it isn’t until you feel something wet drip down the back of your leg that you remember the chocolate he was fucking around with earlier. 

“If you get that on my nice clothes, I will destroy you,” You warn him. He laughs a little and there’s a thump as the rolling pin hits the countertop. 

“Is that code for get me naked?” He asks, a laugh in his voice. 

“No, that’s code for lick it up and then fuck my brains out.” 

The laugh in his throat quickly becomes a growl and he sets to work doing just that. His tongue runs over your skin, gently lapping at the chocolate there, and several times he gets distracted leaving purple marks in his wake. He even slides tongue along your slit, long and thorough and quick, and you almost come just from the obscene moan he lets out. 

"Fuck, please, I need you," You gasp out. Seokjin slides a hand under your shirt, massaging the muscles in your back as he does, and stands to his full height.

"Let me know if it hurts," He says softly. His voice is a whisper against your ear and it's never sounded quite so wrecked or beautiful. "I'll stop, okay?"

"If you don't get inside me in the next five seconds, I will go ask Jimin and Snow if I can join them in their kinky hot tub," you growl. 

He curses quietly and thrusts his length inside you. Neither of you are quite prepared for what it feels like, and the moment he gets buried to the hilt, he stills. 

"Shit, Pumpkin, I'm not gonna last long," He mutters. You can't even manage words. The stretch is absolutely blissful, just on the right side of painful when paired with the sting of your still-tender ass. He's the perfect height for this, too; perfectly lined up without either of you having to try very hard. 

He pulls almost entirely out, leaving just the dusty pink head you remember inside. There's not even a chance to whine at the loss, because before you know it, he's slamming back in. 

Seokjin's pace is erratic and harried; there's no smooth strokes here. You're both in too much of a rush, too drunk on the pleasure to want anything but release. 

Hands move along your skin, one lifting your shirt so he can pepper kisses along your spine while the other reaches down to gently tweak your clit. 

It takes three swipes of his finger to have your knees shaking with the power of your orgasm. You clench around him and he stills. You can't think, your brain is absolutely fried at this point; all you know is the feeling of him inside you and the disappointing emptiness when he pulls out. 

Warmth hits your back and Seokjin's moans echo in your ears. You're almost afraid to turn around, afraid this is some hyper-realistic dream.

"Shit, hold on, let me clean this up," he says, panting. You can hear him moving through the kitchen and when he comes back, something cold and wet slides along your back. 

You wait patiently as he cleans you up. He wipes away every instance of cum and chocolate from your skin - though he looks a little disappointed to be doing so, which you file away for later. 

"God, that's so much fucking cum," You say, wrinkling your nose at the mass of wet wipes he tosses in the trash while you fasten your pants once more. 

It's just in time, too, as Jimin and Snow come in from the hot tub, smiling and giggly with each other. 

"Ah," Jimin says, looking between you and Seokjin. "I did lose a bet. Damn, she's gonna be so pleased with herself."

You glare at him, but there's no real heat behind it. The two of them disappear to get dressed in actual clothes, and you and Seokjin set to work plating the cookies and treats he'd made. 

You can't stop the fond look at the rolling pin every few minutes. 

Later, after you discover Cat and Hobi have arrived safely and you make sure they actually eat the plates set aside for them, you're on the hunt for Seokjin. He's disappeared somewhere and it's almost time for the countdown. 

You finally find him - where else - in the kitchen, making a horrified face at Namjoon. 

"What? It was good," Namjoon says with a frown. Seokjin just waves him off and Namjoon shrugs, grabbing a couple glasses of champagne and heading back to Slick. 

You sidle up to him as close as you can get and he wraps an arm around your waist like it's second nature. It's surreal, that the man you love is pressing a kiss to your temple and handing you a mug of cocoa. 

"I'm glad we talked," He says eventually. You hum your agreement; you aren't looking at him, just staring down into your cocoa as you absently stir it with a candy cane, but you do lean into him ever so slightly. "Remind me to bake Jimin a cake."

"Why? What's he done to deserve a cake?"

"He helped me out earlier, while I was cooking dinner. Helped me figure out how to say what I needed to, that sort of thing."

Your face shoots up as your heart clenches in your chest. "Jimin," You echo. "Jimin is why you decided to talk about your feelings." Seokjin just nods, eyes wide and not understanding why you have murder in your eyes. 

"I'm gonna kill him so hard-" You say, already setting your mug down and turning to go find that short gremlin and skin him alive. You don't get two steps before a hand comes to rest on your shoulder, heavy but gentle. 

Seokjin pulls you closer to him, a smile playing on his lips as he does. "Why would you want to kill Jimin for that, Pumpkin?"

"Because!" You exclaim. "Jimin's the only one that knows that I-"

The words tangle in your throat, cloying together into a ball you can't seem to unwind. You're too used to choking it down. You don't know how to say it. 

"That you love me?" Seokjin finishes. You can't bear to look at him, huffing slightly as you turn to stare out the kitchen window at the snow-covered trees beyond. 

Seokjin's hand glides down your arm to wrap around your own, tangling his fingers with yours. With a grace you tend to forget he has, he brings them both upwards until he can press a soft kiss in the center of your palm. 

"Jimin isn't the only one that knows that, Pumpkin," He says quietly. You can feel your ears burning, a pleasant contrast from how it's usually him embarrassed and red. 

"Whatever," you grumble, giving up on your mission to brutally murder one of your best friends. Seokjin laughs, loud and squeaky and wonderful, and pulls you into another hug. 

"I love you too," He whispers. "Now, let's go join the others. I believe you owe me several years of kisses."

"You wish," You mutter half-heartedly. He hands you your cocoa and pats your still-sore ass with a wink.

"That's a great move."

"Really?"

"Yes." There's a pause as she waits for you to remove your fingers from the piece. "If you want to lose."

You offer her a weak glare that she ignores as she studies the board. 

"I'm glad that you and Seokjinnie finally got things figured out. It was very cute to watch, but it was getting a little ridiculous, you know." 

She moves a piece, and you squint to try to help you figure out her strategy. 

"Right, it had nothing to do with your bet with Jimin," You say sarcastically as you move another piece. You eye her, one finger still remaining on it, to try to figure out if it's what she expected. 

"Of course not," She says as you remove your hand. "That was merely a bonus." She immediately lays a piece, gaining even more of an advantage than she already had. 

"Well then," You start as you lay another piece, "I'm sure you know all about Jimin and his neighbor, and Star and Tae I don't need to tell you anything about Yoongi or Cat or Jeongguk, either, probably." 

Her fingers hesitate over the piece she's picking up, and her eyes narrow at you. 

"Ah, don't be so cruel. You're supposed to respect your elders, you know."

"Alright, Granny Park," You say with a rare grin as you glance to where Seokjin is baking a ‘sorry we fucked in your kitchen’ cake and decoration some sugar-free cookies for her. "What exactly do you want to know?

[ksisbsow-blog]

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[raisingsupergirl]

6 Ways to Enjoy a Caribbean Cruise When You're a Cheap Introvert

The word "vacation" means something a little different to everyone. Pristine ski slopes, powder-white beaches, Amazon jungles, rolling Highlands, a cabin in the woods—the settings are as various as the activities. But in general, the point of vacation is to change your scenery, to recharge, and to reaffirm your appreciation for life. As for me, it doesn't matter where I am so much as what I'm doing. Rather, what I'm not doing, which is anything. Daily life is way too busy already. Vacation shouldn't be. It should be a time when I can sit back, take a deep breath, and forget about all of my worldly stress. Which means, ideally, that the vacation won't cost much money or force me to be around a lot of people since both of these things cause me stress. So why, oh why, did I agree when my wife suggested that we go on a cruise?

To put it simply, she tricked me. "I earned it through Beach Body," she said. "All we have to pay for is our plane tickets," she said. Whoa, a free vacation? As someone who hates spending money on frivolous luxuries, the word "free" is of particular appeal. But I should have known… Nothing's free in Waterworld. And as our departure date neared, I started regretting the decision before I ever stepped foot on the boat. But since we'd already committed, I knew I had to make the most of it. I knew I'd regret it even more if I spent money to be surrounded by strangers if I didn't find a way to enjoy myself. And when I started looking for that silver lining, there was plenty of joy to be found. In fact, by the time we returned home to our screaming, squealing daughters, I was actually happy that we'd made the trip. The reasons for my change of heart are many, but there were six things that really made all the difference, and here they are...

1) Understand what you're getting into. You're not going to a resort. You're not going to a hotel on the beach. You're boarding a floating city that will carry you thousands of miles across open, international waters, some of which are over a mile deep. This city is filled with thousands of other people, the majority of whom you've never seen before and will never see again. Once this city leaves land, it has a finite amount of everything. This is hard to remember when you shower with drinkable water and eat so much gourmet food that the mention of chocolate lava cake makes you want to throw up, but if you only bring a 3 oz bottle of contact solution, you will be keeping track of how much you use each day and calculating if you'll have enough to last you until you return home. At least, I did. I'm sure it's different for everyone, but this fact really made the ship's extravagance all the more amazing for me. Especially when I counted over 100 events on ONE day's itinerary list—everything from no-limit Texas Holdem in the casino to competitive rock climbing to fully immersive ice-skating shows, all on that one single boat. My wife and I fell into a rhythm eventually, which allowed us to spend less time wandering aimlessly and more time participating in the things we loved (mostly eating and falling asleep in lounge chairs on the top deck), but it took a while. Which is why I wish someone would have told me this piece of advice before I left—YOUR FIRST DAY WILL BE STRESSFUL. 

Whether you're flying or driving to your port, travel isn't much fun. And when you begin the boarding process at your ship, it just gets worse. It's like TSA security combined with border security, and then you add in the cruise line's private rules and regulations, and you're rushed through the whole thing as fast as humanly possible. And when it's all done, you're shoved onto the floating city and set loose. The experience reminded me of the time when I took a bus into NYC's Union Station, and then walked up the steps and took my first glimpse of Times Square. Trust me, you're going to want to find the nearest chair and just sit for a moment. Even though there will be people running around everywhere, you're in no rush to go anywhere or do anything. Just take a minute (or thirty) to look around, people watch, and breathe. Slowly, you'll start putting the pieces together. Your room and your checked luggage (yes, you have to check your luggage when you board the ship) won't generally be ready for a few hours, so you can grab a bite to eat (once you figure out which restaurants are included and which cost money, but more on that later) or just wander around for a while. It's likely that you'll get lost, but that's okay. Even though it looks like you're in the middle of downtown, you really are on a ship. You can't get that lost. Most importantly, just remember that your first day will be spent learning the rules and settling in. There will be little to no relaxation. As long as you go in knowing that, you'll be much less frustrated and anxious. At least until you start trying to figure out what foods and activities are "complimentary," and which cost extra. Which brings me to my next point…

2) Buy everything ahead of time, or not at all. If you drink alcohol, you have two options—spend a boatload (pun intended) of money or smuggle in your own booze. If you choose the former option, you can go about it two different ways. Either you can pay per drink (which is really only an option if you plan to drink sparingly since they're $10-$15/drink) or purchase a drink package. If you go for the drink package, buy it ahead of time. In our case, it was about $50/day if you purchased it ahead of time and about $80/day if you waited to buy it on the boat. POINT OF CLARIFICATION: You CANNOT buy a drink package for just one or two days. It's all or nothing, so the "per day" breakdown is misleading. Which means you'll be spending $250 on a 5 day cruise (and remember that your first day is pretty much a wash anyway) for all you can drink IF you buy it ahead of time and about $400 if you wait to buy it when you board. MORE CLARIFICATION: You CANNOT buy just one drink package if you are rooming with someone (a spouse or otherwise). The other person also has to buy some form of drink package (the soft drink package was around $200 for the week on our cruise). In short, if you plan to buy the ship's alcohol, save up your money and come to terms with how much you'll be spending on it. Otherwise, it'll just make you mad every time you swipe your card, and then there's really no point in doing it in the first place.

BUT, for those adventurers among you, if you want to partake in some adult beverages but don’t want to take out a second mortgage, you can try your hand at bootlegging. Googling the topic will bring up a host of sneaky options, but basically you pour clear liquor into some different bottle (contact solution, rubbing alcohol, etc) and try to pull a fast one on the x-ray security, or you can do what we did and buy plastic Rumrunner flasks, which are invisible on the x-ray machines. For us, it worked like a charm (be sure to push all the air out if you're flying so they don't expand and leak in your checked baggage), but it was a little stressful. ALSO, many cruise lines allow you to carry on a couple of bottles of wine, so be sure to take advantage of that if you can.

But enough about alcohol. If you plan to buy excursions, be sure to buy those ahead of time also. We didn't do any, so I couldn't tell you if they will be cheaper, but I CAN tell you that it's exasperating watching your room charges continue to climb throughout your trip. A "free" show one night charged $2.50 for a bag of popcorn. Yes, you read that right. I had just eaten a "complimentary" New York strip steak at dinner, and then they wanted me to pay $2.50 for a bag of popcorn thirty minutes later. So the more stuff you can buy ahead of time, the more likely you'll be able to swallow those silly little charges as you rack them up. Either way, realize that unless your cruise is truly all-inclusive, some charges most definitely WILL apply, including tipping your waiters and other helpful staff.

3) Get a room with a view. This is one of those things we sprung for ahead of time, and even though I am cheap, I'm SO glad we paid extra for a balcony. THIS is the primary reason to go on a cruise—falling asleep to the sound of crashing waves (keep your door slightly open at night), waking up to a brilliant sunrise stretching out across thousand miles of sparkling, blue water, and enjoying a glass of smuggled rum (mixed with some orange juice and a pineapple wedge—which were free when we put them in our water bottle during a meal but cost extra otherwise…) as the faint outline of a Haitian island formed on the horizon. It's pretty hard to top that, especially if you're an introvert like me. All of the view. None of the crazies. Also, it helped my wife and me when the boat really got to rocking. We never experienced any seasickness, but there were times when it was nice to see what we were feeling.

4) Exercise. Yes, seriously. The cruise I went on was actually hosted by Beachbody®, the fitness company that my wife works for, so we participated in some fairly insane group workouts every morning (imagine a couple hundred people jumping up and down at the same time across the entire top deck of a ship), but even if it had been a different situation, I would have still exercised ever day. Why? Well, if you haven't noticed how much I've been talking about the copious food and drink stashed away on cruise ships, let me say it again—you will eat and eat until you can't see your toes, and then you will eat some more. And the food is great (we ate in the main dining hall every evening, which didn't cost a dime, even when I ordered two or three appetizers and my wife ordered two or three desserts), but even the best surf 'n turf turns bland when you're putting in twice the amount of calories that you're burning off day after day. So yes, take a minute (or sixty) every day to work up a bit of an appetite. Swim, jog, lift weights, or just use the stairs instead of the elevator when you're exploring your little ship's sixteen floors. The more you get that blood flowing, the better everything will taste, and the better you'll feel when you do lie back and fall asleep in the sun (oh, and remember the sunscreen, especially if you go after a long winter like we did!).

5) Appreciate wherever you make port. This is another big reason to consider a cruise over a resort (along with getting the room with a view overlooking the vast greatness of the ocean). Watching an island slowly appear and unfold before you as you pull into port is magical. And the chance to experience multiple destinations in one trip is undeniably appealing. But don't squander that chance. When you do reach your ports of call, go explore! A beach is a beach. An ocean is an ocean. Yes, the Bahamian waters are the most beautiful I've ever seen, but it's what I found on land that made the trip really worth it. Walk a while and find the locals. Get away from the tourist traps and enjoy the real Caribbean culture. Take in the sights, sounds, and smells of a different world. As much as I don't like crowds, I LOVE new cultures. Earth is a beautiful place, and humanity is so much more interesting and diverse than your hometown. And if you're lucky enough to make port at a smaller island, you'll enjoy it all the more. Our cruise line (Royal Caribbean) owns Labadee, Haiti, and we were able to kayak around to Labadee's actual fishing village, which is ONLY accessible by small boats. It was an experience I'll never forget. 

6) Go again (or don't). Finally one last piece of advice. As I've already mentioned, cruise ships are overwhelming. They're stressful at times when you're inexperienced with their rules and operations. There's so much to see and do that it's hard to fully relax until the cruise is almost over. Ironically, that's why so many people only choose cruises for their vacations—they already put in the work of that first one. After a couple, that first wasted day becomes more enjoyable, and every other day is filled with countless possibilities. Like I said before, it's like being in the middle of NYC… in the middle of a tropical ocean, and you don't have to worry about your wallet getting stolen. I'm still not sure if it's exactly my thing, but it's pretty clear that if I ever do go again, it'll be a more enjoyable experience than the first. And to even suggest that my first time wasn't enjoyable is just silly. It really was magical. Frustrating at times, and not as relaxing as a resort on the whole, but definitely well worth it. Even if I did gain ten pounds in five days. And hopefully my experience will make yours all the more enjoyable. Bon Voyage!

