OK, I know I've given a lot of—maybe too much—space to the animals of our new Food Director (I promise I'll show other staff pets soon), but I can't help this one. This is Allie Lewis-Clapp's new dog, who is nameless, and we were hoping that you could vote on (or come up with) a name for the little guy:

Allie says that she and her husband got him in Brooklyn on Sunday. "He’s settling in well with our other dog, Franny—constantly putting her whole tail in his mouth and pulling on her with his entire body weight," Allie writes. "Strangely, she seems to enjoy it, and leaves herself open for these types of attacks.  Similarly, he digs his baby teeth into her harness and pulls on that, too — I actually think he might be just a little bit smarter than her!"

Here are the names in the running (with no clear winner):

*       Gus
*       Lou
*       Henry
*       Howard
*       Ed/Eddie (for either Edgar or Edward)
*       Joe
*       Earl
*       Theo
*       Norman

Which one do you like? Or nominate one of your own.....

..was April 24, and a number of Real Simple staffers' kids came to the offices and tried on clothes in our fashion closet. Here are a few of them:

This is Jackson in the fashion closet with a fancy hat, pretending to be Spiderman. He loved the pizza party we held, but his favorite part about Take Your Child to Work Day was being the only boy with all the big girls.

This is Kendall:

Kendall came with her best friend, Michelle. Michelle has older sisters and they watch America's Top Model. Before the day, Kendall's mom told her that they were all going to be models. Kendall and Michelle were so excited and practiced. So here's Kendall imitating America's top model.

And this is  Bryn:

She says she liked "learning how to make a magazine," which is good since she wants to start Ice Cream magazine.  The dress she is wearing above is her "favorite color," and "the scarf was the most beautiful I've ever seen." She is excited about appearing on this website and wants to say hello to her kindergarten class.

Finally (again) this is Allie Lewis-Clapp's dog Franny:

No, Franny wasn't in the fashion closet at Real Simple for Take Your Child to Work Day. But I couldn't resist this photo....

We received this email from a reader on Sunday:

"I wait eagerly at my mailbox for Real Simple every month, so the special Travel Issue was a real treat...and right before my 6-hour flight to Michigan!  The day of my travels, our plane sat on the runway for an hour, so I opened up the Travel Issue to the story called 'The First Thing to Do When....'  I had no sooner finished reading the tips on how to respond to a flight cancellation, when the pilot announced our plane was returning to the gate and all 150 of us passengers would need to go to the counter to reschedule on a different flight.  Using the tips I had just read, I used my cell to call the 1-800 airline number, rather than reschedule at the counter, and had a new flight within 20 minutes.  I passed by the other 149 passengers and they had only helped 6 people in that time! Thanks, as always, for real solutions in a world lacking simplicity."

The January issue of Real Simple featured a story on slow-cooker recipes that generated a lot of mail—mostly from readers who thought the recipes had not been tested, because they didn't seem to work. (Yikes.) The most vituperation was reserved for the "Orange Chicken with Potatoes" recipe, which some of you called "bitter" and "blah."

Here's the reason the recipes were disappointing: They were designed for and tested using new six-quart slow-cookers, while many standard slow-cookers are four-quart. Anyone who made the recipe with a four-quart crockpot would have experienced problems.

The fact that a six-quart crockpot was needed for the recipes should have been clearer in the magazine, and we apologize for any inconvenience The revised, retested recipes are currently available here on realsimple.com.

What does SNCR mean? No, it's not an abbreviation of Snicker, the famous candy bar, though it's pronounced like that. The title of this post is an acronym for the Society for New Communications Research, a "nonprofit global think tank dedicated to the advanced study of new communications tools, technologies, and emerging modes of communication." That's a fancy way of saying that it involves a bunch of smart people who are trying to figure out how to interact more effectively with you—yeah, you, the person who's reading this.


If you're reading this, you're reading something that wasn't even available just a few years ago. And lots of new stuff like this is available now—from Facebook to Myspace to Linkedin and Twitter. How established, big media companies, like Time Inc., which is REAL SIMPLE's parent company, deal with and incorporate this new technology is a big issue, which is why I'm here, in Sonoma, CA, at the SNCR conference, with a lot of smart people, attending seminars, blogging, emailing a lot, tweeting, and, now and then, drinking some Sonoma valley wine at a really good restaurant recommended by Chuck (thanks, Chuck).


