Photo: P.O.P. Candy

Leave the Halloween variety packs to your trick-or-treaters: these five splurge-worthy candies are suited to a more sophisticated palate.

P.O.P. Candy’s Thyme, Walnut ‘n’ Cherry Butter Crunch Toffee, $13 for 8 oz. Inspired by (brace yourself) the ingredients in holiday stuffing, this sweet slab of faintly herbaceous toffee (pictured) just plain works: it’s buttery, nutty, and delightfully unusual.

Obsessive Confection Disorder’s Apple Cider Caramel, $4 for 1.2 oz. Few flavors evoke the season like apples and cinnamon, both of which figure prominently in these artisan treats from a small California company (whose adventurous caramel menu also includes Artichoke-Limoncello and Black Garlic With Smoked Pepper). Filled with chunks of fruit and a generous dash of nutmeg, the Apple Cider Caramels pack a tart, spicy punch, and—though you’d never guess it—are 100% vegan.

Chuao Chocolatier Love At First Bite Chocolate Fangs, $5.95 each. Unlike those sticky wax choppers from childhood, these sumptuous white chocolate fangs offer a surprising center of strawberry balsamic caramel. Fangtastic! (Oprah.com readers get 20% off until Dec. 31; use code OPRAH)

Bissinger’s Blueberry Acai Gummy Pandas, $4.75 for one 4 oz. bag. We don’t typically consider candy a health-food item, but these intensely flavored gummies feature not one but two sources of antioxidants—and taste about ten times better than the bland bears of old.

Vosges Day of the Dead Red Fire Skull Lollipop, $3 each. Each November, the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos celebrates those who’ve gone on to the great candy shop in the sky—and these lollipops will have you celebrating the delicious marriage of dark chocolate and ancho and chipotle chilies.

Photo: Diane Cu and Todd Porter

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, again! I’m having so much fun looking through all the new cooking magazines; I get great inspiration from them and love to try new recipes. As always, I try new dishes on my family first to make sure they're not too difficult to make and that they taste great. I wouldn’t like to spring a new dish on everyone, especially on a holiday, and not have it go over so well. Right about now, I start picking out the new recipes I want to try for the holidays (follow my adventures on Twitter @cristinacooks). I choose four or five new dishes, and out of those, I pick at least two to include or replace on the holiday table. Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing my favorite family recipes you might like to serve at Thanksgiving this year. Here are two of my family’s favorite sides, Yukon Gold Mash Potatoes with Scallions, and Creamed Spinach. Enjoy!

Photo: Ben Goldstein/Studio D

If there was ever a time to roll out of bed and show up to work in my Mickey Mouse fleece jammies now would be it—as October is National Pajama Month [as reported by Glamour.com]. But if your boss isn't the type that would look fondly upon you swapping out your black pumps for bunny slippers and your pencil skirt for pajama pants, then at least use this as an excuse to treat yourself to a new set of PJs to slip into after hours. We like this owlish pair from Piggy Pajamas (at left) that gets softer with every wash and donates 20 percent of sales to the National Breast Cancer Foundation in honor of another worthy October cause—National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

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Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.


* In the above video, renowned Australian chef Ben Shewry passes his father's wisdom about the sea down to his son. (Vimeo)

* And for a slightly less solemn take on parenting, read this hysterical John Jeremiah Sullivan essay about allowing the TV show One Tree Hill to film in his house—and then not allowing it anymore: "And so, for primarily petty and neurotic reasons, I made a decision that negatively impacted our financial future. It's called being a good father." (GQ)

* The many faces of Darth Vader. (Wired)

* How Sal Khan is educating the world, one video at a time. (O Magazine)

* And finally, real men are kind to animals: This gorgeous National Geographic photo of orphan elephants with their caretakers is a guaranteed smile. "It's not for the wages," explains one veteran keeper. "The more you're with them, the more you satisfy yourself. You just love them." (National Geographic)

Photo: informationisbeautiful.net

When your goal is to make a 30-minute meal, the last thing you want to do is waste the first five of those precious minutes figuring out what, exactly, you're going to whip up for your hungry self. You stare into the open refrigerator, your eyes falling on a package of shrimp you bought yesterday, and then to the asparagus that probably has one more night left before it starts to go limp. You look at the rack on the door, holding all those condiments. "Barbecue sauce? No. Chili sauce? That doesn't go with asparagus, does it?" Your eyes begin to glaze over.