[writeradamanteve]

Campbughead  @writeradamanteve: Day Twenty : Science Fiction

COWBOY JONES

Words: 4,837

Chapters: 1/2

Rating: Eventual Smut

Pairing: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones

Summary: To get away from her overbearing mother, Betty jumped at the chance to work as a mechanic for the Whyte Wyrm. The ship’s captain, FP Jones flies across the galaxy hunting bounties for a living with his son and daughter and their lives are as exciting as they are mundane. Betty’s ready to adventure with this ragtag family of space cowboys (and when she wasn’t working, daydream about the handsome Cowboy, Jughead Jones).

ONE

Betty tapped her spoon on the edge of the bowl and it made flat, metallic clinks.  The bowl was huge, intended for mixing large portions of food, like Garden-tossed Salad or a macaroni dish that served three, but all of the smaller bowls were still in the sink, unwashed from the previous night’s homemade macaroni and cheese.  It had been Jughead’s turn to wash the dishes and it wasn’t a surprise he had shirked it.  He shirked as much housework as he could, but Betty refused to clean up after him.  She may have feelings for the 3rd Quandrant’s most effective cowboy, but she wasn’t going to let him push her around.

At the bottom of the bowl was a pile of cereal and some chunks of a banana.  The banana was still okay, but in about a day or two it would be overripe.

Combined with the stale bread we could actually make decent pudding.  

She shook her head after the thought. She was getting tired of being the only one in this goddamn spaceship who cared to think about recipes for leftovers. Before she came around, the Joneses tended to let their leftovers rot in the fridge.

I swear, they’d all expire if I weren’t around.  

It was a little past eight and she expected that the other occupants of the Whyte Wyrm would be waking up soon. FP was usually up around the same time she was, but he must’ve been exhausted from that last bounty they had to catch.

They had been successful, thank goodness. They needed the funds, as evidenced by the low food supply, but Jughead had said payment wasn’t due to arrive for another two days. Alliance money came slower when it needed to be transferred from the 1st to 3rd quadrants of space.

This, quite understandably, put Jughead in a foul mood. He was swearing all the way back from the planet Ursula K in his speedcraft, which he dubbed Hitchcock. His profanity had clogged Betty’s radio frequency for minutes on end.

She normally didn’t mind when he cursed up a storm, but this time, she tuned him out, his swearing was so bad.  

He was also, still asleep, though he might be waking up soon.

JB’s sleep schedule didn’t count as a schedule.  Her hours were as erratic and random as she was; she slept when she wanted, wherever she wanted, whether it was on the couch, on the stairs or on the kitchen table.

Betty moved the cereal and banana around.  They were fresh out of milk, but there had been some chocolate syrup in one of the cupboards.  

Desperate for some semblance of breakfast, she had poured some of the syrup on top of her mixture. Everything, after all, was good with chocolate.

Her mother, Alice Cooper, would be furious if she knew her daughter was having chocolate first thing in the morning. Then again, her mother wasn’t here. She was at least two wormholes away, which was how Betty preferred it. She wouldn’t have had taken FP’s job posting for a space mechanic if she didn’t.

The chocolate was predictably delicious and probably unhealthy, but she figured she needed the fat anyway. Her shorts were loosening and she thought perhaps her boobs were shrinking.

The thing about living in the Whyte Wyrm and depending on bounty rewards for their prosperity was that food was either in abundance or went starvation levels low. Feast or famine.  It was therefore smart to load up on calories when there was something, anything in the pantry.

To the side of the bowl was her coffee and she took a sip of it.

She breathed in its fresh aroma and sighed happily.  Decrepit as their lives could get on the ship, they at least believed in good coffee.  FP always insisted on buying the best brand.  Betty had no complaints, even when it was her turn to buy the groceries.

Betty felt the caffeine invade her system, and it was good.

She began to munch on her makeshift breakfast as little by little, she felt less aggravated by their lack of food supply.

There was a sound behind her, and judging by the light but slow stride, it was Jughead.  Betty didn’t even bother to look.  Newly out of bed, Jughead was even less sociable than usual.

In the morning, Jughead was what her mother would classify a disgrace to the public.  His ink-black, scraggy locks tended to look a bit bent out of shape and the scowl on his face was enough to deter everyone who saw him from making smart-ass comments about it.  

He shambled out of his bunk in wrinkled combat pants and his white, wife-beater shirts, sometimes torn, sometimes yellowing from overuse. Sometimes he didn’t wear a shirt at all, which often caused Betty to wonder if he wore anything under those pants of his.

Not that she was complaining. Jughead Jones wasn’t a tank, by any means. His limbs were long and his body was lean, but those lines of muscles were certainly there. Like his body was pulled tight, and she liked it. She liked it a lot.

He took one look at her and she met his gaze with an arch of her eyebrow. She was ready for him, but he hadn’t even had his coffee yet.

Jughead made no comment, heading straight for the coffee machine.  He poured himself a mug and he padded to the stool beside her, hunched over his cup.  She paid him no attention as she munched on her breakfast and drank her own coffee.

After a while, probably after the caffeine kicked in, he was awake enough to speak.  “What’s that?”  He was looking into her huge bowl.

“Cereal, banana, and chocolate syrup.”

“Where’s the milk?”

“We ran out.”

He was silent, probably cursing the emptiness of their refrigerator, and again the delayed reward, in his mind.  There was a spoon on the table; neither of them knowing from whence it came, but Jughead didn’t seem to care.  He took it, polished both sides of it with the edge of his shirt and began to point it towards Betty’s breakfast.

She scowled.  “Really, Jug? There are still a couple of bananas in the fridge. Go make your--”

Ignoring her, Jughead tugged at her bowl and began to eat.  She rolled her eyes and scratched at her scalp irritably.

“This is good,” he said through a mouth full of cereal and banana.

Sighing, Betty’s only response was to eat before he finished all of it.

Halfway through the meal, she caught him staring at her cleavage. She pretended not to notice, but she might have adjusted her shoulder slightly to give him a better view. She noticed that Jughead liked this particular shirt on her. She was yet to call him out on it.

He tore his eyes away from them seconds later, his face noticeably red.

She didn’t have that many clothes to wear. When she accepted FP’s job offer, she had rushed home, taken what she could into her small suitcase, and hurried out before her mother could stop her.  She left a video message for her mother to find and by the time Alice Cooper found it, she was halfway across the galaxy in the Wyrm.  

As a result, Betty’s clothing choices were limited.  She could shot for new things, of course, but she preferred to save as much as she could instead of blowing it off on shopping.  All she needed to do her job was a shirt and overalls. When she wasn’t working, she wore shirts and shorts. She had one sundress for special occasions. That hadn’t been busted out yet. There weren’t many social events to go to in their line of work. Bounty hunting wasn’t a very socially inclined industry.

Still, it didn’t mean she didn’t care what Jughead thought of her. If she ever bothered to wear clean clothes, nicely fitted shirts, and painted toenails, it was because she wanted Jughead to notice, and while he did seem to notice sometimes, he never said anything, which kind of drove her crazy.

And annoyed her. Constantly. Especially now, when he was eating her breakfast.  

It was time to call him out. If only for her own sanity.

“Were you just looking at my boobs?”

He choked on the dry cereal, causing his face to redden even more. “Jesus, Betty.”

“Well, were you?” she cried.

He looked like he was struggling. He probably was. With the cereal. With his words. “You know, you wear a shirt like that--”

“This old thing?”

He dealt her a look that was less than amused. “Shoot me, alright. I’m exhausted, I’m hungry, and they were--you were in my line of sight. It’s just--I’m just too tired to look away, okay?”

She wondered about Jughead sometimes. She’d never once seen him come home with a girl (or guy) or left with his whereabouts unknown. He always got back to the Wyrm alone and only left for assignments, or quick errands.

For a good looking, healthy twenty-something, who didn’t appear like he was awkward with those who were overtly attracted to him (she’d seen him grin cockily at a few admirers, men and women of varying species, even) he sure didn’t seem to have much of a sex life.

Not that she was doing any better.  She hadn’t gotten laid for far too long.

Jellybean swooped into the kitchen, her laptop open in her hands. She was typing something on it, her fingers flying.  “Morning, grouch!” she said to her brother without looking at him.

He grunted, but he turned away from Betty, probably relieved that a distraction bailed him out of his very awkward situation.

Hotdog, the Joneses’ sheep dog, followed her in, yipping excitedly, after which he began to lick Betty’s perfectly manicured toes.

“Ugh!  Hotdog!  Gross!”

Jughead laughed upon seeing the disgusted look on her face.

“Aw, he just likes you, that’s all,” Jellybean said, not looking up from her laptop.  

Betty liked Jellybean. She was a sweetheart, but she often had her head in the clouds. She never had any in-depth conversations with Betty, only fleeting, distracted ones. So she figured Jellybean wouldn’t care if she skipped making nice for stopping Hotdog from slobbering her foot.  She tried desperately to shake Hotdog off her.

Hotdog simply refused to leave Betty alone, so she lifted her foot, growling menacingly in the hopes of scaring Hotdog off, but she miscalculated her balance and she promptly began to topple back on her seat.  She screeched.

Jughead lunged, and was brutally punished for his good deeds with Betty’s foot as it swung up and hit him square on the chin.

“Dammit, Betty!”

Betty figured it was going to be a pretty bad fall and she braced herself for impact, so she was relieved when her head remained suspended above the floor, her butt still wedged on the stool.  She craned her neck and found that Jughead had grabbed her ankle as he glared at her.

“We don’t exactly have proper health insurance, you know,” he muttered.  He reached over with his other hand, grabbing her by her upper arm.  He yanked her up to sit her up, and she told herself she only imagined the extra rub her arm felt as he disengaged his hand.

“That damn foot’s like a sledgehammer,” he muttered.

Ruffled, but otherwise unharmed, Betty tried to regain as much of her dignity as she could.  “Sorry, the dog--”

“Bad Hotdog!”

The dog whimpered.

Betty was surprised he yelled at the dog. Jughead tended to snort off any inconvenience Hotdog had visited upon her, like when the dog chewed on her slippers, or when he peed on the side of her speedcraft. Maybe she was finally being let in?

And while she was trying to understand the moods of Jughead Jones, she realized that he saved her a bad knock to the head.  “Th-Thanks.”

Jughead arched an eyebrow.  “For yelling at the dog?”

“For catching me.”

“Yeah, well…” He began eating the rest of her cereal. She let him.

Jellybean started singing a pop song.  A grin spread on her face as she looked at the bottle of chocolate syrup.  There was a cartoon cow on it.  “You know what planet outside of earth has cows?”

Betty sighed.  She still couldn’t believe she understood that as Jellybean-speak for “I have something.”

“No JB,” she replied. “What planet outside of earth has cows?” Not that she was expecting a straight answer….

Jellybean’s fingers wiggled and danced over the keyboard.

Betty exchanged raised eyebrows with Jughead before they turned to watch Jellybean with growing interest.  Several faces came up on screen, set side by side on a grid; men and women with bounties written below them.

“Pick a face, Betty!”

Sometimes, Betty just found it easier to do what she was told. She pointed to a face of a man. Handsome and rugged. His bounty was also the biggest on the page. “Jason Blossom.”

Jellybean nodded.”Good choice! I knew you’d pick him for his dashing good looks and inspired bounty. Blew up a stadium, this one. Accidentally, I’ve found. But he inadvertently killed the Prime Minister’s daughter so...”

Jughead snorted. “Dead man walking. Did you find him, JB?”

She nodded, delighted by her own success. “He’s raising cows in Oberlin Major. For beef. He’s a space rancher.” She typed a few more things on her laptop before she pressed the final button with a flourish and turned it around so that both Betty and Jughead were looking at the screen.

It showed a crowded space port on one half of the screen, like a video feed. On the other half was Jason Blossom’s face with pin-pricks of pixels dancing over it.

“Face recognition software?” Betty asked.

Jellybean wiggled her fingers maniacally. “My special program. Better than any of the ones in the market.”

“Better, how?” Jughead asked.

“It crawls data by geo-location.”

Betty and Jughead exchanged looks. That was most certainly illegal, but then again, Jellybean’s primary function was to get them through the inconveniences of galactic red tape.

The frequency of the pixels followed the movements of the video, until finally, the pixel flashed on and off, corresponding to a face in the crowd that seemed to match the flashing pixels on Jason’s face.

Betty leaned over to look more closely at the feed. “Is that--Is that him in a wig?”

“That’s a girl,” said Jughead.

“How do you know it’s not him dressed as a girl?”

Jellybean started to giggle madly as she pulled up the information about Jason. “Jason Blossom of Thornhill Mansion has a twin, Cheryl!”

The young hacker pulled up another video of Cheryl in the terminal, stepping into a passenger ship. Jellybean paused the video and zoomed in on the digital sign perched on the ship’s dock. The sign said, “Oberlin Major, Boarding.”

Betty’s eyes widened and she pointed to the picture. “You figured out Jason Blossom was Oberlin through that? She could’ve been going there for something else entirely.”

Jellybean began to wiggle her arms.  “My ways are mysterious and brilliant.”

“That’s for sure,” said Jughead from the corner of his mouth.  

Jellybean pressed some commands on her laptop then peered at her monitor.  “A movie is filming at his ranch. That’s how I found him. And cows. Cows outside of Earth are delightful curiosities.”

Betty chuckled. This girl was crazy and delightful. She wished Jellybean would let her in more.

Jellybean cracked her fingers. “On the set of the unreleased film Rocketship Salsa, someone took a picture and posted it on Instantgram.” She turned her monitor around again, showing them a photo of a fan with one of the actors of the movie. In the background, there was a blurry outline of a cow and a redhead. Jellybean zoomed into the picture, cleared up the pixelation, and clicked “Match” on her facial recognition interface. The software blinked excitedly. Jason’s face matched with the figure in the picture.

Betty was, once again, thoroughly impressed.

Jughead made a sound and nodded.  “The real crime here is that a film named Rocketship Salsa is being made because they think it will make them money..”

Betty shot him a look, but she did follow it up with an amused grin. “So are you and FP going for it?”

“Hells, yes. It might even pay us sooner than that goddamn bounty yesterday.” He ruffled his hands through his hair and Betty longed to touch those silky strands.

Do I even have enough batteries left in my vibrator, I wonder?

Betty sighed. She needed an occupation.  “Can I come with? This ship is running perfectly and I’m really, really… ” horny “... bored.”

He seemed to be thinking about it. It wasn’t as if she’d never done a run with them before. She was handy enough with a firearm to help where she was needed, but it was never a given. She always had to ask, and while FP tended to just say, “Sure thing!”, Jughead always seemed to be resistant to the idea.  

She exaggerated batting her eyelashes and pouting her lips. “Please?” She might have angled a bit for some cleavage, too. She wasn’t above that right now. If he jumped her, she wasn’t going to complain.

He rolled his eyes. “Christ, fine. But do as I say. If something happens to you, this hunk of junk will give out at some point and then we’ll really miss you.”

The only reason what he said didn’t hurt was because he was half-grinning as he said it.

Betty clapped her hands. “Wonderful! JB, send me all that info, won’t you?”

“Okie, dokie.”

“Hey, does dad know about all this, JB?” Jughead asked, pressing the buttons on his wrist tagger. A screen projected above it and he moved some data around--probably the information Jellybean sent him.  

Jellybean shook her head.  “Dad was up early and left early.”

Betty was surprised about that. She made a grunting sound.

“One has to wonder,” muttered Jughead, probably meaning he didn’t really care.

“Dad took the Chopper and I didn’t ask, but I could track him.”

“Don’t bother,” said Betty and Jughead in unison. One thing Betty learned about living in the Whyte Wyrm was that FP always came back and it was always better not to know what FP was up to in his free time.  It was either too embarrassing or too illegal. Either way, both her and Jughead didn’t want to know.

They looked at one another for about two seconds before they realized that both of them would be needing the shower.  Betty had a one-second head start being nearer to the door as she shot down the hallway.  Jughead was close at her heels.

As the bathroom door came into view, she grinned triumphantly to herself.  But in the next second, she felt strong arms grabbing her from behind and shifting her around.  Mid-shift, she planted her feet against the wall and kicked, slamming Jughead against the opposite wall in the narrow hallway.

Jughead’s grip didn’t loosen in the least, but her leg muscles were strong enough to make him immobile, pressed between her and the wall.

Jughead cursed his predicament profusely.

