And I don't mean just eating to make yourself feel better.

When your job sucks, when the bills loom, when it feels like you're treading water but never going forward with your life, then sometimes what is planned for dinner becomes extremely important.

Just the act of sitting down with the family and eating a delicious meal and sharing the ups and downs of the day makes all the rest of the crap worth while. Just being able to imagine the meal to come helps pull you through the day. Well, for my hubby that's what's been working, anyway. And so the way I plan meals now has changed to cater to his tastes. (Luckily, we enjoy a lot of things in common.)

This morning I made a bunch of cinnamon-sugar dough lumps. Oh, all right - you just take two cans (?) of premade refrigerated biscuits, cut them into fourths, roll them into balls then roll them in butter, then a cinnamon-sugar mixture. Pile them into a bundt pan or any tube pan, set the oven at 350, bake for about 20 minutes and voila! You have cinnamon-sugar pull-aparts (or, as I call them, dough lumps). Drizzle icing if you wish. But the point is, I enjoyed making them, knowing that my kids would enjoy eating them as a weekend treat.

I'm just saying. Sometimes thinking about food and the fellowship that accompanies it can help - eh - 'succor the soul'.

It's a damn good thing that I'm going to the gym a lot now.