That's where Taste Buds, an infographic created by data visualists David McCandless and Willow Tyrer, comes in. The simple black-and-white graphic visualizes flavor patterns, with each area covering a different food category, like fish, poultry, root vegetables, etc. The categories are laid out like the spokes of a wheel, so the offshoots of, say, the fish category include lobster and crab, white fish, smoked fish, shrimp, etc. Follow those ingredients, and you'll see which flavors go with them. So if you're trying to figure out what to do with that shrimp, try coriander, curry, ginger, lemon or lime. For the asparagus, you might go with cream, eggs or mushrooms. (And if you're wondering why these combos, McCandless and Tyrer say they determined the pairings based on 1,000 recipes from Epicurious and BBC Food).

You can purchase a hi-res pdf download of the image here--which we plan on doing for those evenings when we don't feel like following a recipe but need just a little direction.

Photo: Thinkstock

Seriously, grab a hanky. Here is the story of a woman who sacrificed herself so that her child could live. Stacie Crimm, of Ryan, Oklahoma, reportedly " laughed and cried all at once" when she discovered she was going to have a baby at age 41—she'd been told she couldn't become pregnant. A few months later Crimm started complaining to her brother of strange aches and pains.  Scans revealed that she had neck and head cancer, but she worried that chemotherapy would damage her unborn child and refused treatment. Soon the tumor reached her brain; Crimm collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, where they delivered her tiny, 2-pound, 1-oz baby girl. Although Crimm was in and out of consciousness, and little Dottie May needed intensive care, a sympathetic nurse at the hospital worked to get the baby to her mother, moving her in a capsule-like ICU, so that Crimm could hold her baby in her arms. She did, just that once. A few days later she died.

In accordance to her mother's wishes, the baby is being raised by Crimm's brother and his wife, who were able to take her home last week. NewsOK has the whole story, including photos of the irresistable Dottie May.

How about that nurse, right? Agi Beo, for making a mother's dying wish come true, here's to you. The word "heroine" doesn't even begin to cut it.

More stories of everyday heros:
The untold story of the 9/11 boatlifts
Small acts of kindness to try today
People who make a difference

Photo: Thinkstock

I distinctly remember my confusion the first time I was chided, “You never ask a lady her age.” Huh? Kids are fascinated with age, announcing when they first meet, “I’m four and three-quarters and I’m going to have a Hello Kitty birthday party and you can come!” Weren’t grownups, and specifically grownup ladies, the same? And if not, why not?

Well, it’s certainly a touchy subject for a certain Texas actress, who is suing Amazon for (cue Dr. Evil voice) $1 million dollars – for listing her age on the popular site IMDb. According to the suit, this “Jane Doe” is concerned about “revealing to the public that the plaintiff is many years older than she looks...In the entertainment industry, youth is king. If one is perceived to be 'over-the-hill,' i.e. approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress, such as the plaintiff, to get work."

The way this story is being presented around the Internet (I’ve seen it posted several times) is much in line with my initial reaction. There’s an air of “Silly actress! Why is she being so vain?” But the more I think about, the more I wonder who’s really being silly here.

The inimitable Lisa Kogan on how to handle a bad (very bad) day: 3 ways to stop kvetching and start enjoying life.

Crocheted pants? Epically unfortunate seasonal sweaters? This blog always makes us laugh.

The joy of pen on paper. When was the last time you actually wrote something down?

The Life-Lifter: In a real-life fairy tale moment, a nine-year-old cancer patient gets a personal letter from a princess.

Making decisions has never been my strong point, especially when I'm faced with too many options. Facing a menu at a diner, for example—with all its possibilities of getting whatever I want, whenever I want—I usually end up ordering a mix of things (a grilled cheese, a shrimp cocktail, and a side of mashed potatoes with gravy) that have no business being together.

I'm faced with the same problem when it comes to deciding on a nail polish color. Whether it's choosing from the rainbow of options at the nail salon or digging through the colors stuffed into multiple bins under my bathroom sink, I end up testing at least 20 shades on my fingers before deciding on one. So when I spotted O contributing assistant fashion editor Sara Mitzner's nails, I knew I had at last found a way to embrace my indecisive nature.

She created this ombre effect by choosing five shades in the same color family, then started at the darkest point on her thumb and gradually worked her way to the lightest on her pinky. The key to making this manicure look sophisticated (and not like a preschooler's paint-by-number project), says Mitzner, is choosing neutral and understated colors that are office-appropriate on their own. Try varying intensities of pink, or go bold with blue. To get Mitzner's mani, try these shades: RGB Cosmetics Nail Polish in Black, CND Nail Colour in Asphalt, Dior Vernis in Gris Montaigne, OPI Nail Lacquer in French Quarter for Your Thoughts, and Ginger and Liz Colour in Tuck Me In.

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