Betty was too annoyed to gloat.  “Dammit, Jughead!  You can’t cheat me out of first-shower rights!”

Jughead grunted against the pressure.  “Since when did either of us make first-shower rights easy?”

She exerted more pressure and he growled.

“Stop that!  Are you hoping to suffocate me?”

Betty growled in frustration.   “This was funny the first 3 times but it’s getting old, Jones!”

In spite of himself, he laughed. “Speak for yourself!”

“Look, Jughead.  Just let me bathe first and I promise you, I won’t use up all the hot wate—“

“Like hell!”

“Even if I do, at least I don’t leave the floor and towels sopping wet; and I don’t make mush out of the soap, either!”

“Betty, get offa me!”

“I’m using that bathroom first, dammit!”

“Okay!  I’ll let you! Just get the fuck off!”

“Promise!”

“Okay, already!”

“Say it, fucker!”

“I promise! God-dammit, Betty!”

She slackened her legs and he let her go.

Barely keeping her balance, she turned and arched an threatening eyebrow. If he tried anything...  

He put his hands up and grinned, then his eyes flickered down to her her collar.

Once again checking her out.

You know, that shower’s big enough to fit two people smashed together.

She wanted to say it, but lost her nerve. When he didn’t do anything, she took a deep breath and headed for the shower.  

8888888888888888

By the time Betty was done getting dressed for the day, Jughead was already lounging on the couch, letting his hair dry.  Jellybean sat on the table, humming a made-up tune as she tapped away on her computer, and Hotdog was Hotdog, watching her warily in case she had an urge to kick him out of the way.

Jughead gave her one look and arched an eyebrow.  “You look… different.”

She rolled her eyes impatiently.  Of course she looked different; she had finally put on her sundress.  It was an airy green spaghetti strap with small flowers dotting it. It wasn’t fancy, but it was perfect for a romp out in the arid climate of Oberlin Major.

“Don’t wait up for me,” she said, slinging her strappy gold sandals over her shoulder.

Jughead watched her leave for their docking port.

She climbed into the Vixen, her personal speedcraft, and dumped her shoes into the cockpit.  She liked driving barefoot.  

“Hey, Betts.”

Mildly surprised, she looked up from her craft, watching Jughead approach from the doors.  “Yes?”

“Where are you going?” He seemed genuinely curious.

“Reconnaissance. You and FP may not be big on homework and preparation, but I am. I like to scope out the site. Plus, there will be actors there. I’m a little curious.”

“So you’re going by yourself?”

She frowned. “What? Do you think I can’t handle it?”

He tilted his gaze. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just… do you want some company?”

Betty thought this an interesting development. She let her eyes scan his figure, up and down. Not that he was an embarrassment to be around with. She found him incredibly handsome and distracting, but she wondered if this was just him getting cabin fever or this was him finally noticing her.

She was well-aware she could just come out and make the first move. There was nothing wrong with that, per se, but she was, first and foremost, polite. She had been invited to this ship and she didn’t want to be the one to initiate a disruption in the dynamics. Getting down with the captain’s son was sure to change things. Even if she wanted it to happen, she wanted that initiative to come from Jughead.

His house, his move.

“I don’t mind company,” she said with a casual tilt of her shoulder. “Just don’t get in my way.”

He chuckled and climbed into his own ship.  “You’re the boss.”

She scoffed, flipping her controls open. “Right. As if.”

“What?”

“Why are you really tagging along? Like, are you bored? Do you not want me to get a head start? Are you afraid I’d screw up?”

“Cooper, what did I even do to deserve that last bit?” He smirked, powering his own spacecraft.

“N-Nothing! I’m just curious. You’ve always let me go off on my own…”

“Yeah, when you want to window shop at the flea markets. But this is work. You don’t ever go out on the field without a partner. Dad and I go out together all the time. It’s for safety, Betts.”

Oh.

She pulled the strap on her seat and secured herself. “Fine.”

“Great. What’s the script?”

“Script?”

“Well, if we’re going to scope out the place, we can’t look suspicious. What’s our script? Our roles? Vacationing couple? Brother and sister? Pimp and whore?”

She shot him a glare. “Maybe vacationing couple.”

He laughed softly under his breath. “Vacationing couple, it is. Let’s go, sweetheart. We don’t want to be late to cast meetups.”

Sweetheart.

This was either the best idea or the worst idea.

888888888888888

Jughead looked at Betty through the Hitchcock’s windshield.  She still refused to look back and he laughed to himself.

He was never going to understand Betty’s moods.  One minute she was sweet and nurturing and another minute she was on his case, irritable and snarky.

Not that understanding her was really all that important.  In spite of Betty’s mommy issues (the girl seemed to have a fear that her mother would catch up on her), he liked her enough that he didn’t complain about having her on the ship.

They needed a mechanic, for one. And she seemed nice enough, unfailingly polite at first, but thankfully less guarded the longer she had been around them. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Personality himself, so he liked how she seemed to have eased in instead of coming like a hurricane.

Her personality did bring a change of pace to the ship, however, which he thought surprisingly welcome. She tended to clean, which was a bonus of sorts--the Joneses tended to be a little more lax on that regard. But mostly he liked the quiet way she asked after all of them, how she tried to make clever contraptions and fix broken things. He liked that she read. Constantly. He liked watching her write in her journals and then put it away when she caught him looking.

He liked her skimpy outfits.

He liked those a lot.  

He liked that she worked on the engine with those overalls that she only really used as pants. She liked that smudge of grease on her chin and the ginormous wrench she lugged around when she was in the engine rooms. He liked watching her work on his spacecraft when it needed an oil change, because he could happily stare at her legs when she was too busy to notice.

She did get cranky. She was human and they were in a cramped spaceship, where they had to turn sideways when they met in its walkways and ramps, where the path to the shower rooms were the perfect set-up for intensely flirtatious racing and close contact.

Even her anger was entertaining.  Until he met Betty, he never knew fighting and calling each other names could be so amusing.  Never mind that he sometimes got a little carried away and ended up irritating himself.

Maybe she wondered occasionally why she never had to deal with awkward encounters in the small hallways when it was FP or Jellybean. Maybe she didn’t wonder. Maybe she knew.

She was driving him crazy.

He would swear she deliberately flashed him her cleavage on a daily basis.

But did he really want to risk screwing the uncomplicated dynamics of their ship up? If he gave into his impulses and fucked Betty on the engine room floor, which he had fantasized about countless times, his father might very well eject him into space.  

For one, space mechanics as good as she was who were willing to get paid a pittance with shitty benefits was rare. And second, FP seemed to have made an agreement with Betty’s mother that FP was to watch out for her like a daughter.

The only person, it seemed, who was more afraid of Alice than Betty was FP.

Ah, well. He was just going to have to jack off in the shower. Again.

He flipped on the radio, grinning as he channeled in on Betty’s frequency.  “So vacationing couple, right?”

“Right.”

“Honeymoon or just a quick getaway?”

She flew her ship close to his so that they could be looking at one another through the clear glass of their cockpits.  “What difference does it make?”

He slanted a grin.  “Huge difference. Honeymooners are more lovey dovey. Quick getaways are more about touring and sightseeing.”

She shot him a scowl before veering her ship away from him.

He laughed, following her.  “I’m serious!”

“Nobody’s going to care!”

“We’re professionals. We have to do everything right. Hey, you’re the one who said you want to do your homework and shit.”

“Fine. Quick getaway. We’re there to observe. So… you know, look at things. We can hold hands, maybe.”

He chuckled. Hold hands, indeed. “Fine. Whatever you want.”

“Okay, then. Anything else you want to talk about before we do this?”

“I really think we should go grocery shopping before we head back to the ship.”

She gave an irritated sigh, but she didn’t disagree. “Tell me that you brought money and don’t expect me to pony up for that.”

Jughead grinned. Maybe he liked to tease her occasionally, too. “Oh, right. Money! Yeah, about that…”

There was an audible crackle in his receiver. A sure sign that she had cut the transmission off.  He laughed.

He was going to enjoy this impromptu mission.

tbc

[tubbotums]

Just in case anyone actually thought I couldn’t do it

The most pronounced people who had what many would consider to be a weird appetite were teenage boys and pregnant women. Cravings and all sorts of hormonal imbalances made it a common occurrence to see these types of people mix things that one wouldn’t think was possible, like pickles and ice cream, or salsa and fruit slices. You would think that this kind of appetite would make anyone sick to the stomach, much less keep off any stray weight that comes with mixing certain foods that basically serve as a calorie bomb. It was no wonder people gained when they ate like crap, though at least for teenage boys and pregnant women that weight could be worked off easily and they had an excuse for it.

Orihime Inoue however, did not have an excuse. She was just plain weird.

At 17 years of age, she was not pregnant, nor was she a sweaty teenage boy. She was very much a female herself in quite a few ways, and she was very much so curvy and full in a different way than one would think. For a time, she was simply just curvaceous in the right places. Nice, ample breasts that were definitely too large for her own benefit (getting her uniform on was a pain despite how many people oogled her), long, thick legs that rounded out an ideally shaped body for any woman. She was the epitome of beauty, and her natural air-headedness to match her wavy, orange hair just brought it out so much more. For some though, that was cancelled out by her overtly weird appetite, and for a while that didn’t matter. She found her ways to stay in shape despite never working out a day in her life. That was until she spent her time in the Soul Society for just a bit too long...

You see, while she still maintained her human form in the Soul Society, apparently spirit food wasn’t exactly slimming on the waistline and vice versa. Pork dumplings with peanut butter in soul form hit a lot harder and more apparent then before, making Orihime’s sudden ballooning in size that much more apparent. The poor girl would go from eating your standard sized meal to asking for seconds within a minute with a wholesome look on her face, her expression a telling sign that she had no clue as to how quickly she was devouring a meal. Most people like to take their time and enjoy it, but not Orihime. No, she inhaled her food at this point.

“Orhime, are you sure a literal ice cream sandwich would taste good? And are you sure you want to put strawberry jam in there too?” People would ask.

“Well if I don’t try it, I won’t be able to find out! I bet the bread would taste super yummy with the ice cream, and the jam would just add to it too! Maybe I’ll even dip the bread in the ice cream instead of making it like a sandwich when I have loaf number 2!” She would reply back, happily accepting the fact that she held an entire loaf of bread in her hand, all while storing another two in her bag.

This was common and led to many stares in more ways that one. People were amazed that she could actually stomach such garbage routinely, but were also more impressed that her school uniform could hold together too. Every button from the chest down strained tightly against her soft, flabby body, pressed up against her as her blazer showed Orihime’s undershirt without any issue. Her gut hung over her red skirt, the same one that had a difficult time now keeping her bubbly rear hidden away from a certain pervy friend of hers.

White stockings were ripped along the seams, allowing for flab from her legs to flow through and blob out from where they were. Her thighs, ample and large as tree trunks rubbed against each other, stretching her skirt to it’s limit as well. Her white undershirt was popped at the top, accidentally exposing cleavage under her red ribbon. With breasts as big as her’s, finding clothing that actually would reasonable cover them was a challenge all onto its own. However, that white undershirt was not so white. No, it was more faded, like plenty of bleach (no pun intended) was used to get stains out. It was easy to tell too, since even know Orihime managed to drip chocolate ice cream and red jam onto it from her rather messy eating. All of the mixing of different foods would do that, and she’d have to take care of it herself whenever possible if she wasn’t too lazy for it.

And so, Orhimie Inoue ate her lunch and had fun doing so. Her appetite was weird, and she ate probably too much spirit food to actually still be on a diet that was mostly human. She consumed loaf after loaf, and tub after tub of her deliciously disgusting meal, and once she was done Orihime let out a massive sigh of relief and went to rubbing her bloated gut, those buttons looking tighter than ever around her midsection.

“Oh jeez, maybe I should have listened to Ichigo and Rukia and just ate the bread or ice cream alone! My tummy is making the extra rumblies now, and my uniform is super tight!” she stated, trying to look past her behemoth sized boobs to look at the massive flesh orb that rested in her lap. “But if I did that, then I wouldn’t have tasted that yummy chocolate and strawberry ice cream sandwich deluxe I made! Talk about a tough choice to make for next time...”

And with one heavy sigh, a button flew off as fast as a bullet from a gun, flying across the room as her blazer now revealed her belly button and part of her stomach. Even Orihime, who could barely see past her chest, knew exactly what happened. One might have expected that she’d be embarrassed and blushy by this sudden event, but actually she one that fight the new her.

“Maybe I should just get a new uniform then. That way, I won’t have to worry about this happening and I can try it again next time! I hope Ichigo doesn’t think that’s too much of an issue though... e-ehehehe~”

This was Orihime Inoue. Female, High Schooler, and Residential Glutton.

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: Tokyo Treat May 18

Ahhhh, I took a bit longer than I would have liked to. But with good reason.

Sorta.

Basically, I spent the past few days going through all of the old crates to sort the items and dispose of the boxes/crates. They take up a lot of space when you order so many, and I bought some cute little boxes to sort the items by type and take them to my room.

I still have some to go through, but I made a lot of progress. I think I threw away about 20 boxes. But I did keep a handful of them either because I had use for them, or someone I know did. It’s actually been kind of fun going through them :3 and oddly therapeutic.

Anyway, let’s get on with it! If you like anime, manga, and video games, this box is perfect for you!

Theme: ANIME SNACK ATTACK

So, as you can see, we’re having an anime (and manga and video game) theme. Three things I adore!

LUCKY TREAT

The Lucky Treat is full of anime inspired items, and Pokemon! One of the most popular merchandising brands you find in these boxes lately. Like literally, nearly each box I've gotten recently seems to have some form of Pokemon item in it (not counting the makeups. But I know they have pokemon beauty products.)

MINUTE MAID CRAFTZ CHERRY & PEACH

I'm putting this here because the image of this is the very first one in the post. You can see it on the right-hand side there. Anyway, this is a drink by Minute Maid, a very popular juice brand that I like x3 It combines the sweet, flowery tastes of cherry and peach- I think this would perfect for spring time!

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

If you like Peach then you'd like this drink, basically. The Peach is overwhelmingly strong, and there is a faint cherry-ness to it, but it mostly blends into the peach. It was refreshing~

Sriracha Rice Chips & Don Taro Udon Snack

First up we got some delicious looking Sriracha chips made from brown rice and soy beans. As you can see on the bag in the pic. These are gluten free and flavored with a spicy kick! Perfect for those intense scenes; or when you start feeling yourself getting tired and need a wake-me-up.

Although, there was one little problem with mine...

Seeing this nice, big clean slice in the bag had me worried a teensy-bit. It came like that out of the box and it wasn't tampered with as far as I know- so I can only assume it was a last-second manufacturing thing that went unnoticed. It happens.They seemed fine, so I just put them in another bag.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Besides a tiny bit of staleness they tasted really good x3 They had a "deep crunch" to them, being sorta soft (which was either staleness or due to being made out of bean and rice) but still crispy. Oddly they reminded me of chicken-flavored ramen.

They are spicy, but it has to build up. It sort of lingers on the tongue for a few minutes but otherwise you won't notice it just eating a couple. It wasn’t really hot though for being made with sriracha. But I really like eating it so maybe I just didn’t notice?

Our next item in the pic is a snacking noodle dagashi, flavored after a real udon bowl.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

Honestly they tasted a lot like those chips did. Minus the rice-bean texture. They're not bad or anything, but I'm not super-obsessed with snacking noodles; or noodles as a whole. I have to be in the mood for them. But they didn't taste bad, as I said, and if you really like crunchy snacks (or ramen) you would probably like these.

MENTAIKO UMAIBO & SENZU BEAN EDAMAME

Oh, our usual Umaibo and share pack snacks! How I love and sometimes detest you~

Depending on the flavors that is.

Our Umaibo is one I've had, maybe two other times by now. Mentaiko is "salted, creamy pollock roe", or fish eggs if you're not familiar with the term.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

Not being a fish person, I've never tried fish eggs before. They haven't appealed to me. So I can't say if this tastes accurately or not- to me it reminds me of their cheese-flavored ones. I’m not a big fan of this, but it’s not bad either. It's not as strange to me as it originally was the first time I tried it.

Now, I've already given my opinions of these "share packs" so I won't waste time doing it again. For this month we get packs of this edamame themed snack with a light flavoring on them. First of all, each bag is 64 calories, making this a nice snack for those who worry over their weight or just want something a little healthier.

Apparently chosen to represent the "Senzou Bean" from Dragonball. Each bag also has a cute design, made to look like a mesh bag or pouch filled with edamame!

