List of All Articles with Tag 'life'

As the temperature drops (in many places), the holiday TV calendar is heating up with a variety of festive options

The federal government has opened civil rights investigations at seven schools and universities over allegations of antisemitism or Islamophobia since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war

Thanksgiving is only days away, and families all across America are in the midst of building their dinner menus for the feast. While you’re heading to the grocery store to pick up your turkey and sweet potatoes, there’s one aspect of Thanksgiving that’s important to consider while planning out the big day: When will dinner be served? Over the years, Americans have opted to host their dinners at different times, with many families starting the meal at 3pm on the fourth Thursday in November. On the other hand, some people decide to eat dinner as they normally would, by hosting Thanksgiving at 6pm or 7pm. The question of when to have your Thanksgiving dinner may be tied to one major factor - that large meals can make you a bit sleepy. There’s constant discussion surrounding the star of Thanksgiving, turkey, and how it makes you tired. Turkey contains tryptophan, an amino acid in our bodies that helps make melatonin to regulate sleep schedules, according to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. There’s no arguing that eating a Thanksgiving meal full of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes would make anyone ready for a nap. Still, the question remains as to whether the chemicals in turkey actually make us susceptible to tiredness, or whether other factors are at play in our post-meal slumber. Speaking to The Independent, professional chefs have discussed the drowsiness that comes from eating a hefty meal, and how that feeling can affect your upcoming Thanksgiving plans. According to the Cleveland Clinic, tryptophan is an essential acid that’s found in food containing high levels of protein, such as chicken, eggs, cheese, and fish. Since there’s tryptophan in turkey, the amino acid can affect our body’s levels of both melatonin and serotonin, neurotransmitters that control our moods. Speaking to The Independent, California-based chef Brendan Collins acknowledged that the tryptophan in turkey is an amino acid that affects our sleep schedule. However, he clarified that turkey isn’t the reason for the drowsiness, and rather our eating habits on Thanksgiving could be the culprit. “I think the truth is that we can end up overeating on Thanksgiving, in comparison to our normal eating schedule, and we get food comas,” he explained. “We need to sleep because of that. Not because of the small amount of tryptophan found in the turkey itself.” John Carpenter - an executive chef at Signature Restaurant at La Cantera Resort and Spa in Texas - agreed that stuffing our faces with food on Thanksgiving may be more likely to blame for our tiredness. He noted that it’s easy to feel sleepy after a big meal and specified that a range of foods and beverages can contribute to the drowsiness, from pumpkin pie to wine. “Thanksgiving dinner is quite heavy, between stuffing and large amounts of meat we eat, whether that be turkey or ham,” he explained. “It’s also usually surrounded by friends and family, and there’s some alcohol drinking usually involved, which isn’t exactly known to keep us awake.” With the side effects of eating a big Thanksgiving meal in mind, chefs have shared their advice on when to plan your dinner. It’s important to note that the day before Thanksgiving can be relatively busy, from buying your ingredients to decorating your home. In addition to managing physical tasks, Carpenter said there’s another routine he usually takes on to prepare for the holiday - changing up his eating habits. “For me personally, I definitely prefer to change my eating schedule, leading up not only the day of Thanksgiving, but also a couple of days before,” he said. “I always eat a little bit lighter, leading up in anticipation of a big meal. And personally, I normally don’t even eat breakfast on Thanksgiving because I know I’m going to eat so much.” The morning of Thanksgiving tends to be quite hectic, so Collins urged families to give themselves enough preparation time before dinner. He recommended giving yourself a good two and a half to three hours of cooking time, when you can prepare all your vegetables while the turkey is in the oven. So, when is the best opportunity to serve the food to your guests? Professional chefs recommend the daytime, rather than evening, as the best time to host your dinner, taking both meal preparation time and drowsiness into account. “Normally for me, it’s early in the afternoon or early in the day,” Carpenter explained. “I have two children so I prefer earlier because it gives us the rest of the day for them to wind down from a big meal and all that. And then you have more time during Thanksgiving day to be with your family.” When you decide to host your Thanksgiving dinner is entirely up to you, but Collins acknowledged that the age of your guests is another factor to consider. He noted that children are generally accustomed to having their meals earlier in the day, even though that might not be the case for adults. “I think if there’s a lot of children under 10 years of age, having your dinner at 2pm or 3pm would be good,” Collins said. “If it’s more towards the adult scene, then I think it’s more of an early dinner, late lunch kind of thing. I’d personally go for 4pm or 5pm.” Thanksgiving aside, studies have found that late-night dinners may not be the best idea. In a 2022 study published in peer-reviewed journal Cell Metabolism, researchers examined 16 patients who were overweight and obese as they ate the same exact meals on two schedules - one group eating as late as 9pm. Results showed that eating later had a large effect on how patients regulated their “energy intake, expenditure, and storage”. Since there’s so many different types of food served on Thanksgiving, eating dinner on the earlier side could ultimately be better for your physical health. “Personally, I know you shouldn’t be eating a huge meal later at night, especially the size of a normal Thanksgiving meal,” Collins added. “So definitely give yourself the time for your food to settle down.” Although there are various factors to consider when planning the timing of your Thanksgiving dinner, it’s important to remember not to let the stress of it ruin the day. “Don’t stress out too much about the food,” Collins said. “I know sometimes Thanksgiving is one of the first times you’ve seen friends or family in a long time. So I think the idea is that it’s celebratory, and make sure you do that. Buy really good wine or champagne and enjoy yourself.” Read More 10 Thanksgiving traditions and where they come from The French have rules, and they have camembert rules – mess with them at your peril Pearly Cow, Margate, restaurant review: Go for the steak, but stay for the potatoes The French have rules, and they have camembert rules – mess with them at your peril Pearly Cow, Margate, restaurant review: Go for the steak, but stay for the potatoes We must stop Big Cranberry Sauce’s reign of terror over Christmas sandwiches

