Living

'Dark Knight,' 'Iron Man' battle for effects Oscar

Superheroes Batman, Iron Man and Hellboy are mixing it up with actors Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman and an ancient mummy for the visual-effects Academy Award.

Bayview offers wine instruction

Expand your knowledge at one of four wine events this month at Bayview School of Cooking.

Plant-derived sugar substitute may soon get OK from FDA

Type in "aspartame" or "sucralose" into a search engine, and you're bound to come up with all sorts of hits linking the two artificial sweeteners to some sort of malady. Never mind that the Food and Drug Administration says they are safe.

Feel as if you are in France with simple beef dish

For the past couple of years, I have collected every book written by Peter Mayle, whose book, "A Year in Provence," put him on the literary map. Some are clever novels and some continue the saga of his move to the south of France nearly 20 years ago. Of course, it sets me to dreaming of spending a month or two in one of the small villages tucked up into the hills east of Avignon.

Thick, low-fat soups a hearty diet staple

Thinking about how to fill up while on a diet? Think about soup.

What's happening

Western Washington All Breed Dog Show Cluster: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday, Puyallup Fair & Events Center, 110 Ninth Ave. S.W., Olympia. Featuring 3,000 dogs per day, exhibits and prizes by various vendors in the Showplex Pavilion. Call the event center's 24-hour event line at 800-841-5045 or go to www.thefair.com for more information.

Life without plastic

Amid a recent flurry of worrisome reports about plastic, a simple question came up: Could we live without it?

Try small changes for a green year ahead

The choices we make and the products we consume can contribute to global climate change by generating greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Your "carbon footprint" is a measure of the effect your choices have in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced.

When high-tech gifts won't work

Did you get a gleaming, nicely wrapped high-tech present for Christmas that is in various stages of assembly or sitting idly by, useless until someone at tech support can offer help?

'Dr. Meg' invades MySpace to learn about teen behavior

Many teens cleaned up their MySpace profiles, deleting mentions of sex and booze and boosting privacy settings, if they got a single cautionary e-mail from a busybody named "Dr. Meg."