Poor me, right? I have to say, though, that the hotel I'm staying at, which shall remain nameless, has a sign on the door warning that substances causing both cancer and birth defects have been identified inside. Also, a little note in the bathroom says that I should tell the front desk if I want the sheets changed, which is supposed to be both "green" and "eco," though in a cancer-causing hotel it seems more like just "cheap." And do they mean changed from my previous night, or just in general? I hold my breath.....

If you have a question for the editors of Real Simple—it can be anything from how to get red wine stains out of your carpet, to why we feature fur in fashion, to how we got our jobs—email it to me, post it below, or ask it here. We'll be sure to get back to you. You may even find your question in the pages of the magazine.

A couple weeks ago, a guy named Guy Kawasaki called the editor of this website, the fabulous Margit Detweiler, and said he wanted to talk about working with us here at Real Simple. Guy runs a great website called alltop.com that gives users access to a wide variety of first-rate content—in a simple, clear, smart way. Alltop.com is like one-stop information shopping on the web and, like realsimple.com, it makes hard things easy.

It's not easy to be easy.

Anyway, Guy called Margit, who is so busy that she kept putting him off. She also didn't know who he was. (Neither, for the record, did I.) Well, it turns out that Guy is like this famous guy who was behind the marketing of Macintosh, the author of eight books and the father of four children. He describes himself, in part, as an "evangelist, entrepreneur, investment banker, and venture capitalist." He's also a down-to-earth guy who once couldn't make a phone meeting with Margit because of hockey practice.

Long story short: alltop is including realsimple.com as part of its best daily content. To take a look at Guy's site, click on one of the alltop badges in the sidebars of our blogs....

Welcome to Allie Lewis-Clapp, Real Simple's new food director, who comes to us from Martha Stewart's terrific magazine and TV show Everyday Food. Here's a picture of Allie in action:

Photo via Martha Stewart

At Real Simple, Allie wants to focus on "healthy food—not diet food but healthy food" and on recipes that are "real and appealing and accessible and streamlined."

Allie lives in Manhattan with her husband, Todd, and their dog, Franny, a half Pug/half Boston Terrier mix. A graduate of both Yale and Le Cordon Bleu, Allie loves Red Cat and Gotham Bar and Grill but cooks a lot at home—for both her husband and her dog. (Husband loves fish sticks. Dog loves sour cream so much that "he does a little dance for it.") Allie's go-to meal: roast chicken, which she often makes three times a week—no special recipe. "You just put the chicken on a sheet pan and put it in the oven with garlic and herbs."

If you want to send a message to Allie, or ask a question, email it to me.

In the meantime, here's the sour cream–loving Franny:

In the April issue of Real Simple, we ran a statistic (on page 14) listing the five rainiest cities in the U.S. (Quillayute, WA, topped the list with 105.18 inches of annual rainfall.)

In response, we received five letters from Alaskan readers, one of which is excerpted here:

"Hilo, Hawaii, has 128 inches [of annual rainfall], and Ketchikan, Alaska, has 152 inches (along with another 47 inches of snow on average). We are used to being left out [in Alaska and Hawaii], but it would be nice for the article to say 'in the contiguous 48 states' rather than just not considering us. You have many long-time readers in both states, I'm sure, and although numerically we're not your biggest demographic, we like to feel that we have a little recognition. Thanks for an otherwise good (as usual) issue."

We received our information on rainfall from the most recent data compiled from the National Climatic Data Center, but consider this an admittedly small, albeit sincere, recognition of Alaska and Hawaii.

In the May issue, Real Simple featured Biotherm's Healthy Difference moisturizer as the best moisturizer without SPF for dry skin in our Ultimate Skin Care Guide. Unfortunately, the product is now unavailable. Sometimes products sell out while the magazine's on the newsstand; there's not a lot we can do about that, but in this case, we've worked with Biotherm to create a special offer—while supplies last.

Customers who purchase Biotherm's New Aquasource Superserum (the company's recommended alternative to our winning product) here will receive a free travel set, while supplies last. The set includes a cleansing gel, an eye treatment, a lip treatment, and more—all for the same price ($24) as the product recommended in the magazine.  Note that you need to click on the link to "Discover Aquasource Superserum" (it's not the product shown on the first page of this link) and type "REAL SIMPLE" as your promotional code to get the free kit.

Hope this helps.