[osier59]

This is from the Sweet Potato Queens' Big Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner) which I came across at a garage sale. This HAS to be one of the funniest and most wonderful books I have read in a very long time, not to mention a BIG score for only $1.. You should RUN, not walk, to the nearest garage sale or Half Priced Books or HEAVEN FORBID Barnes & Noble to get it. It's a fabulous read and actually has some good recipes too!

And of course I KNEW I had to share these 12 steps with you.

1. We admitted we were powerless over pies and all things tasty and that our hormones, our moods, and our waistlines had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that there was no power on earth that could keep us from eating, improve our dispositions, manage our hormones, cause us to enjoy exercise, or sufficiently moisturize our skin.
3. Made a decision to submit a laundry list of miracles (e.g. let me wake up skinny and rich with a gorgeous young stud who adores me) to God, as we understood Him, and beg Him to perform them on our behalf – with no effort on our part whatsoever.
4. Made a searching and fearless physical, moral and financial inventory of everybody we know (in hopes of feeling better about ourselves by finding at least one person who’s a bigger mess than we are.)
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to our closest, dearest most intimate girlfriend the exact number of pounds registering on the scales, minus eight.
6. Were entirely ready to have God – and/or our medical and cosmetic professions – remove all the excess poundage, gray hair, mood swings, and wrinkles.
7. Begged Him on bended knee to do so, and while He was at it, to bestow all of these things on our enemies.
8. Made a list of all persons currently thin and became willing to make them a pie and/or a cheeseball – anything in order to put a few pounds on them
9. Made pies for such people whenever possible except when Sara Lee had a special on ready-made pecan pies, in which case we bought them by the crate and distributed them liberally.
10. Continued to monitor the lives of everyone we know and advise them at every opportunity (who knows better than us what they should be doing, and it distracts us from our own situations so nicely).
11. Sought through constant conversations over coffee and pie (and/or margaritas and Armadillo Dip, depending largely on the time of day) to find the name of any doctor on the planet who might have some clue as to what to do about our hormones and, barring that, the name of a really good plastics guy – knowing , as we do, that in this world, it is a far, far better thing to look good than to feel good.
12. Having come to the realization that we’re all gonna wrinkle up and die one day anyway, resolved to have as much fun as possible on every single day left to us and to exhort others to eat some pie and join us in this pursuit.

We offer these Twelve Steps as a guide – suggestions, as it were – for twenty-something- year-old people who have awakened to find themselves trapped in forty-or fifty or even more-something bodies.