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Since I moved to France two years ago, I’ve learned not to be in a hurry on market day. Everyone wants a chat. This is never more apparent than on the cheese stalls of our village market on Tuesdays and in the nearby town of Pezenas on Saturdays. We discuss what I bought last week, the merits of the new season cheeses, and I sometimes come away with a mini jar of jam or mildly spicy piment d’espelette jelly, a “free” gift for spending a ludicrous amount because if you put something in front of me I haven’t tried before I will not be able to resist. The French love of cheese is legendary. General de Gaulle is supposed once to have said, “How can you govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?” Skip forward a few decades, and the consternation over Nicolas Sarkozy’s flashy Rolex habit was as nothing to the outrage when it was revealed he planned to nix the cheese course from state lunches. Was a president who neither ate cheese nor drank wine (he believed it slowed you down) really worthy of the highest office in France? So imagine the reaction when it was announced that “meddlesome” Brussels, in a quest to make all food packaging recyclable by 2030, was voting on a ruling that would get rid of the classic and much loved round wooden boxes camembert has been packaged in since the 19th century. The ruling next week would also affect Mont d’Or cheese and the crates oysters are sold in, but let’s focus on camembert for now. There’s only so much smelling salts to go round. Guillaume Poitrinal, chair of the French Heritage Foundation, said on X/Twitter: “The wooden box – low carbon, light, biodegradable, tough, made in France – is better for the planet than plastic from Saudi oil, transformed in China with coal-fired electricity, and which will end up in the ocean.” But while in some quarters the camembert crisis of 2023 has been presented as an opportunity to give Brussels a kicking, it’s inevitably more complicated than that. An article in Le Monde suggests this is a red herring, a battle inflamed by the biggest producers of industrial camembert to protect their corner of the market. French customers bought more than 45,000 tonnes of camembert last year, with only 6,000 tonnes being artisanal camembert meriting the protected designation of origin label. At the moment, all camemberts are sold in the famous wooden boxes, making the artisanal and mass-market cheeses indistinguishable to most. If this legislation passes, only the protected-origin cheese will be allowed to retain the traditional boxes. The rest will be forced into some lesser, biodegradable plastic outfit, visually marking them out as a second-rank product. But shall we, while we’re here, put a word in for second best? In a world where there is as much snobbery about cheese as there is about wine, some wags have commented that the boxes taste better than the mass-produced cheese. Forgive them their snobbery, it’s all they have to make them feel alive. Of course, if you love cheese you won’t want to deprive yourself of a beautiful artisanal camembert, made in the way it has been made for centuries, offering whiffs of hay, mushrooms and the milkmaid’s apron. Who cares if it costs as much as the dinner that preceded it? But few of us could, without blinking, fill up a party cheeseboard with these precious rounds just to watch Fred from over the road hoovering them up unthinkingly between sloshing down cheap red and boring on about low-traffic neighbourhoods and parking. And removing everyday camembert from its wooden box would deprive us all of that cold-weather favourite, indulgent and delicious far in excess of its cost or difficulty. I speak of the glory that is a whole camembert baked in its box, served with small potatoes, cornichons, and perhaps a bit of ham? I know in my career as a food writer, few recipes are more crowd-pleasing than something that goes big on the melted cheese. If I were ever in any doubt, I recently shared a recipe in my weekly recipe newsletter for dauphinoise potatoes with a whole (mass-market) camembert baked in the middle. Essentially, I sent potatoes to do the wooden box’s job. The crowd went wild. Then, the Queen herself, Nigella Lawson, cooked it and shared a picture of it on her Instagram. Within hours, I had hundreds more followers hunting me down for the recipe. So I am very grateful for the little cheese in the wooden box and I hope it will never change. I know I share that feeling with the majority of French people, and if I’ve learned anything at all about my new countrymen and women, ruling or no ruling, I doubt camembert (or Mont d’Or, or oysters) will be sporting new outfits anytime soon. Plus ca change. Debora Robertson’s Lickedspoon online newsletter is published weekly; she also posts on Instagram, @lickedspoon Read More Woman defends her $7,000 cheese board Will an adaptogen a day keep the doctor away this winter? David Beckham spotted with Bollywood stars at Sonam Kapoor’s private party in Mumbai Will an adaptogen a day keep the doctor away this winter? 