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

If they reminded me of anything on smell alone, I'd say "cheez-its and some green vegetable". Their taste and texture is about the same too, but I do get an edamame vibe. I think its adorable how they look like them too x3 and they have a light saltiness to them that is pleasant.

Besides the snacking noodles, I’d say these were the top in crunchiness.

DRAGON BALL CHEESE PUFFS

You read that right: Dragonball Cheese Puffs. These are 91.9 calories for the bag, and include a fun card as part of a game series. I know they've made these, but I'm used to seeing the gummy ones; but because I only buy those types, it was neat to try another kind.

So... as you can see, I got Vegeta! He's my favorite x3 I can't ever use the card for its intended purpose- but I'm happy regardless.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

They're basically like any other cheese puff-based snack. However, the flavoring was actually very light on the cheese and tasted more like the corn its made out of. But it didn't taste bad, and the crispy texture is nice. These are good as long as you're not expecting a huge, cheesy flavor.

ALMOND TOFU CHOCOBI & CHOCOPIE

I think I'll swap things around and start with the Chocobi; it hasn't been in the box for a while. This time, rather than a fruit it's flavored after a specific dish: Almond Tofu, a smooth and healthy Japanese dessert. I've never tried it before but I assume it's like yogurt or pudding with a jelly texture.

The box is 139.4 calories, and was made in celebration of yet-another Crayon Shin-chan movie. This one features stickers from different regions in Japan, the one I got says Aichi. But to be honest, the only one of these I recognized was Hokkaido. I kinda wish I got that one~

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

As usual Chocobi as a texture is pretty nice. It's crispy, and they come in such a cute shape!

However... as usual, they also go stale VERY quickly.... So I've never been a fan of them.

Now these, the flavor isn't as odd as past ones I received. It's kind of like sweet, very light coconut, maybe a tiny bit almond x vanilla-ish. I really like almonds and tofu, but I didn't come to this snack knowing what to expect so I can’t say I’m being picky.

Our other item here I was a lot more excited for, meanwhile. The Petite Chocopie by LOTTE! It's basically chocolate covered cake and marshmallow cream- but since when has that ever been a bad thing??

Per each cake/pie its 74 calories, which isn't that bad if you want something sweet. According to the back they also have a type that features a chocolate drizzle rather than coating, and has chocolate and marshmallow cream inside~

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Right off, if you don't like dark chocolate then you probably won't like these. I don't think they're made with it, but they certainly tasted like it. My mom thought so too, and she hates dark chocolate- which is a shame because I really like it. But at least I know it'll be safe from her ;3

These were pretty good, but I did have one complaint. As you can see in the picture I took they don't really sync up with the photo on the package. Which is common, I know, but what the actual item lacks in thickness it also lacks in taste unfortunately. With the rich chocolate and cake/cookies under it, the marshmallow cream is too thin- you barely taste it, if at all.

SHIN-CHAN GUMMY, SPLATOON GUMMIES, AND THOMAS THE TRAIN CHEWY CANDY

This single piece of Shin-chan Gummy is available in soda/ramune, and cola flavors. As much as I enjoy soda/ramune, I really, REALLY wish I got cola. Or maybe one of each. The image in the booklet is a tiny bit misleading because you only get 1.

I kinda had to leave it in the package because by the time I got to it (a week ago, just about) it had like... melted into the plastic. At least I assume. I tried to remove it and it was not coming. I took the picture, then I mangled it to get as much as I could out.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

I LOVED how this tasted. Exactly like the soda/ramune flavor I like. However, I couldn't necessarily judge the quality of the gummy due to unforeseen issues. As noted above...

The next item I got was another one I was excited for cus who doesn't love Splatoon, am I right?

I only have the first game for now, but I'll be getting the Switch VERY SOON, so I'm excited to get the second on x3 I also have a cute pink water-filled squid I got from the toy store like a year or so ago.

Anyway, these gummies are available in Orange and Melon. There's also a very rare gummy shaped like an octopus that can be found in certain bags. Mine wasn't one of them. One bag is 155 calories, which is kind of lame due to how small it is. BUT at the same time, I've seen worse.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Not only are the gummies really cute, but they taste very good too. I was also happy to see that the bag is zip-lock style and they lasted for 4 months with no sign of aging!

I was so excited when I got them back in May that I couldn't resist trying them then (=´3`=)

The gummy texture... I can’t really describe. It's chewy, but not hard, and they don't take five minutes to eat either. More like a few seconds.

Our last item in this picture is the Thomas the Tank Engine Chewy Candy!

The inner-child in me was really excited to see this. Not only because the candy itself sounded good, but I grew up on the Thomas the Tank Engine stop-motion cartoons x3 Ironically, now that I'm older he seems a lot more popular. That or I just never noticed it before. There's also another sense of irony here though. Back in August, I was re-watching the super old original stop-motions I grew up on; not for any real reason, I was just bored and like the background noise.

Okay, so anyway the candy is a grape chewy candy by Lotte. It looks a lot like gum but it's kind of thicker, and what's fun is that each piece has a little puzzle on it, or you can fold the wrapper in certain ways to make shapes or "toys". Each stick, or the whole pack is 85 calories. I can't actually tell.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It pretty much tastes exactly like grape hi-chew, the only difference is the texture. So if you like Hi-chew or grape candy you'd like this. If you don't then... you probably won't.

(Oh, and if you're curious my favorite is/was James~)

BORUTO GUMMY & BORUTO PINEAPPLE JELLIES

Our last items of the box are these two "Boruto" snacks! Boruto, if you never heard of the series is essentially a sequel to "Naruto". A series I was very fond of. However, I don't like Boruto. It's not because of the characters or anything, but because of some "decisions" they made I just didn't agree with. Besides the cute packaging and decorative detail on the bag, the jellies each feature a decorative lid design based on various Boruto characters. Each Jelly is 19 calories, and are pineapple flavored, with real pineapple juice!

This box was essentially full of nostalgia for me x3 when I was younger I loved eating little jellies. They became pretty scarce as I got older though, and one day they kind of just stopped showing up. It's a bit disappointing.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

They taste really good, it's not an overwhelming Pineapple flavor. I love the slippery, soft, squishy texture~

Our final item is this Boruto energy-drink flavored Hand Gummy :3 Hand Gummies are popular and fun, being based on the game Rock-Paper-Scissors. I've gotten one or two other gummies like this before, but if I recall they were much smaller- but I got scissors both times, including this one!

That's usually my go-to gesture and always has been ;D But you can also look at is as "peace sign" too if you wanted. Anyway, these are energy-drink flavored, but the booklet assures us that no energy drink ingredients were actually used in making this. It's simply BASED on a fizzy, sweet-and-sour pineapple energy drink.

That rested any concerns I had, because I'm one of those who people who avoids energy drinks at all cost. If I want energy I'll just eat sugar.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It pretty much tastes like the jelly, but the flavor was stronger. I also really liked its super-soft texture x3

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Quality - 4 out of 5. The only real reason why I marked it down was because of that slice in the rice chips bag. I'm sure this was an extremely rare thing though, I usually don't have any problems with any of the items I get in this box.  

Content - 3 out of 5. I didn't hate anything at all this time around- which is almost as rare as the above mention. Usually I find one item I detest, and I pretty much only disliked one item, and even then it wasn't that bad...

Theme - 5 out of 5. Besides a couple of items, it was pretty much covered in anime stuff!

Total Rank: 12 out of 15 Cuties. I genuinely LOVED this box in comparison to the April box. It had a couple of faults but nothing serious that I couldn't overlook. Considering how excited I was for this, I feel like they could have done better- but they did really good! Maybe like a... B+

♥ Cutie’s Scale of Yummy ♥

1. Cherry x Peach Drink - It was so refreshing~

2. Splatoon Gummies - I can't say I prefer orange or melon flavors in comparison to ramune, grape, or cola- but they tasted so good and looked adorable!

3. Thomas Grape Chewy Candy - Loved. Loved. Loved!

4. Hand Gummy - I liked this just a little bit better than the jelly. It's very soft and chewy, I'd recommend these if you can find them, they come in many flavors.

5. Pineapple Jellies - I loved their soft, wiggly-jiggly texture~

6. Chocopie -  I loved the soft, cakey texture and its dark chocolate-esque taste~

7. Rice Chips - Delicious!

8. Shin-chan Gummy - I was disappointed with this because it was delicious! I just wish it hadn't stuck to its packaging. Well, that and I wish we got maybe one or two more~

9. Edamame snack - They tasted good but I just liked other stuff better.

10. Dragonball Cheese Puffs - I liked how they tasted, but I felt like it might have been a tiny bit misleading cause it didn't taste like cheese to me. I don't know if its because the information in the booklet was wrong, or... I’m very happy with the card I got though!

11. Mentaiko Umaibo - It tastes better than when I first tried it. But I can't say it's in my top 5 Umaibo list...

12. Udon Snacking Noodles - As I mentioned, these I have to be in the mood for. They don't taste bad but it's not something I'd probably reach for.

13. Almond Tofu snack - I really am not just a fan of Chocobi...

Alrighty, here we are at the end of another review. I'm sorry if it seemed like the quality started lowering so far down. I'm feeling kinda tired and my head hurts suddenly, and after trying to write these twice I really didn't want to have to try again you know?

Anyway, I hope you'll stay tuned for the next review :3 it'll be May's Doki Doki crate, then we'll be moving onto June stuff!

Until then, stay cute!

[well-hidden-hot-mess]

today’s thoughts

this is going to be rambly but what else is new. just had a bunch of random thoughts floating around in my head that i just wanted to get “on paper” so hopefully they’ll stop floating around my brain and taking up space where more important things should be and stop stressing me out. 

to follow up on yesterday’s post, woke up feeling backed up and bloated so i was dreading the weigh in because i was sure i was going to have maintained or gained. which yes i know is stupid for it to be such a “worry” or be on my brain the first second i wake up but it wasn’t i swear. i was up at 5am and this happened at like 7am but the second i looked at my body and saw my stomach being all puffed out i was like this isn’t going to be fun... but i tried to be positive and be like look, yesterday you “only” (i need to stop using that word) went for a leisurely walk (i’ll go into that next) and did yoga for activity (even though I hit 11,000 steps) plus you didn’t drink all of your water and you ate an extra 230 calories in the form of a chocolate protein bar (more on that later too) so if you are up a little bit, it’s understandable and it’ll be okay... stepped on the scale, looked down, and was shook because I lost .9lbs... halle-fucking-luyah. i shouldn’t feel such a relief at that but i think it was just that weight was lifted (no pun intended) from my shoulders because i was kicking my ass so hard the last 10 days and wasn’t seeing any progress so it was just a lot of frustration built up since i knew there was zero reason this should be happening due to previous experience and just common sense with how this all works. oh idk if i mentioned, i did lower my macros yesterday back down because my activity level wasn’t as high as i thought it would be and i wasn’t as active in between my workouts and since i was maintaining pretty steadily, i figured that would be a good idea and i was right. 

for the walk part, i forced myself to slow the f down and do an actual leisurely walk and ended up losing track of time and walking an hour and afterwards i wasn’t absolutely wrecked and useless the rest of the day. so that’s the plan from now on unless i’m doing cardio as my more intense workout of the day (like if i’m pairing it with yoga or something) or doing the stairs or something. 

the protein bar. well i was all up in my feels and had no idea why and was just really tired and mentally drained but not like full on but like 75% done and just emotionalish. i had drank my preworkout and was determined to go workout but it like never kicked in and that kinda hinted to me that maybe i just needed a break and it would be better to do it today (my hip was ultra pissed plus i was exhausted so it wouldn’t have been the best and it would’ve just made me frustrated and not a positive experience). so i made myself a healthy dinner (air fried skinless chicken drumsticks (which holy fuck are my new favorite food ever) with asparagus and brown/wild rice) even though i wanted nothing to do with cooking (thankfully they were all already prepped) and figured they would fit in my macros. lol jk because the macros i thought i had left didn’t include the rice i had at lunch so with some switching around my carbs/fats, i hit everything pretty spot on. which i was happy about for .1 second until i wanted something sweet since that’s how i always end my day and i had zero macros left. so that little “fuck it” voice popped up and i was like you know what, it’s not going to kill me and i just want it so it’s fine, i don’t care (not like f it i don’t care but more like it’s only 230 calories, i’m not going to let that ruin my day) and crawled into bed. it was at that point that i realized i was emotional when a tiktok that was like “things will get better” like sweet but not like powerful enough to ellicit the reaction of tears rolling down my face. so i looked up exercise for depression figuring there’d be something that would help me and then one of yoga with adriene’s videos popped up called “yoga for depression” and it was like 15 mins so i’m like let me just do this in my bed and maybe i’ll feel better in general and less guilty for completely skipping the second workout. so i did that one... and then another... and another to total 45 mins. i felt so much better afterwards and like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and i fell asleep really quickly and easily after that so i’m so beyond happy i did it and feel proud of myself to not give into the impending binge that i could feel brewing and to not just give up on the day and stay in that negative headspace. so that was a good end to a could’ve been terrible day. 

i went to target yesterday and as always went a little crazy with the spending but it was mostly on stuff i needed and healthy snacks that don’t go bad quickly. but my plan was to get back from my walk, eat something, clean myself up a little, and go to target so get there by like 12. i just couldn’t get myself to get up and go. i was ready, there was just something holding me back aka anxiety. like target is my happy place... i had more than enough money so it wouldn’t be a stressful thing... and i just couldn’t get myself to get up and go. i think quarantine and not working/leaving my apartment every day has made my anxiety expand into like very mild agoraphobia like symptoms. i finally was just like fuck it, i need to go now or else it’s going to be busy with all the kids getting out of school and people getting out of work so i ended up leaving at 3 finally. it’s just a weird feeling having this invisible thing holding me back to begin with but like ultra weird that it was holding me back from a place i love a little too much. but i’m proud that i pushed through and ended up having a nice relaxing visit and FINALLY found my favorite creamer (oat yeah oatmeal cookie flavor omg) when they’ve been out for months and a couple other fun snacks that i’m excited to try. plus i found cute little baskets to put in my shoe rack and i love them and some organizers for my bathroom drawers which desperately need to be reorganized so i’ll probably do that later since it’s a rainy day so i won’t feel guilty not being outside. 

i’ve been thinking about work again and some things have been floating around in my brain. like making a youtube channel (about what? no fucking idea), or a podcast (again about what tho?), or a blog (same issues) or something like that where i can work from home for now on my own schedule until i’m ready to go back out into the real world and work again. i think i’m going to do some brainstorming about that today and report back.

my dad got me the new ninja air fryer/oven and omfg i’m legit obsessed. it’s like the only positive thing i have right now and as sad as that is, i’m ignoring how pathetic that is and just enjoying it for now. #ignoranceisbliss

i think i’m going to adopt a kitten like this week. i need something cute and fluffy and to make me happy and to focus on so i don’t go insane. nashville humane has so many cute little nuggets and one is a tuxedo and his name is elmo and i’m obsesseddddd. 

okay this has been going on for way too long so i need to go chug an energy drink and get my walk started before the torrential downpour from the latest hurricane/tornado/whatever the fuck it is. 

[losingitinjersey]

Wine night was a success!  I love that I went into it with plenty of calories to spare so I could thoroughly enjoy myself (five glasses of enjoyment) and didn’t worry at all about ruining my progress.  I’ve been publicly using dietbet as an excuse against eating not low carb food and it’s been completely acceptable.  Since there’s money on the line no one questions my decisions.  This is fantastic!  I think I might need to permanently participate in dietbet for this reason alone.  I didn’t eat any of the food at the winery since we went into the evening having already had dinner and even when I came home pretty fricken toasted I didn’t gorge myself on food.  I simply ate the two remaining pieces of bacon from dinner, drank a bunch of water and went to sleep.  I then woke up this morning two pounds lighter.  Whaaat?  I’m sure it’s just from being dehydrated so I’m not going to log this 243 into dietbet unless it sticks around for a few more days.  

This morning was another kitchen adventure!  I was going to make noatmeal but remembered how tiny the portions were and I wanted to physically eat more than that so I got it into my head to try and bake with Keto Chow!  I found the recipe for pancakes or muffins but since I wanted to make waffles I just stuck the batter into my waffle iron.  I also didn’t use the recipe quite as it was written since it was for a full day’s worth of meals and I knew that if I made that much we’d end up eating it for one meal and no one needs that.  So, I only used two scoops of Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow (instead of three) and one cup of half and half (instead of 1.5 cups of cream (we’re out of cream)).   Everything else I followed, oh, except I didn’t add in MCT oil and I neglected to follow the order of ingredient mixing because I wasn’t reading closely enough.  Whoops.

