Month: October 2019

October 18, 2019 at 03:00PM by CWC The other day I learned my Yiayia was a fraud. I was on the phone asking my mom if she could dig up my grandma’s Greek soup recipe, a thick rice and lemon concoction I was convinced could heal the pangs in my broken heart. “You mean the lemon egg soup?” my mother asked when I begged her to flip through her recipe index cards. “That’s easy, you just boil the chicken to make broth—” “Um, can’t you buy chicken broth,” I cut her off. Yes, you can. But my mother’s comment made me do a quick Google for Greek chicken soup, just to see if there were any variants of her recipe out there that didn’t require me to deal with a whole chicken. Plot twist: Avgolemono soup, aka Greek chicken soup, is the go-to comfort food of an entire culture, not a Margaret Garis original. I’m not sure if that makes me a bad Greek or a bad granddaughter. All that mattered was that I was craving that connection, and I wouldn’t feel okay until I mastered the meal for myself. My relationship to my Greek heritage is weird and fragmented. I’m only half Greek, yet my most formative childhood memories were forged in that strong cultural pride. (My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Totally accurate.) My grandparents basically ran the Staten Island Greek Festival, and I loved all the sights, sounds, and tastes that came through it. It’s one of the

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October 18, 2019 at 01:00PM by CWC I am the most aggressively Taurus of all Taurus bulls, and even though I’d never describe myself using the adjective “earthy,” I do enjoy the distinction of being one of the zodiac’s Earth signs. It’s a great, strong-headed element with which to identify. But before diving right in to explain what are the Earth signs in the first place and what being one might mean, first, a primer on the elements: Elements, or triplicities, help determine someone’s basic temperament, whereas quadruplicates, or modes, more so refer to how each sign directs its energy behaviorally. There are four elements—water, fire, air, and Earth—and each include three zodiac signs, hence triplicity. Each element is known for a certain group of traits, but, like with every other astrological quality, each also includes some certain less-than-cute qualities that need to be energetically balanced. Let’s dive more into what this means for Earth signs: So, what are the Earth signs, good and bad traits, included? As previously mentioned by yours truly, Taurus is an Earth sign—the one with a fixed modality— followed by Virgo with a mutable modality, and Capricorn with a cardinal modality. The takeaway here is that all Earth signs handle things differently behaviorally (my fixed modality, for instance, means that I hate endings and changing), we’re nonetheless connected by a similar personality temperament. Earth signs are known for being pretty in touch with practicality. That said, there’s one area where they often go overboard. “Earth

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October 18, 2019 at 03:00AM by CWC When you think of physical exfoliants, your mind probably goes to the ones you can clearly see in your scrubs, like sugar and salt. Sure, they do a great job buffing away dead skin, but when it comes to getting silky-smooth skin the safe way, experts say smaller grains are a much better choice. Plus, they’re just as effective if not more so. While larger, more coarse grains are great for pedicure soaks or scrubs where you’re dealing with hardened layers of skin on your feet, they’re too harsh to use on the rest of your body, says Sheel Desai Solomon, MD, FAAD, a dermatologist in North Carolina. In fact, they can even cause damage to your skin. “When it comes to the body, especially the face, finer grains cause the least amount of irritation to the skin while efficiently exfoliating. They’re less harsh on the skin while helping polish the epidermis and clear the dead skin and dirt at the top,” she says. “Coarse, large, or irregularly-shaped grains, on the other hand, can cause microtears in the epidermis. Over time, these minuscule cracks in the skin will affect the protective barrier found in the epidermis.” Those tiny cracks won’t just leave you with chronic inflammation and dry or flaky patches. They can also open your skin up—literally!—to other problems as well. “Our skin is designed to provide a protective barrier for us from the outside environment,” says Caren Campbell, MD, FAAD, a

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