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A kind of refined beauty, made up of draped pearls, mod suits, and tiered frill, formed what we know to be Princess Diana’s bespoke wardrobe through the 80s, while a modern elegance juxtaposed with a bit of casuality took hold of her 90s apparel. In general, the icon, famed for her charitable actions and discernible humility, inadvertently left a lasting impression as the archetype for understated luxury, and Elizabeth Debicki’s renewed role as the “people’s princess” in season six of the Netflix special The Crown, captures that very sentiment. Back with the first four of the final episodes, The Crown has offered a fictionalised behind-the-scenes take on the royal family’s history from Queen Elizabeth assuming the throne in season one all the way up to Princess Diana’s devastating death in season six. And though the actors’ portrayals of each figure are meant to leave stylised impressions of their personalities, their costumes have left viewers with an all-too-realistic picture. Amy Roberts and Sidonie Roberts, the show’s wardrobe designer duo, have worked to fit each actor in garments representative of emblem outfits seen on the royals over the years – Debicki’s assumption of Diana being markedly authentic. The Roberts pair did not fault in the first half of season six, which released on 16 November, dressing Debicki in identical replicas of Diana’s ensembles in the summer of 1997. In the first episode, Diana is pictured on holiday in St Tropez. The Catherine Walker red dress seen on the actual royal on that very same trip is extremely similar to the one seen on Debicki. Between the high, square neckline – very depictive of 90s style – and the double, gold buckle waist belt, Debicki’s costume is almost an exact match for the Walker original, with the exception of the fabric shade. Diana’s was a more of a coral red with a hint of orange to make the hue a less potent ruby. However, in the show, the sophisticated shift garment is pinker. But the massive gold clip-on earrings worn by Debicki look exactly like the real ones. Because the season majorily recounts Diana’s time in the Mediterranean with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, just before her untimely death, Amy and Sidonie were tasked with dressing Debicki in the many one-piece swimsuits Diana wore that summer. “There were lots of swimsuits on Diana this year,” Sidonie told Harper’s Bazaar ahead of the release. “She’s wearing them for four episodes – in fact, the majority of her outfits on her rail for this season were swimsuits.” Diana’s actual leopard print halter-neck, made by Gottex Swimwear, was re-released by the company, therefore allowing the show’s costume to be the exact style and design seen on her. But of Diana’s more illustrious waterproof wear, was her low-back light blue suit worn on Fayed’s yacht. Not only did Debicki favour this particular one-piece out of all her wardrobe changes throughout season six, but the designer pair were especially determined to do the bodysuit justice – which they did. “That blue swimsuit is so iconic,” Sidonie remarked. “That image of her, what we call ‘walking the plank’ and sitting at the end there, it’s so iconic that I think for an actor when they’re in that, it makes them feel completely in their character.” Each swimsuit seen on Debicki in season six came from Gottex as Diana donned the brand repeatedly. On shooting in the shimmery, aqua-coloured piece, Debicki noted: “There was just something about that swimsuit and recreating that moment that felt very sacred and important, and it was very important we got it right.” “It’s as close as possible to the real imagery and yet what I get to do as an actress, kind of enter into that space, which all the things around it feel so accurate, and then I get to discover what’s emotionally in that moment,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. The first four episodes of The Crown season six are now available to watch on Netflix. Read More How Princess Diana’s The Crown season six outfits compare to her actual wardrobe Fans react to most ‘heartbreaking’ scene in The Crown What’s fact and what’s fiction on The Crown season 6? The story of Dodi Fayed - Princess Diana’s last partner The story of Kelly Fisher, Dodi Fayed’s model ‘fiancé’ he dated alongside Diana Did Princess Diana really confront the paparazzi in Saint-Tropez?