The batter was pretty liquidy but I poured it into my waffle iron and it came out pretty dang moist.  So I cranked the temperature and did another batch.  They came out almost perfectly this time except I neglected to spray the iron with Pam (I didn’t realize you had to do this between each batch) and so round two was basically perfectly cooked crumbles.  Batch three got sprayed down and they came out great!  I’d call this breakfast an almost win.  Oh, and then I was talking when I was making coffee and forgot to count how many scoops I put in which resulted in it being WAY too strong.  Like, even with a shit ton of half and half and splenda it wasn’t worth drinking.  So I just one had sip, grew some hair on my chest, then switched to water for the rest of breakfast.  

As Kevin noted at breakfast, not only did I not follow the recipe, I didn’t even use the recipe to make the food that was intended.  :)  I love it and completely enjoy my kitchen attempts and ingenuity.  Long live weekend mornings!  

[fuckyeahtattoogirls-blog1]

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/keto-diet-weight-loss-and-disease-treatment/

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

At first, the cravings were like “a drug withdrawal,” Jay Wortman recalls.

Lying on a hotel bed in Ottawa one night, he’d had to white-knuckle his way out of eating Ferrero Rocher chocolates he’d spirited off a flight. A recent Type 2 diabetes diagnosis had prompted the Vancouver-based family medicine doctor to cut out nearly all carbohydrates — sweets, pasta, bread, even fruit — in an attempt to manage his blood sugar while he waited to start medication. But he couldn’t stop thinking about those chocolates, or his favorite breakfast: waffles doused in syrup. “I think I was a full-fledged sugar addict,” he says.

Four months later, the sugar pangs had eased. He got through the early weeks by stocking up on artificial sweeteners and focusing on how much his 2-year-old son needed a healthy dad. With sugar off the table, he says, all that was left was “the non-carby foods” — bacon, eggs, steak, and vegetables. Soon, he started sleeping better and feeling less fatigued. Weight was coming off at the rate of a pound a day, until he was down 30 pounds and no longer overweight. “I had to get my pants taken in,” Wortman says. “And then I had to get them taken in again.”

More than 16 years later and still following the ultra-high-fat, low-carb regimen that’s become popularized under the name keto, Wortman has never taken a diabetes drug. He hasn’t needed to. He feels stronger and is skiing the most ambitious slopes of his life. “At 68, I’m far fitter than I was at 52 when [my diet] started,” he says.

Transformation stories like his — and the thousands of seemingly hyperbolic claims of dieters losing dozens of pounds, complete with Instagrammed before-and-afters — have made keto the biggest diet phenomenon today. The most Googled diet of 2018, it has eclipsed household names like Weight Watchers (now known as WW) and the other low-carb regimens, Atkins and Paleo.

Keto is a Silicon Valley life-hacking fixation (see author Tim Ferriss’s keto videos), a Hollywood trend (see Kourtney Kardashian’s and Halle Berry’s keto journeys), and fodder for numerous online communities. Devotees can meet at low-carb keto cruises, keto conferences, and keto cafes. While there’s no leading figurehead, a cadre of evangelists sell books and pseudo-medical supplements and devices to help dieters check whether they’re truly in “ketosis,” the holy grail fat-burning state keto dieters are after.

Beyond all the hype, the chance that keto — a minimalist variation on the diet promoted by cardiologist Robert Atkins — can solve the obesity crisis is vanishingly slim. On average, low-carb diets look a lot like others when it comes to long-term weight loss: Most people can’t stick to them. There’s tremendous variation in how humans respond to nutritional and dietary tweaks, and let’s not forget that the promises keto boosters now make are reminiscent of the overhyped claims that fueled the recent gluten-free craze.

But how do you explain results like Wortman’s? He expected that avoiding carbs would help manage his blood sugar in the very short term, not that his other diabetes-related symptoms — thirstiness, frequent urination, and blurred vision — would vanish. And he definitely didn’t anticipate that the diet would allow him to control the disease long-term, without any medication.

Keto might not be an obesity panacea, but it would be a mistake to dismiss the diet as just another fad, in part because of results such as Wortman’s. Along with all the dubious keto supplements and the weight loss books has come a growing body of science exploring keto as a potential foil for Type 2 diabetes and other illnesses. It’s part of a fascinating broader examination of how we might use nutrition to treat disease.

“It’s anti-establishment”

Keto isn’t just low-carb — it is practically no-carb. Its followers avoid ice cream and pizza, as well as whole grains, fruits, and legumes such as brown rice, apples, and lentils. No bakery-fresh bagels, homemade apple pie, birthday cake, or even juicy watermelon.

But what people eat in America — and around the world — is carbohydrates. They account for roughly half the calories on average in the American diet, come highly recommended in national nutrition guidelines, and feature prominently in the traditional diets of everyone from pasta-munching Italians to rice-loving Indonesians.

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, of the world’s more than 50,000 edible plants, “Just three of them, rice, maize and wheat, provide 60 percent of the world’s food energy intake.” All three of those staples are carbs.

To follow a keto diet is to reject this culture and history. And while keto forbids processed junk foods — something common to just about every diet — it also severely limits the fruits, grains, and legumes suggested by the US Department of Agriculture as essential parts of a healthy diet. Keto adherents believe the conventional nutrition wisdom is not only wrong but actively harmful.

This rejection of mainstream thinking helps explain why keto went viral at this moment, and why it’s more than just a diet. It’s a cultural identity.

Take Wortman. He’s been on two of Jimmy Moore’s low-carb cruises, sailing across the Caribbean, downing steak after steak. His wife started keto shortly after he did and remains on the diet. He calls their daughter, who was born seven years into their keto lifestyle, “a product of a keto gestation.”

The diet didn’t just change Wortman’s life; it changed how he thought about medicine and nutrition. He believes there’s a conspiracy by a “matrix of agendas” to promote a plant-based diet. The “whole fiber thing is a myth,” he tells me. He also thinks the concerns about a meat-heavy diet’s impact on the planet — that cows produce too much methane — are hugely overblown (they aren’t), and that the link between cardiovascular disease and saturated fat has been “debunked” (it hasn’t).

In a time when black is white, up is down, and discussions of fake news dominate the news cycle, it’s no accident that keto went viral, says Alan Levinovitz, a James Madison University religion professor who studies diet beliefs. “It’s anti-establishment,” mirroring other strains of rebelliousness in our politics, he says. He experimented with the carnivore diet (a form of keto) and says he experienced no health improvement.

Americans are living in the aftermath of the low-fat experiment — where the public learned about guidelines and studies that have often been muddied by food industry interests. With its emphasis on fat, keto is the antidote to the Snackwell’s era. You can gorge on butter and bacon and stay in ketosis. It’s the perfect fuck-everything-you-know-about-nutrition diet.

A diet to heal disease?

Keto’s potential to heal has captured the imagination of people like Columbia University oncologist and author Siddhartha Mukherjee, who has been studying the diet’s effects on cancer. “We are trying to steer clear of any diet crazes,” he says. “For me, it’s thinking of the diet as a tool or drug,” one that may work when used in tandem with traditional cancer medicines in “a very particular population of cancer patients.” Keto’s effects on insulin and glucose levels — and how they may interfere with cancer cell growth — are what intrigue Mukherjee and other scientists.

He’s only tested the cancer hypothesis in mice. And he has other concerns, echoed by many in the medical field, including that keto may not be safe for the cardiovascular system since it can drive up cholesterol levels.

Wortman, the keto evangelist, is gratified that other doctors are at least opening their minds to keto as a therapy, something he didn’t expect to happen in his lifetime. After his high-fat and -protein diet controlled his blood sugar, he started reading about keto in Atkins’s books and scientific papers and became convinced of its potency.

The diet’s potential for treating Type 2 diabetes is the aspect of keto that has long obsessed Wortman. More than a decade ago, he started lecturing on the subject at medical conferences, only to be lambasted. Other health professionals believed the high-fat regimen would damage people’s kidneys, arteries, and brains.

Wortman felt vindicated when, this spring, the American Diabetes Association came out with a consensus statement — intended as guidance for doctors across the country — suggesting a very low-carb diet could be a nutritional treatment option for some patients with diabetes.

Today, Wortman prescribes keto to all his patients who have Type 2 diabetes. (The standard medical interventions include weight loss, exercise, medication such as metformin, and insulin therapy, as well as regular blood sugar monitoring.) He’s even experimented with using the diet to treat northern British Columbia’s aboriginal people, who are disproportionately diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Though he never published anything on the experiment in a scholarly journal, it was the subject of a 2008 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary. “People lost weight, improved their diabetes, and got off their medications,” says Wortman, who does not profit from advocating for the keto diet.

“The obvious failure of the conventional approach has also been getting too big to ignore,” he adds. “I often say to my patients and colleagues now, ‘What’s the most important thing you do about your health? It’s your diet.’”

The burning question

The reason for shunning sugars is that eating more than the equivalent of a slice or two of bread each day can knock dieters out of ketosis. Dr. Atkins reportedly liked to say that ketosis is “as delightful as sunshine and sex.” (With his four-phase plan, he promised to help people “stay thin forever” by eating more fat and fewer carbs — the same way the now-popular Keto Reset Diet book promises to “burn fat forever.”)

To understand how ketosis works, consider how the human body uses fuel. On a typical high-carb diet, we’re fueled primarily by glucose (or blood sugar), much of which we derive from carbohydrate-rich foods. When we eat a bagel or a bunch of grapes, for example, the glucose levels in our blood rise, and the pancreas secretes insulin to turn glucose into an energy source, moving it from the blood into our cells.

But the body only evolved to store enough glucose to last a couple of days. So if we forgo eating carbs, it finds other ways to keep going.

One of those ways is a process called ketogenesis. In ketogenesis, the liver starts to break down fat — both from food and from the reserves stored in our fat tissue — into a usable energy source called ketone bodies, or ketones for short. Ketones can stand in for glucose as fuel when there’s a glucose shortage. Once ketogenesis kicks in and ketone levels go up, the body is in ketosis and burning fat instead of the usual glucose. (Whether this actually leads to increased calorie burn or fat loss is a matter of scientific debate.)

There are a couple of avenues into ketosis. One is through fasting: When you stop eating altogether for an extended period of time, the body will ramp up fat burning for fuel and decrease its use of glucose (which is part of the reason people can survive for as long as 73 days without food).

Another way to reach it is by making your body think it’s fasting — by eating only about 20 to 50 grams of total carbs per day. At the low end, that’s equivalent to a slice of bread or a small potato.

People on a keto diet generally aim to get about 5 percent of their calories from carbohydrates in foods such as berries and salad, about 15 percent from proteins like salmon and sardines, and 80 percent from fats including coconut oil and avocado. And ketosis is a quantifiable state. Dieters can measure their ketone levels with blood tests, breathalyzers, and urine strips (with varying degrees of accuracy — blood tests are considered the gold standard for now).

This data-driven aspect is part of what appealed to Ethan Weiss, a University of California San Francisco professor of cardiovascular research. Initially, he was skeptical when he was invited to consult for Virta Health, a company selling lifestyle counseling on ketogenic diets for Type 2 diabetics. A second-generation cardiologist, he says his family had “nothing that resembled fat in the house” when he was growing up.

The more he learned about keto, however, the more intrigued he became. He says he was excited by “the idea that we can give [patients] an option that’s going to get them off medication reliably. The only other intervention that’s done that was bariatric surgery,” he says.

Eventually, Weiss co-developed a breath sensor, called Keyto, to help people track how their diet affects their ketone levels. Playing around with the prototype, he realized he’d made the diet a kind of game. “I was trying to see if I could get my ketone levels to go up. And because I’m naturally competitive and like games, I got obsessed.”

Within two months, he dropped nearly 16 pounds he hadn’t intended to lose and saw his blood sugar levels, which had been high, normalize.

Still, he concedes there’s a lot we don’t know about the effects of the diet. “There are two questions: Is it safe to be in ketosis long-term? And is there something else about this diet that’s potentially dangerous or harmful long-term? We can’t really answer either one in a rigorous way today,” he says.

One concern is that some people on keto will see their cholesterol levels increase, which is linked with a heightened risk of heart disease. In a recent op-ed criticizing low-carb evangelists for their “cheerleading,” Weiss wrote of the cholesterol problem: “It’s a classic issue of balancing benefits and risks, one complicated because it isn’t clear if, how much, or in whom an increase in cholesterol even matters. That’s why there is general consensus that rigorous clinical trials are needed to answer this critical question.”

Other doctors, writing in JAMA Internal Medicine, list “keto flu,” cardiac arrhythmias, constipation, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies among keto’s documented side effects in the pediatric scientific literature. But the diet’s greatest risk, they write, may be the opportunity cost of not eating enough high-fiber, unrefined carbohydrates.

I ask Weiss why he’s so excited about keto, even willing to promote it, given those risks, and the fact that sustained weight loss on keto doesn’t look all that different from other diets. “[We] can’t let perfect be the enemy of great,” he answers. “That is, what we are doing now sucks.”

The frontiers of keto science

Oncologists are also looking past keto’s big unknowns and exploring the potential benefits of the diet as part of cancer therapy. While they warn that it’s far too early to prescribe the diet for any specific cancer type, they’re excited about the possibilities.

For a study published in 2018 in Nature, Mukherjee and his co-authors tested whether PI3-kinase inhibitors — a class of drug used to treat cancers, which has the side effect of driving up blood sugar and insulin levels — would perform better in mice when they also ate a keto diet or took a drug that suppressed insulin levels. The idea they wanted to test, Mukherjee explained on Weiss’s keto podcast, was: What if “the drug causes a physiological side effect — high sugar, high insulin — and that high insulin is now what is bringing the tumors alive again … like a malignant circuit.”

In the study, the combination of the drug and the diet shrank 12 types of tumors in mice — even pancreatic cancer, which is very difficult to treat in humans. But keto caused the leukemia to worsen, meaning researchers still need to work out where the diet is helpful and where it’s harmful.

Marcus DaSilva Goncalves, a co-author on the study and endocrinologist at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, says we’ll learn more from a human trial, scheduled to start later this year, that will build on the mouse research.

For now, it’s way too early to know whether this research will translate to humans, despite all the YouTube videos and blogs suggesting that sugar “feeds” cancer. “We are in the Stone Age of understanding which diet is best for each type of cancer site,” Goncalves said.

He’s also concerned about heart health. “We don’t know what it’s doing to cardiovascular risk factors. But cancer’s unique — people are willing to accept a more hazardous condition in order to cure the cancer.”

Much better-established are keto’s effects on epilepsy. For nearly a century, doctors have been prescribing the diet to treat epilepsy, an idea that came about in the 1920s, when researchers observed that people who fasted experienced fewer seizures. Researchers still aren’t sure why the diet can work, but a few mechanisms have been proposed, including making neurons more resilient during seizures. And today, studies have shown that children and adults whose epilepsy doesn’t respond to medications seem to experience a pretty large reduction in seizures when following a ketogenic diet.

That doesn’t, however, mean that the diet works for other conditions. There are still many questions about even the most talked-about keto applications, such as keto for Type 2 diabetes. While researchers have found the diet can reduce people’s hemoglobin A1C (a measure of blood sugar) and their reliance on medication, the effects tend to wane after one year.

Virta Health, the keto counseling company Weiss consults for, recently published data from a two-year evaluation of the Virta program. Through telemedicine, Virta’s clients get nutrition support and health coaching about how to prepare low-carb foods and stick to the diet. In the trial, people’s A1C and weight crept up between one and two years — but 38 percent saw their diabetes reverse and 15 percent were in remission. “Those results are dramatically better than anything else anybody’s published at two years with diet or lifestyle regimen,” Steve Phinney, a founder of Virta who has been studying (and living on) keto for decades, says.

Skeptics, such as the cardiologists turned diet gurus Dean Ornish and Joel Kahn, argue that keto’s potential heart risks are too great. Others note that it’s not clear whether it’s the keto diet itself or the weight loss it can induce that helps control Type 2 diabetes.

To begin to answer the latter question, Phinney and his colleagues ran a study that cycled 16 patients through a low-carb (keto), moderate-carb, and high-carb diet during four-week periods, with two-week reset periods in between. During the diet, the participants were fed enough to keep their weight stable. At the start of the trial, they all met diagnostic criteria for metabolic syndrome, a constellation of conditions — excess fat in the abdominal area, high blood sugar, low HDL (or “good”) cholesterol, and high blood pressure — that are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes.

The results were just published in the journal JCI Insight. After one month on the high-carb diet, one of the 16 people no longer met the criteria for metabolic syndrome. On the moderate-carb diet, three of the 16 reversed their metabolic syndrome. On keto, that number rose to nine out of 16. This suggests that it’s carbohydrate restriction, not weight loss, that helps control metabolic syndrome, including high blood sugar.

The study will have to be replicated. It’s also worth noting the high-carb group ate a lower-quality diet (with foods such as marshmallow fluff and barbecue sauce) while the lower-carb groups stuck to whole foods, which could have muddied the results. And it was funded by a grant from Dairy Management Inc. and the Dutch Dairy Association, and co-authored by researchers with a financial stake in showing keto’s benefits.

But Phinney believes the work is nothing short of revolutionary. “A guy named Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientific revolutions don’t happen overnight, they happen over time,” he says. “We’re using a non-pharmaceutical, very powerful tool to hopefully halt and turn back an epidemic that is threatening our ability to provide health care because it’s such a dramatically expensive disease.”

And there are other ways the diet may be used. Researchers are currently exploring the benefits of keto for Type 1 diabetes. There’s preliminary research suggesting an ultra-low-carb diet could have a role in treating neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A lot of the brain research, however, was done in mice or cells, so we still need evidence of human response. When we have better studies, keto might look as ineffectual as gluten-free — or maybe it’ll be the diet miracle we’ve been hoping for. That is, if we can stick to it.

CREDITS Editor: Eliza Barclay Visuals editor: Kainaz Amaria Designers: Amanda Northrop and Christina Animashaun Copy editors: Tanya Pai and Tim Williams Cover designer and graphics: Javier Zarracina Photographer: Scott Suchman for Vox Food stylist: Lisa Cherkasky for Vox

Source link Keto Diet Diabetes

[bubblegumfiles]

Week 1 Food Diary

And other random thoughts

Day 2 - May 2, 2019

Got off work a little after 2am and put putted my way to the neighborhood Wal-Mart. I needed honey but walked out with baby spinach, blackberries, and a tin of cashews too. I was a bit frustrated that even with so few items my nano haul was $13. At least everything but the blackberries will last a bit so long as I keep my portions in check.

1/2 cup of plain oats with cinnamon, honey, and banana with 2 scrambled eggs was the post work meal. I was looking forward to it too. Hunger haunted me the whole shift, which is why I thought the berries and nuts might be good work snacks. (Ended up only eating cashews and only before work. Don’t wanna create a snacking habit if I can avoid it) The meal looked small to my eyes but it satisfied me, which was nice. The two glasses of water helped a lot I’m sure.

Funny thing about properly hydrating: you pee a LOT. I woke up way earlier than intended because of it. Twice. The first time I woke up I couldn’t get back to sleep and I think it was because I was hungry, so I repeated the oatmeal and eggs meal. It sort of worked but that put me at 1,002 calories and I got a little sad. It’s only day 2 and I fear being awake due to hunger. Also, calorie counting and trying to measure stuff is frustrating.

An odd salad was dinner, no dressing. I used juicy veggies. Even beets. I like beets. Rough estimates of some portions put my count at 1,187, which lets me know that a measured salad with no dressing and a few berries is a good go to for those between hearty meal hunger attacks. I also noticed that while I scarfed the other meals down, I ate the salad a lot more slowly. Not sure if it’s because I low key don’t want veggies or if all the required chewing has something to do with it. I wanted to get veggies in though because I think the nutrients will help my body find a better balance. I also felt good about the lower calorie count so I could have a little snack at work, like a few blackberries and a few cashews.

Didn’t feel good about not exercising again but I needed to get my bearings with everything. I battled hunger pangs and wasn’t up to getting out to exercise just yet. I feel like Saturday will be a good day to start because I won’t have to feel anxious about what I’ll have to do later if that makes sense. That’ll be day 4. If the weather is good, I’ll hit the track at a nice park a city over since it isn’t tooooooo far. I think being in an aesthetically pleasing place is good for the mind when you’re walking or jogging in circles.

Day 3 - May 3, 2019

Beets. With vinegar. I don’t know why but they were satisfying. Ate a cup of them. But then I also ate a can of black beans. And a banana. Yikes. Guess I got really hungry.

Magic happened after I woke up. I wasn’t immediately hungry and when it did happen it wasn’t vicious. I ate a nice veggie plate with zucchini noodles, mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, and sweet peppers. I even downed 4 glasses of water in one sitting and my calorie count was only up to roughly 888 calories. I felt more confident in my ability to do this without struggling since I didn’t feel woozy from hunger. One thing I’m concerned about getting a good amount of calories so that I’m not hungry and getting enough in a day that my body doesn’t think I’m starving.

I was offered a chocolate bar at work and I took it and ate it. I shared it with coworkers but I’m counting the entire caloric amount in my final day total, which is 1,108. I don’t feel guilty about eating it, but I’m going to be sure not to do that again too close to today. It was yummy but tasted sweeter than usual.

Day 4 - May 4, 2019

Saturday arrived. I must have been tired because all I had when I got home was a banana with peanut butter and 2 glasses of water.

After some rest it still took me a while to eat. I didn’t calorie count today but I was sure not to overdo it. I had a banana with peanut butter again and 2 eggs, then a salad that Mama bought me (bless her cause I don’t think I’d have eaten anything else due to feeling overwhelmed and anxious). It had meat in it (turkey and ham I think) cause she didn’t know I was trying to stay away from it. It wasn’t much so I ate it and felt satisfied. It was from subway and quite tasty. I had ranch but I didn’t add it. Plus the salad was juicy with the veggies it had. Even jalapeños! I nibbled on maybe two strawberries because I was feeding them to Genesis. Other than that, nothing.

I feel like I should increase my water intake though.

I later wanted an idea of how many calories I’d consumed and it could be somewhere around 898/900, which I think is too low to be healthy on a regular basis but since I’m not hungry I won’t push it. Just something to look out for since my appetite did an about face.

Early Monday morning I remembered I ate blackberries on this day. I’m not sure of the amount but 1 cup of them is 62 calories. I know it wasn’t a cup but I’m adding that total anyway. So 960/962.

Day 5 - May 5, 2019

Brain decided to stay awake so eventually we ate. It was quite good. Bed of baby spinach leaves, zucchini, black beans, and mushrooms. I really enjoyed that. But I think I have a love for black beans and any meal that has them. I had a serving of cashews after and bummed the morning away reading weight loss journey blogs and watching cool recipe videos.

Haven’t been able to get to the gym due to maintenance on the cardio machines and I haven’t been able to get outside due to the rain but I’ve decided not to fret. Doing well on the meals so exercise time will come. I’ll probably have more energy and a higher tolerance for it too since I’ve gone a few days without gunking up my system.

Cold pineapple chunks breathed life into me. Yum yum. I don’t know why I didn’t think to check this from the start but I weigh 265 lbs. That’s a lot, lol. But I’m going to be focused more on how my clothes fit than anything because as long as I’m comfortable in my outfit and I like the way it hugs or falls, I’m content. Total calories today only got to 702 but since I didn’t move much I figured it was okay. Had I been active I think this is a dangerously low amount.

Day 6 - May 6th

Tried a meal with spinach leaves, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, sweet pepper, Roma tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, garlic, and sardines. First time adding a tiny bit of fish. One can of sardines. I’m thinking of trying fish once a week (maybe twice if my energy seems to be dwindling) but only the types that could have the lowest amounts of mercury in them. I don’t understand it much so that’s why my fish intake will be low for now. Anyhow, the meal was amazing and I’ll definitely do it again. Snacked on a serving size of cashews. It seems to quell hunger pangs.

Oatmeal with banana, cinnamon, and honey came second. No snack between that and my brown rice and quinoa with peppers and onions before work. I think I’m being far too heavy with the salt. Not sure how to season things without it though. I like garlic powder and paprika, black and cayenne pepper, but I haven’t ventured far into the land of seasoning. Hopefully I find some good ones so I can get away from using so much salt. Calories sit at 1,405. Much better than the past two days. I’m hoping to get to 1,500 as often as possible.

Day 7 - May 7, 2019

I was hungry but didn’t want oatmeal initially. That’s what I’d planned but when I read what I wrote I thought “well that’s bland”. I can’t afford to get burnt out on food already. Not sure what to do about it at this point though. After a bit of water I think I felt better about eating it. The initial dismissal mostly came from the fact that I originally planned to have strawberries in it, only to find that I don’t have any here like I thought. I’ll just have it with a banana like I’ve been having it. Oatmeal is a good source of fiber.

Second meal was broccoli and red potatoes and it was soooooo yummy! The chopped onions and garlic cloves combined with the paprika sealed the deal for me I think. I was surprised at how delicious they turned out! Apples are a good snack but sometimes it seems to trigger hunger. It also triggers my heart palpitations apparently so I only ate half and then had a few grapes.

Had scrambled eggs before work. Really wanted more broccoli but didn’t have time to make it. Having a good amount of veggies in a day, especially green ones is important to me. Just have to plan better I guess.

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: TokyoTreat Nov 19

Just a heads up for anyone who might not have been informed, I never received my December Tokyo Treat box, so there will not be a December review. 

“It’s finally November which means its the time of year when all the delicious new autumn snack flavors are released in Japan! Each region is known for their specialty dish or flavor so we wanted to bring you on an adventure across Japan to try flavors from various regions around the country! So hop on the Japan Express and discover all the incredible fall treats from across Japan in this months box!“

For this months contest, the winner could receive Kirby and Rilakkuma themed goods, while the Lucky Treat consists of items from series like Pokemon, Monster Hunter, and Evangelion.

Apple Coke & DIY

(See top for pic of the drink)

I’ve had this DIY before and I was greatly... unhappy with it, I made a review post on it in the past so I won’t bother with it here. However, I will say that this was inspired by the fishing hot-spot in Japan, Shizuoka.

Our drink item is a brand new Coca Cola inspired by the amazing apples hailing from Aomori. But this kind of confused me, because I was very sure I’ve had this drink before. The packaging reminds me of something, and I could have sworn I tasted the flavor before. . .

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

New or old, it doesn’t matter. This was very tasty and refreshing, especially if you like apples! It had a faint apple pie (apple + cinnamon) scent and taste, but it was overwhelmingly apple without question. The coke portion wasn’t very noticeable in comparison, but I really liked it~

Apple Mochi & Anpanman Apple Gummies

Our last two Aomori representatives are also apple flavored, we got 1 of each apple color with this box :P These are also other flavors of an item I had in the past.

First we have this package of small, hard jelly-like cubes of apple-flavored mochi. These are a fairly easy to find item (I see them on Amazon a lot when I browse Asian snacks/candy), and come in a variety of flavors. Like most Mochi these have a very chewy texture, but unlike most Mochi, these are more on the firm, harder side.

♥ ♥

I usually like these, I’ve had 2-3 different flavors before this one, but unlike them I have to say I could barely taste the apple flavor at all. It’s mostly marshmallowy with a faint hint of a green apple aftertaste. I didn’t dislike them, but I can’t say this would be the brands best representative either.

- - - - -

I’d like to say I was excited to see these but having had prior, poor experience with this brands gummies, I really wasn’t. Basically, these have a very thin papery, dissolving film behind them and it likes to stick to things, and they are very hard to remove. I believe partly this was because of my own doing in keeping them for longer than intended, but I’m not 100% sure. Either way it was a nightmare trying to eat the last pack we got, so I wasn’t sure how this time would go.

Luckily, I was able to peel off most of the paper and pull them out with little struggle using the toothpick from the prior candy. The paper also dissolves, so you can suck on it and just spit that part out if you have trouble removing it.

♥ ♥

They tasted very good, but like the grape ones I noticed a light strange after-taste, which can be a little repelling if you eat them all at once. I mainly rated this one on the whole “ordeal” that comes with it. But as I said, if you open them to eat after getting them it might not be a problem? 

Brown Sugar Bar & Matcha Sandwich Cookies

Next we’ll be taking a temporary rest stop in Okinawa, a tropical island located in the Southern area of Japan. This crispy brown sugar and Honey bar will melt in your mouth (if you can resist chewing on it~) and is 28 calories.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s very sweet but avoids being cloying, and while I’m not a big honey girl by any means, I only really tasted a little of it and wasn’t turned off by the flavor. The flavor lingers in the mouth for sometime after eating, but its not unpleasant.

- - - -

I strongly dislike green tea so I wasn’t looking forward to this, even though I love cookies >3< the matcha flavoring is inspired by Kyoto, the green tea capital of Japan. We get a whole box of these little sandwich cookies, making them the perfect partner to any tea party or picnic.

Unless you’re like me and don’t like green tea that is. . . .

♥ ♥ 

If you like green tea then chances are you will love these :D but I found the taste unbearable, too strong, and bitter. I keep trying to overcome it but I just don’t like green tea, in fact I think I came close to gagging if not for the plain cookie itself.

Thankfully, my mom loves green tea so I just gave the box to her.

Hojicha Kit Kats & Chocolate Pie

Before leaving Kyoto, how about we enjoy some kit kats? Don’t be deceived though, these are actually green tea flavored, sorta. Hojicha is “green tea roasted over charcoal for a deep flavor“. 

♥ ♥ 

These are actually okay. Not that great, but they don’t really taste like green tea either so I didn’t find them horrible. If anything I was more bothered by their grey coloring and grainy texture. I feel like these would go nice with some tea or maybe a chocolate drink, or some coffee.

- - - -

Saitama is known for its delicious chocolate, so for this month, we can enjoy this adorable little chocolate pie- which instantly made me think about the ones from McDonalds as of late.

This pie consists of an ultra-flaky and salted crust surrounding a thin layer of chocolate.

♥ ♥ ♥ 

The saltiness of the crust was a little surprising but I didn’t hate it. That and the flakiness brought to mind an actual pastry one would buy at a cafe or shop, it was lovely. But the cream inside had a slight bitterness (I like dark chocolate though so it didn’t bother me), and I really wish the flavor was either stronger, or that there was more of it.

Constellation Cookie & Mochi Choco

Still in Saitama we have this adorable Constellation Cookie, which features a thick chocolate disc on top of a smaller biscuit. The chocolate has a drawing of 1 random constellation, and surrounding it is the date it is active, its name in English, and Japanese writing (its name in Kanji maybe?).

It’s hard to see, but I got Scorpio; which is ironically the sign after mine, the sign before my Moms, and it belongs to my Uncle. My sign is Libra, which is actually depicted on the packaging (its a bear with a pair of scales).

♥ ♥ ♥

This was pretty tasty, I sort of had my hopes up that it would be like this box of cookies I love getting from the store. But it wasn’t really like it at all, the chocolate had a bit of a bitter, chocolate pudding-like taste, and the biscuit was very plain. It was still pretty good though, and I love the cute idea and drawings on it.

- - - -

Meanwhile, over at Yamanashi we have its popular chewy and delicious mochi. This chocolate mochi is 117 calories and consists of a thin chocolate coat to accent the fluffy chocolate cream filling. Mochi is a fluffy, chewy, partially sticky pounded rice sweet that is available in a variety of styles and flavors.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

It’s very yummy! It’s soft and chewy with a light sweetness. The texture might be a little odd to those unfamiliar with it, and it can be a bit of a mess if you try to pull it apart, but I would definitely recommend trying it if you get the chance.

Dorachoco & Kibidango

Besides mochi, Dorayaki is another well-known and popular Asian treat. The hustling and bustling capital of Japan, Tokyo is well known for delicious Dorayaki. For anyone unfamiliar with this item, Dorayaki is basically a pair of pancake-like pieces of dough that is filled with cream or jam of some sort. It’s like the fluffy equivalent of a Taiyaki, the fish-shaped snack.

This specific Dorayaki is chocolate filled :3

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

For such a small treat its very flavorful. It has a bit of an unique taste that I really can’t describe, and you definitely need a drink with this one. It’s very “thick“ and coats the mouth and throat, so it can dry it out if you eat both of them in one sitting, or at once. 

- - - -

Our next item is a peach-flavored bar featuring the legendary Momotaro, who came from the Okayama prefecture. The bar is 52 calories.

♥

Honestly I didn’t like this at all. Not only did it have a more harder version of the plastic from the Anpanman gummies- but it doesn’t taste like peach at all. I really don’t know if it was a mistake or if the writer didn’t try it because to me it was extremely nutty; like peanut butter. I didn’t hate it (and I do hate peanuts btw), but I couldn’t bring myself to finish eating the piece in my mouth.

Brown Sugar Porickey & Takoyaki Umaibo

Porickey are yummy pretzel sticks that we’ve seen before in this box (along with the similar Pretz), and this is a brown sugar flavor, once again bringing us back to Okinawa.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

Oddly these don’t taste anything like brown sugar to me. BUT I actually really like these :D they taste exactly like honey wheat pretzels I get from a store sometimes. They have a very faint sweetness to them.