Naomi Watts has admitted that going through menopause in her mid-thirties felt like “the end of her worth”. Watts, now 55, said she thought of menopause as “equating to the end” of her career, when she experienced it three years after her breakthrough performance in David Lynch’s 2001 psychological thriller Mulholland Drive. In an interview with Times Radio on Thursday, the two-time Oscar-nominated actor added that the lack of conversation around menopause – or the end of menstruation – “told me that you don’t matter anymore”. She continued: “So I kind of spent a lot of time spinning out and turning in on myself, feeling panicked about the end of my career, the end of my worth. If I can’t bring children into the world, my partner will probably leave me. What do I mean? Where’s my purpose?” Watts has been advocating for greater awareness and sensitivity around the subject, with the actor launching her own menopausal beauty brand Stripes last October. In the interview, she noted that, while women come together to discuss their periods, first kisses, or experiences with getting pregnant, the conversation around menopause has remained shrouded in secrecy and shame. However, Watts acknowledged that she wouldn’t have spoken about her own experiences when she was younger. Opening up about her decision to talk about going through early menopause publicly, she said: “Maybe it was just the right timing, maybe that the average age of menopause is 51. Maybe I just had to get past that milestone to actually admit that that was me. However, Watts added, her outlook has since changed because she “got on top of the education” and has a better understanding of it. “I’ve also got my friends,” she continued, underscoring the importance of having a community. “We can moan about it if we have to, laugh about it and share our experiences openly. “I think when the conversation is off the table, that’s the worst part of it,” Watts said. The Impossible actor has previously said that going through early menopause was “incredibly isolating”, with the NHS estimating that premature menopause – before the age of 40 – affects one per cent of women in the UK. The symptoms are the same as perimenopause, or the years of transition leading up to menopause. These usually include changes in the pattern and/or frequency of menstrual cycles, anxiety, mood changes, hot flushes, and hair loss or thinning. Read More ‘It was the most isolating experience’: Meet the women with early menopause Smoking causes 150 cancer cases every single day in UK, study finds Millions of women able to get contraceptive pills over the counter next year Smoking causes 150 cancer cases every single day in UK, study finds Millions of women able to get contraceptive pills over the counter next year Woman with cystic fibrosis had weeks to live – now she’s climbing mountains

On Thursday, a research note from BTIG landed in inboxes with the title “Now We Got Bad Blood.”

SUKHBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — For millennia, herders in Mongolia and their animals have lived and died together in the country's vast grasslands, slowly shaping one of the last uninterrupted ecosystems of its kind.