- - - - -

Takoyaki of course can only be from Osaka (Not really, but its THE Takoyaki place in Japan), and I’ve had this Umaibo before so I won’t waste time. This isn’t fishy or oceany tasting at all, it reminds me a lot of a “condiment“ you would have on something, and I really like its taste!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Corn Potage Snack & Potato Snack Corn Potage

(Is it stupid that the names of these two snacks actually made me step back and be like wut.)

Our next two snacks are bringing us to Hokkaido, one of my favorite locations in Japan x3 It has many specialties, including corn; which is one of my favorite too!

I believe I’d had both of these snacks in the past at some point, and they’re pretty similar in terms of flavoring. They both have a sweetened buttery taste, the only difference being that one is a puffy snack, while the other is crispy with a slightly more salty taste.

They both get ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Atsugi Luxury Potato

Hokkaido is also known for its potatoes, as well as sea urchin. So our last snack has combined the best of both worlds to bring us a luxury chip with sea urchin flavoring.

The bag was severally under-stuffed, but that’s probably a good thing because somehow the entire bag is 333 calories!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

I’ve never had sea urchin before, but I was expecting a fishy taste so I’m very happy it wasn’t the case when I tried them. The taste is pretty normal potato chip, with a saltiness and scent bringing to mind some sort of jerky. I thought they were pretty good though.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - 4 out of 5. There was a decent amount of repetition in this box, and a few items I wasn’t very fond of, but I liked this box. I wish we got a better DIY though <_< Theme - 5 out of 5. I loved the idea of experiencing the different lands in Japan through their foods. We’ve probably had this going on already, but I like how they were addressing it with this box. I think they did a great job! Total Rank: 8 out of 10. I would recommend this one, especially for those interested in learning a little more about Japan. The only thing I wish is that maybe we had a few more unique or different items to more represent the Asian culture.

♥ Cutie’s Scale of Yummy ♥

1. Potato Snack Corn Potage - extremely flavorful! Perfect for corn lovers, like me :3  2. Apple Coke - It’s very strong in realistic apple flavoring. I really enjoyed it. 3. Corn Potage Snack - It was really good, and its crispy texture was nice but I think I liked the other corn snack a lot more. 4. Mochi Choco - this one would be another good choice to have with some milk, after you eat it. It wasn’t as sweet as one might think, but it was yummy.  

5. Takoyako Umaibo - It’s a sort-of unique flavoring for them, but I really like it!  6. Chips - I didn’t hate these, even if they weren’t as unique as I was thinking they would be. 7. Chocolate Dorayaki - You definitely need some milk with this one! 8. Porickey - Eating made me feel nostalgic, I really want to go to the store for some honey wheat pretzels~ 9. Constellation Cookie - I wish we could have gotten 2 per-pack. Tasted good, but it could have been a teensy-bit better too.   10. Brown Sugar Bar - it was sweet and the melt in your mouth texture was very pleasant.    11. Chocolate Pie - plenty tasty but it had room for improvement.    12. Anpanman Gummies - this time was better than previously, otherwise I would have completely given up on these.   13. Green Apple Mochi - they weren’t as flavorful as I had hoped.

14. Hojicha Kit Kats - I didn’t find it unbearable like the items following this, but I didn’t like them very much either.

15. Kibidango - too complicated to unwrap, not very tasty in my opinion.

16. Green Tea Cookies - nuff said. 

[lauramalchowblog]

Is Keto Insomnia a Common Problem?

When I did my first earnest attempt at a keto diet a few years ago, one of the benefits I quickly noticed was improved wakefulness and energy during the day. I chalked this up to sleeping better on keto.

It turns out that I might have been one of the lucky ones. While plenty of people report improved sleep, a fair number also complain of insomnia, sleep disruptions (waking frequently during the night), and generally poor sleep once they go keto.

Can a keto diet really impact sleep quality? What might be the mechanism behind a correlation? And how does one work around any potential effect?

I’ve written a lot about sleep over the years, and I don’t intend to rehash what I’ve already written. Rather, I want to explore why a very-low-carb ketogenic diet specifically might impact sleep. I’ll link to some of my past posts at the bottom for those interested in improving overall sleep hygiene.

What is “Keto Insomnia?”

Insomnia disorder, as defined in the DSM-5, involves the following:

Difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, and/or waking too early without being able to fall back to sleep

Symptoms occur at least three nights per week for at least three months

Sleep problems are not explained by other illness, medication, and so on

Distress and/or impaired ability to function in daily life

Acute insomnia is similar, but it’s short-term and might be attributable to a specific trigger, such as a stressful event, major life change, or travel.

People who complain about “keto insomnia” seem to mean one of two things:

Sleep disruptions that occur during the transition phase—the days or weeks immediately after starting keto (acute)

Sleep issues that start after being keto for a few months or longer (might be acute or chronic)

It can be hard to know whether the latter are actually related to keto at all. However, if diet is the only obvious change these folks have made, keto seemingly takes the rap.

Why Might Keto Mess with Your Sleep?

On possible clue is this oft-cited study in which participants experienced decreased REM and increased slow-wave sleep when following a keto diet. Decreased REM sleep can contribute to the subjective experience of insomnia. However, total sleep was not impacted. This study was also small, involving 14 participants who followed a keto diet for just two days.

Other than that, however, there’s not much to go on. A couple studies found no change in sleep quality among healthy adults following a keto diet, and a handful of others reported improved sleep quality (in epileptic children and obese adolescents).

Moreover, the team at Virta Health recently released their findings after one year of treating diabetic and prediabetic patients with keto diet interventions. Their patients enjoyed significant improvements in sleep quality and daily functioning compared to baseline and compared to individuals who didn’t go keto.

All together, the research so far suggests that when it comes to sleep, keto is neutral-to-positive for healthy adults and beneficial for individuals struggling with certain health conditions. Of course, the data are still quite sparse.

A somewhat larger, but still limited, body of research has looked more generally at how the macronutrient composition of one’s diet affects sleep. To be blunt, the results of these studies are all over the map. There’s tremendous variation from study to study in terms of how diets were constructed or measured, food timing, other relevant dietary factors such as total calorie intake and fiber content, as well as what aspects of sleep were assessed and how. Depending on which study you’re reading, consuming fat, protein, or carbohydrates might seem to help, hurt, or have no effect on sleep.

In short, there’s no compelling scientific explanation for when or why keto would harm your sleep. I know this is no comfort to those of you who are experiencing sleep disruptions now, however. Let’s turn to some things you can try if you’re not in the camp of good sleep while keto.

Possible Solutions

Despite the dearth of research, it’s possible to make some reasonable guesses about what might be causing your sleep issues. Of course, before trying any of the supplement suggestions below, consult your doctor. Likewise, get help if your sleep is so poor that you are having trouble functioning.

First, the obvious: basic sleep hygiene. These are the things I harp on all the time, like avoiding blue light at night and honoring a consistent bedtime. Sure, you probably didn’t change any of these when you went keto. However, it might be that something about keto eating—like getting less tryptophan to your brain (I’ll explain in a minute)—is making you more sensitive to poor sleep habits. Refer to my other sleep posts linked below for more details.

Check your electrolytes. Especially if you’re new to keto, electrolytes are the most likely culprit for sleep issues. You want to aim for the following daily:

3-5 grams of sodium on top of what you get from food

3-5 grams of potassium

500 mg of magnesium

Most keto newbies drastically underestimate how important electrolytes are, not just for sleep but for energy, workout performance, and avoiding the keto flu. Check out this post for more details.

For sleep issues, start with magnesium. Make sure you’re including plenty of magnesium-rich foods such as leafy greens, dark chocolate, and hemp seeds in your diet.  You can also supplement with magnesium—the glycinate form is preferred for sleep—starting with 100-400 mg as needed.

Also consider adding a mug of warm bone broth to your evening routine. Besides being soothing, it’s a great way to get sodium and the amino acid glycine. Glycine is the most abundant amino acid in collagen. Supplementing with 3 grams of glycine before bed has been shown to improve sleep.

You can also supplement collagen for its many benefits. Aim for at least 10 grams at night. Maybe whip up a batch of Chocolate Collagen Pudding (sweetened with stevia or monk fruit for keto).

Make sure you’re neither too hungry nor too full at bedtime. As you adjust to your new way of eating, try to avoid extremes of hunger in the evening. If you’re practicing intermittent fasting, make sure your fasting window isn’t leaving you stuffed or famished at when it’s time to hit the hay.

Dial back the caffeine. Is it possible you’ve been a little too enthusiastic about fatty coffee since going keto?

Get your stress in check. We all know that stress is a sleep killer, and I see stress running high in the keto community. Micromanaging macros, worrying about which foods are and are not “allowed,” trying to do too much too soon—keto folks can really get themselves worked up. If this sounds familiar, you need to take a step back and work on stress reduction.

Try adding a small amount of high-glycemic carbs to your dinner. Wait, what? Am I really telling you to eat more carbs on keto? Yes, for a good reason.

As you probably know, melatonin is the hormone primarily responsible for regulating your sleep-wake cycle. The amino acid tryptophan is a precursor of melatonin. In the brain, tryptophan converts to 5-HTP, then serotonin, then melatonin. To get into the brain, tryptophan relies on protein transporters, which also carry other amino acids across the blood-brain barrier. When there is too much traffic—that is, too many other amino acids trying to use the protein transporters—not enough tryptophan can get across.

Insulin shuttles those competing amino acids into muscles, leaving the roads clear for tryptophan so to speak. By adding some high-GI carbs to your last meal of the day, you bump up insulin and facilitate this process.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend this as your first option if you are brand new to keto. However, if you’re one of those people who is suddenly struggling with sleep after being keto for a while, this is worth trying. Michael Rutherford, NTP, Primal Health Coach, and moderator of our Keto Reset Facebook group says his clients have had good results adding ~20 grams of carbs to their last meal of the day. Potatoes or sweet potatoes are good choices.

If you just can’t bring yourself to eat more carbs, you can also supplement with tryptophan. A dose of 250-500 mg is a good place to start, increasing as needed. Chris Masterjohn recommends taking tryptophan on an empty stomach and as far as possible from other sources of protein.

Another possible workaround is to supplement with 5-HTP, which is a common ingredient in sleep aids. Rutherford advises his clients to start with 100 mg of 5-HTP taken 30-60 minutes before bed. Be cautious with this supplement if you have depression or anxiety.

Skip the middlemen and supplement melatonin. Melatonin supplementation is somewhat controversial. It’s not my first choice—I’d rather you start by addressing sleep hygiene and tweaking your diet—but I’m not opposed to supplementing as needed.

Doses as low as 0.5 mg can be effective, although as much as 5 mg is generally regarded as safe. I recommend starting at the bottom end, since lower doses are closer to normal physiological levels. Take melatonin at least an hour after eating your last food of the day.

Get your thyroid and cortisol levels checked. If none of your self-experimentation works, or if you’re having other signs of thyroid imbalance, get your thyroid function and cortisol levels checked. While I don’t believe keto is inherently bad for thyroid or adrenal health, it’s certainly worth a trip to your doc.

What’s your experience? Are you sleeping like a baby on low-carb/keto—or not? Have you found any solutions other than those suggested here? Comment below, and have a great week, everyone.

______________

More sleep tips from Mark’s Daily Apple

7 Ways You Might Be Inadvertently Sabotaging a Good Night’s Sleep

10 Natural Sleep Aids: What Works and Why

Does “Sleep Hacking” Work?

How to Manufacture the Best Night of Sleep in Your Life

The Definitive Guide to Sleep

______________

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References

Herrera CP, Smith K, Atkinson F, Ruell P, Chow CM, O’Connor H, Brand-Miller J. High-glycaemic index and -glycaemic load meals increase the availability of tryptophan in healthy volunteers. Br J Nutr. 2011 Jun;105(11):1601-6.

Levenson JC, Kay DB, Buysse DJ. The pathophysiology of insomnia. Chest. 2015;147(4):1179–1192.

Peuhkuri K, Sihvola N, Korpela R. Diet promotes sleep duration and quality. Nutr Res. 2012 May;32(5):309-19.

Riemann D, Spiegelhalder K, Nissen C, Hirscher V, Baglioni C, Feige B. REM sleep instability–a new pathway for insomnia? Pharmacopsychiatry. 2012 Jul;45(5):167-76.

Silber BY, Schmitt JA. Effects of tryptophan loading on human cognition, mood, and sleep. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2010 Mar;34(3):387-407.

St-Onge MP, Mikic A, Pietrolungo CE. Effects of Diet on Sleep Quality. Adv Nutr. 2016 Sep 15;7(5):938-49.

The post Is Keto Insomnia a Common Problem? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Is Keto Insomnia a Common Problem? published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[jesseneufeld]

Is Keto Insomnia a Common Problem?

When I did my first earnest attempt at a keto diet a few years ago, one of the benefits I quickly noticed was improved wakefulness and energy during the day. I chalked this up to sleeping better on keto.

It turns out that I might have been one of the lucky ones. While plenty of people report improved sleep, a fair number also complain of insomnia, sleep disruptions (waking frequently during the night), and generally poor sleep once they go keto.

Can a keto diet really impact sleep quality? What might be the mechanism behind a correlation? And how does one work around any potential effect?

I’ve written a lot about sleep over the years, and I don’t intend to rehash what I’ve already written. Rather, I want to explore why a very-low-carb ketogenic diet specifically might impact sleep. I’ll link to some of my past posts at the bottom for those interested in improving overall sleep hygiene.

What is “Keto Insomnia?”

Insomnia disorder, as defined in the DSM-5, involves the following:

Difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, and/or waking too early without being able to fall back to sleep

Symptoms occur at least three nights per week for at least three months

Sleep problems are not explained by other illness, medication, and so on

Distress and/or impaired ability to function in daily life

Acute insomnia is similar, but it’s short-term and might be attributable to a specific trigger, such as a stressful event, major life change, or travel.

People who complain about “keto insomnia” seem to mean one of two things:

Sleep disruptions that occur during the transition phase—the days or weeks immediately after starting keto (acute)

Sleep issues that start after being keto for a few months or longer (might be acute or chronic)

It can be hard to know whether the latter are actually related to keto at all. However, if diet is the only obvious change these folks have made, keto seemingly takes the rap.

Why Might Keto Mess with Your Sleep?

On possible clue is this oft-cited study in which participants experienced decreased REM and increased slow-wave sleep when following a keto diet. Decreased REM sleep can contribute to the subjective experience of insomnia. However, total sleep was not impacted. This study was also small, involving 14 participants who followed a keto diet for just two days.

Other than that, however, there’s not much to go on. A couple studies found no change in sleep quality among healthy adults following a keto diet, and a handful of others reported improved sleep quality (in epileptic children and obese adolescents).

Moreover, the team at Virta Health recently released their findings after one year of treating diabetic and prediabetic patients with keto diet interventions. Their patients enjoyed significant improvements in sleep quality and daily functioning compared to baseline and compared to individuals who didn’t go keto.

All together, the research so far suggests that when it comes to sleep, keto is neutral-to-positive for healthy adults and beneficial for individuals struggling with certain health conditions. Of course, the data are still quite sparse.

A somewhat larger, but still limited, body of research has looked more generally at how the macronutrient composition of one’s diet affects sleep. To be blunt, the results of these studies are all over the map. There’s tremendous variation from study to study in terms of how diets were constructed or measured, food timing, other relevant dietary factors such as total calorie intake and fiber content, as well as what aspects of sleep were assessed and how. Depending on which study you’re reading, consuming fat, protein, or carbohydrates might seem to help, hurt, or have no effect on sleep.

In short, there’s no compelling scientific explanation for when or why keto would harm your sleep. I know this is no comfort to those of you who are experiencing sleep disruptions now, however. Let’s turn to some things you can try if you’re not in the camp of good sleep while keto.

Possible Solutions

Despite the dearth of research, it’s possible to make some reasonable guesses about what might be causing your sleep issues. Of course, before trying any of the supplement suggestions below, consult your doctor. Likewise, get help if your sleep is so poor that you are having trouble functioning.

First, the obvious: basic sleep hygiene. These are the things I harp on all the time, like avoiding blue light at night and honoring a consistent bedtime. Sure, you probably didn’t change any of these when you went keto. However, it might be that something about keto eating—like getting less tryptophan to your brain (I’ll explain in a minute)—is making you more sensitive to poor sleep habits. Refer to my other sleep posts linked below for more details.

Check your electrolytes. Especially if you’re new to keto, electrolytes are the most likely culprit for sleep issues. You want to aim for the following daily:

3-5 grams of sodium on top of what you get from food

3-5 grams of potassium

500 mg of magnesium

Most keto newbies drastically underestimate how important electrolytes are, not just for sleep but for energy, workout performance, and avoiding the keto flu. Check out this post for more details.

For sleep issues, start with magnesium. Make sure you’re including plenty of magnesium-rich foods such as leafy greens, dark chocolate, and hemp seeds in your diet.  You can also supplement with magnesium—the glycinate form is preferred for sleep—starting with 100-400 mg as needed.

Also consider adding a mug of warm bone broth to your evening routine. Besides being soothing, it’s a great way to get sodium and the amino acid glycine. Glycine is the most abundant amino acid in collagen. Supplementing with 3 grams of glycine before bed has been shown to improve sleep.

You can also supplement collagen for its many benefits. Aim for at least 10 grams at night. Maybe whip up a batch of Chocolate Collagen Pudding (sweetened with stevia or monk fruit for keto).

Make sure you’re neither too hungry nor too full at bedtime. As you adjust to your new way of eating, try to avoid extremes of hunger in the evening. If you’re practicing intermittent fasting, make sure your fasting window isn’t leaving you stuffed or famished at when it’s time to hit the hay.

Dial back the caffeine. Is it possible you’ve been a little too enthusiastic about fatty coffee since going keto?

Get your stress in check. We all know that stress is a sleep killer, and I see stress running high in the keto community. Micromanaging macros, worrying about which foods are and are not “allowed,” trying to do too much too soon—keto folks can really get themselves worked up. If this sounds familiar, you need to take a step back and work on stress reduction.

Try adding a small amount of high-glycemic carbs to your dinner. Wait, what? Am I really telling you to eat more carbs on keto? Yes, for a good reason.

As you probably know, melatonin is the hormone primarily responsible for regulating your sleep-wake cycle. The amino acid tryptophan is a precursor of melatonin. In the brain, tryptophan converts to 5-HTP, then serotonin, then melatonin. To get into the brain, tryptophan relies on protein transporters, which also carry other amino acids across the blood-brain barrier. When there is too much traffic—that is, too many other amino acids trying to use the protein transporters—not enough tryptophan can get across.

Insulin shuttles those competing amino acids into muscles, leaving the roads clear for tryptophan so to speak. By adding some high-GI carbs to your last meal of the day, you bump up insulin and facilitate this process.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend this as your first option if you are brand new to keto. However, if you’re one of those people who is suddenly struggling with sleep after being keto for a while, this is worth trying. Michael Rutherford, NTP, Primal Health Coach, and moderator of our Keto Reset Facebook group says his clients have had good results adding ~20 grams of carbs to their last meal of the day. Potatoes or sweet potatoes are good choices.

If you just can’t bring yourself to eat more carbs, you can also supplement with tryptophan. A dose of 250-500 mg is a good place to start, increasing as needed. Chris Masterjohn recommends taking tryptophan on an empty stomach and as far as possible from other sources of protein.

Another possible workaround is to supplement with 5-HTP, which is a common ingredient in sleep aids. Rutherford advises his clients to start with 100 mg of 5-HTP taken 30-60 minutes before bed. Be cautious with this supplement if you have depression or anxiety.

Skip the middlemen and supplement melatonin. Melatonin supplementation is somewhat controversial. It’s not my first choice—I’d rather you start by addressing sleep hygiene and tweaking your diet—but I’m not opposed to supplementing as needed.

Doses as low as 0.5 mg can be effective, although as much as 5 mg is generally regarded as safe. I recommend starting at the bottom end, since lower doses are closer to normal physiological levels. Take melatonin at least an hour after eating your last food of the day.

Get your thyroid and cortisol levels checked. If none of your self-experimentation works, or if you’re having other signs of thyroid imbalance, get your thyroid function and cortisol levels checked. While I don’t believe keto is inherently bad for thyroid or adrenal health, it’s certainly worth a trip to your doc.

What’s your experience? Are you sleeping like a baby on low-carb/keto—or not? Have you found any solutions other than those suggested here? Comment below, and have a great week, everyone.

______________

More sleep tips from Mark’s Daily Apple

7 Ways You Might Be Inadvertently Sabotaging a Good Night’s Sleep

10 Natural Sleep Aids: What Works and Why

Does “Sleep Hacking” Work?

How to Manufacture the Best Night of Sleep in Your Life

The Definitive Guide to Sleep

______________

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References

Herrera CP, Smith K, Atkinson F, Ruell P, Chow CM, O’Connor H, Brand-Miller J. High-glycaemic index and -glycaemic load meals increase the availability of tryptophan in healthy volunteers. Br J Nutr. 2011 Jun;105(11):1601-6.

Levenson JC, Kay DB, Buysse DJ. The pathophysiology of insomnia. Chest. 2015;147(4):1179–1192.

Peuhkuri K, Sihvola N, Korpela R. Diet promotes sleep duration and quality. Nutr Res. 2012 May;32(5):309-19.

Riemann D, Spiegelhalder K, Nissen C, Hirscher V, Baglioni C, Feige B. REM sleep instability–a new pathway for insomnia? Pharmacopsychiatry. 2012 Jul;45(5):167-76.

Silber BY, Schmitt JA. Effects of tryptophan loading on human cognition, mood, and sleep. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2010 Mar;34(3):387-407.

St-Onge MP, Mikic A, Pietrolungo CE. Effects of Diet on Sleep Quality. Adv Nutr. 2016 Sep 15;7(5):938-49.

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Healthy Hands Cooking Reviews

Contents

Lake austin spa resort

Healthy meal prep cookbook.

Lifestyle … physician

Helps people live

Vegetable free juicing

Years.healthy homestyle cooking features

Cooking For Healthy Living You don’t have to be an experienced cook to prepare meals that are healthy and easy in the kitchen. At UT Physicians, we don’t just explain why you need to reduce your body weight or lower your choles… FRESH: Healthy Cooking and Living from lake austin spa resort Edited by Terry Conlan "In addition to the many marvelous recipes, you will find an assortment of spa tips which illuminate much about a healthy attitude and lifestyle practiced during a stay at Lake Austin Spa Resort." What should be a simple task, is a struggle for this mother of four. Latinique Cooper lives on Washington, D.C.’s southeast s… Find quick and healthy recipes, nutrition tips, entertaining menus, and fitness guides to help you make smart choices for a healthy lifestyle from Cooking Light magazine. Join our newsletter for free recipes, healthy living inspiration, and special offers. Healthy Meals To Pre Cook For The Week Being healthy is not and all or nothing viewpoint. A good rule is to choose healthy options 80 percent of your week and eat … to make gourmet meals to be successful in eating healthy. Many times peo… “I’m a busy mom, just like Toby, and I adore the healthy meal prep cookbook.This is more than a cookbook―it’s a vital tool for every hardworking home cook.”-Robin Miller, author, nutritionist, TV host, and founder of Robin Miller Cooks App-RobinMillerCooks.com ”The Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook is guaranteed to make it easy to put a good, homemade meal on the table even when you have … The first book in the On My Own series. Let’s Cook! can help you plan healthy meals, create nutritious dishes, and respect food and kitchen safety. This book promotes self-reliance and reinforces life skills for independent living. <P>Let’s Cook! is a how-to-cook cookbook designed for anyone wanting to, or needing to know how to prepare healthy meals for themselves or for others. After a weekend blow out, there’s nothing better then getting back on track and starting fresh for a new week. With the help of these recipes from the 28 by Sam … that can be served up guilt free. S… Healthy Meals That Don T Require Cooking I love pressure cookers! Don’t you? Not only do pressure cookers cook things faster, saving you time, but low-carb pressure cooker recipes often require less cleanup because you can cook … We’re totally behind the "everything in moderation" approach to eating, with an emphasis on whole, unprocessed foods. An easy route to sensible, good-for-you meals is to make dinner in just one pot. Getting healthy in 2019? Me too … Market Salad with Chili Lime Vinaigrette at Chick-Fil-A 400 Calories Don’t knock salads f… What Is Healthy Cooking Whip up Simple Salsa Chicken Recipe with Four Ingredients Salsa is a pantry staple and combine it with three other ingredients and you have this amazing simple salsa chicken recipe. How To Cook Healthy Chicken Breast On Stove How To Cook Healthy Sweet Potato Fries Healthy Italian

To create Healthy Hands Cooking review we checked Healthyhandscooking.com reputation at lots of sites, including Siteadvisor and MyWOT. Unfortunately, we did not find sufficient information whether Healthyhandscooking is safe for children or does not look fraudulent.

Instead of cooking ingredients separately on the stove or in the oven … If you’re in the mood for a healthy fruit smoothie …

Thanks to EverlyWell, we can now conduct at-home testing to jumpstart our journey to a healthy lifestyle … physician will r…

How To Cook Squash And Zucchini Healthy How To Cook Flounder Healthy Healthy Cooking Apps For ipad paula deen healthy cooking Celebrity chef Paula Deen has made her living serving up rich Southern cooking, but in light of her diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes, she’s preparing healthier meals. “[My sons Jamie and Bobby] are helpin… Get Chocolate gooey butter cookies recipe from Food Network The current article you are reading does not reflect the views of the current editors and contributors of the new Ecorazzi The recent news that Paula Deen has confirmed … written to the Food Network … Once Paula Deen said that she would attempt to proselytize healthy food, but she didn’t really—she was just scoping the garlic, dill, and lemon as candidates for butter additives. When The Help was all the rage viola davis and her fellow costar visited paula Deen on her show for her episode “Keepin … Michelle for eating unhealthy foods knowing she encourages healthy food and … How To Cook healthy sweet potato fries healthy Italian Cooking healthy banana bread recipe cooking light chicken ‘n waffles casserole Banana … Bread Ooey gooey peanut butter and jelly goodness! kids and adults alike will go nuts … The accompanying recipes, starting with this honey-glazed salmon … Adapted from "Weeknight Wonders: Delicious, Healthy Dinn… How To Cook Asparagus In A Pan Healthy One Pan Lemon Thyme Chicken Asparagus is a super easy ‘throw-together’ recipe! Healthy PLUS low carb, whole 30, paleo AND family friendly! talk about 5 birds with one stone!One pan meals Heat oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. Tip the potatoes and 1 tbsp of olive oil into an ovenproof dish, then roast the potatoes for 20 mins until starting to brown.Toss the asparagus in with the potatoes, then return to the oven for 15 mins. 3. Stir in tomatoes, vinegar, and pepper; cook and stir 2-3 more minutes or until tomatoes and asparagus are softened. Remove pan from heat; sprinkle with nuts and cheese. serve. calories (per 1/4 rec… Healthy Cooking Activities For Toddlers Mahota Commune is a multi-concept store that helps people live healthier together, from organic food and groceries … part i… Alain Ducasse is one of the most renowned chefs of his generation. He is also a restaurant designer, hotelier, and teacher of the culinary arts. Over thirty years, he has developed a unique savoir faire, which has helped define the contemporary art of living and eating. Instead, bring nutrition concepts alive with a variety of hands-on and engaging activities … illustrations of different kinds of food. "Eating the Alphabet," by Lois Ehlert also shows colorful pictu… The three-year project, funded with $685,000 in Ontario and Local Health integration network money, was intended to promote healthy and active living for area children. Over the last three years, 342 … 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Action for Healthy … their children’s schools expand student access to in-school physical activity and healthy foods, improve knowledge and behaviors around exercise and nut… These Indoor Activities For Toddlers are perfect for winter

Before you select another pumpkin for your front porch display, consider cooking it instead: roast, bake, and stew up everything from savory salads and creamy soups to earthy desserts and more.

Healthy Juicing: Get fruit and vegetable free juicing recipes, discover the benefits of juicing, read juicer reviews, learn juicing basics and feel great.

Hand-made boba A few boba shops elevated their game in 2018 … UCSB students definitely experienced this food trend with the …

Just add a few herbs and spices (which you likely have on hand) and pop the pan in the oven. Who says a taco needs a tortilla …

The Healthy Butcher Cooking Classes Oops! This Cooking Lesson is available only for Web Cooking Classes Members Week 9 or higher. This is an excerpt. You do not have sufficient rights to view the full … They are also rich in B vitamins, which promote a healthy metabolism. Along with protein, carbohydrates help your body make n… Meal Prep Classes. Each month, we offer new menus – Paleo and Traditional. The ingredients are fresh and delicious – no junk here! Every meal features premium Southern Steer Butcher meats and … Kimball launched the healthy eating initiative in 2013 … For those who still want the comfort of Southern and Creole cookin… Healthy Indian Cooking With Alamelu Healthy Meals To Pre Cook For The Week Being healthy is not and all or nothing viewpoint. A good rule is to choose healthy options 80 percent of your week and eat … to make gourmet meals to be successful in eating healthy. Many times peo… “I’m a busy mom, just like Toby, and I adore the Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook.This is more than a cookbook―it’s a vital tool for every hardworking home cook.”-Robin Miller, author, nutritionist, TV host, and founder of Robin Miller Cooks App-RobinMillerCooks.com ”The Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook is guaranteed to make it easy to put a good, homemade meal on the table even when you have … The first book in the On My Own series. Let’s Cook! can help you plan healthy meals, create nutritious dishes, and respect food and kitchen safety. This book promotes self-reliance and reinforces life skills for independent living. <P>Let’s Cook! is a how-to-cook cookbook designed for anyone wanting to, or needing to know how to prepare healthy meals for themselves or for others. After a weekend blow out, there’s nothing better then getting back on track and starting fresh for a new week. With the help of these recipes from the 28 by Sam … that can be served up guilt free. S… Healthy Meals That Don T Require Cooking I love pressure cookers! Don’t you? Not only do pressure cookers cook things faster, saving you time, but low-carb pressure cooker recipes often require less cleanup because you can cook … We’re totally behind the "everything in moderation" approach to eating, with an emphasis on whole, unprocessed foods. An easy route to sensible, good-for-you meals is to make dinner in just one pot. Getting healthy in 2019? Me too … Market Salad with Chili Lime Vinaigrette at Chick-Fil-A 400 Calories Don’t knock salads f… What Is Healthy Cooking Whip up Simple Salsa Chicken Recipe with Four Ingredients Salsa is a pantry staple and combine it with three other ingredients and you have this amazing simple salsa chicken recipe. How To Cook Healthy Chicken Breast On Stove How To Cook Healthy Sweet Potato Fries Healthy Italian Cooking healthy banana bread recipe cooking light Chicken ‘n waffles casserole banana … Bread Ooey gooey peanut butter and jelly goodness! Kids and adults alike will go nuts … The accompanying recipes, starting with

“Evelyn Tribole’s ‘Recipe Makeovers’ column has been a favorite of Shape readers for years.healthy homestyle cooking features all the basics– cutting the fat and increasing the nutrition– that our readers rave about! Not only does Evelyn offer hands-on strategies for making over favorite recipes, but she reveals how easy it is to make healthful eating a part of your lifestyle.”

Noodle Kids: Around the World in 50 Fun, Healthy, Creative Recipes the Whole Family Can Cook Together (Hands-On Family) [Jonathon Sawyer] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Oodles and oodles of noodles! Get your kids in the kitchen with …

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Weight loss reminders

It’s probably not the best idea to start a blog that’s supposed to be about the experience of living in a new city by talking about weightloss (Two years later, this is now a food blog), but my struggle with weight loss and passion about food are a big part of this experience. To say the least, I’m not very self disciplined and I don’t do very well sticking to new diet plans. I tried Slimming World for about a month here and it did so little for me, but it was totally my fault (more on this later). Calorie counting doesn’t work very well with me either because it becomes too restrictive and once I lose track all hell breaks loose. However, I find that just having a general estimate of how many calories is in my food helps me a lot in avoiding really horrible food related decisions. 

An example of a really horrible decision would be what I ordered for dinner today. I convinced myself that I’ve been working so hard and I deserve a nice fulfilling meal that consisted of a Little Cheeseburger sandwich, little fries, and a chocolate and peanut butter milkshake, all from Five Guys. I had that ignoring the gnawing sense of guilt knowing that I probably ate a whole day worth of calories in one sitting, and so I didn’t eat anything else today. My estimation was about 1300 cal for the whole thing, but I was way off. The actual numbers are as follows: 

Little Cheeseburger with some extras: 688 kcal

Little fries: 694 kcal 

Milkshake with choclate and peanut butter: 1227 kcal  (!!!!!!)

So here’s where my calculations were off: EVERYTHING! And I thought I’m good at estimating calorie content. I was shocked by the fries, but the milkshake realisation left me speechless. This milkshake has more calories than I intended to consume per day!

So, I’m writing this post as a self reminder for when I want to order from Five Guys next time. Hopefully, that’s not happening any time soon. 

All nutritional information here was taken from Five Guys Nutritional Info