But nothing screams “fad” louder than hearing something new about food.

Sometimes it’s related to losing weight – like the tapeworm diet. (Hmm, we thought we had a tapeworm which is why we ate so much.) Sometimes it’s about health – drinking coffee makes you live longer; drinking coffee will kill you. You know the drill.

Every time we hear a new morsel about food it makes our heads spin and somehow it makes us as hungry as Bethenny Frankel: “I’m eating like I’m on death row.”

So grab a snack as we explore the QuirkOut feeding frenzy about things women do to keep up with food fads.

No Thinking, Please
Amisha is the mother of three and a stock broker who spends her work day making million-dollar decisions about whether to buy or sell. (Hey, just like the way we spend our work day on eBay.)

Thank goodness she never has to make any choices about food. Her QuirkOut decision is to eat the Very Same Thing. At the Same Time. Every Single Day.

Breakfast is oatmeal with blueberries at 7:30 a.m. Noon is lunchtime for a salad followed by one square (only one) of Dove chocolate.

Then she spends the next hours watching the clock and waiting for snack time at 4 p.m. when she indulges in a vanilla yogurt and an Omega 3 granola bar.

Of course, her boss thinks she’s counting the minutes until quitting time. So he’s ready to make a decision about whether to fire her. Amisha, keep your eyes on the Dow Jones because you have hungry mouths to feed. At the same time. Every day.

The Diet Diet
Monica watches waaaaay too much Dr. Oz, which explains why she changes her diet as much as we change our minds about whether Ryan Seacrest is gay.

All the conflicting information about food has led her to QuirkOut crazy eating plans.

Last month she developed a fear of wheat after reading that the grain may be making us all fat and sick. That meant no bread, no cereal and no pasta, which for Monica basically meant, no food.

Next she made her husband go on the Paleo diet where he ate like a meat-loving caveman (and curiously started to wear a leopard skin thong. But we digress.)

Then there was the Raw Food Diet where you don’t cook anything past 104 degrees. It’s all about carrots and celery and beets, oh my. Which Monica realized, was just a different spin on the No Cook Diet she created right after getting married.

Since digesting all this food news, she’s too petrified to eat. Which makes it a win overall: she was scared straight into avoiding the grocery store and finally reached her goal weight.

Cardboard Carbs
Looks like the no-carb craze is here to stay. Just ask Nina, who eats cheeseburgers wrapped in lettuce and makes French toast out of kale.

But just who passed judgment on these carbs? Was Jenny Craig named to the Supreme Court when we weren’t paying attention? (It probably happened while we were busy counting carbs.)

Just for the record, putting marinara sauce on spaghetti squash does not taste like you’re dining at the Olive Garden. And pretending that mashed cauliflower gives you that garlic-mashed-potato high means you’re high on something else entirely.

Even Nina is conflicted. So her QuirkOut decision is that Monday through Friday she is religiously carb-denying and on weekends she is religiously carb-loading. Her scale isn’t too happy, but her minister is thrilled that she’s religious about anything.

Where would we be without our best friends?

Husbands may come and go but best friends are forever. That’s why Meredith told Christina, “Derek is the love of my life, but you’re my soul mate.” No grey area in that anatomy lesson.

Of course there are the occasional BFFFs (Best Friend Forever Fights) and no make-up sex at the end, but we’d still bet on a girlfriend to remember our birthdays and our anniversaries. Besides, who else will tell you the truth (“There’s spinach in your teeth”) and tell you a lie (“I’m so glad you’re getting married first”) with the same sincerity?

So grab your bestie and enjoy QuirkOut bonding moments about things women do with their friends.

Skymall Wars
Meet Lee Woodruff, contributing editor to CBS This Morning, author of the novel Those We Love Most and coauthor with her husband, Bob, of In an Instant, about the traumatic brain injury he sustained while reporting in Iraq.

As a road warrior, Lee knows all too well how boring plane flights can be. After your seatmate catches you watching Three’s Company reruns on his iPad, you’re forced to flip through the Skymall catalog.

Lee has turned browsing those pages into a QuirkOut competition with her friend Sherrie Westin. They tear out items from Skymall and send them to each other as “gifts.”
The goal is to outdo each other by finding the most outrageous offerings, which isn’t hard with that crazy catalog. After all, who doesn’t want a cast iron giraffe toilet paper holder? An armadillo beverage holder? Or a bacon pillow (yes, there is)?

Hey Lee and Sherrie, don’t forget “the greatest books of western civilization” on CD. After all, it saves you all that pesky time reading Crime and Punishment, which you’re already living by flying the unfriendly skies.

Pass the Man, Please
Liza and Rochelle share everything. Vacations. Food. Clothes. Sometimes you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

But their QuirkOut connection goes to the heart of romance, too. They actually pass down ex-boyfriends. When somebody meets a guy on Match.com that isn’t her type, she sends him to the other one.

Liza admits it’s hard to tell the guy, but it goes something like: “Sorry we’re not a love match, but my best friend is actually a geek who goes to Comic Con, too. You’d like her.”
So far none of the second-hand couples felt fireworks and the best friends just end up comparing notes on how badly the evenings go.
They think of it as dating triage. Rochelle says, “We keep trying different combinations because we know there’s a lid for every pot.” Sorry gals, but it sounds like yours are made from Teflon… nothing seems to stick.

Shopping Together
We love the ladies who lunch. They gather at big tables and share big laughs about their QuirkOut moments.

Lisbette and her posse get together once a month for a bite to eat and a bit of vino. Or a bottle. Or two.

The QuirkOut problem comes after lunch when they go shopping together. With a little buzz, the gals get a little snarky critiquing each other in the dressing room. Is it the fashionista or the wine talking?

“It’s not like they’re Stacey and Clinton giving me $5,000 to spend on a new wardrobe,” Lisbette says of her critical pals. Her standard response? “If you don’t tell me what not to wear, I won’t tell you who not to date.” Quid pro quo, girlfriend. Now pour yourself another Chardonnay

Thank goodness for coupons.  Whether it’s $1 off Cap’n Crunch or hundreds off gold jewelry at Macy’s (that we’ll hide from our husbands), we’d be lost without these little incentives.  Our friend even takes coupons with her on vacation.  After all, there might be a Bed Bath & Beyond in Bali and she could save 20% on beach towels.

Congratulations to those gals who use notebooks and spreadsheets to keep track of their coupons. We just stuff them into our jeans and pray we remember to get rid of them at the store (or at least before the jeans go in the washing machine.)

So grab your scissors and cut out these QuirkOut coupons about things women do to save money.

The Idiot’s Guide to Couponing

Meet Rachel Singer Gordon, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Couponing.”

She can save $100 at the grocery store without breaking a sweat.  No, this isn’t extreme couponing.  “That show isn’t reality,” she says.  “It’s television. And you can’t duplicate what they do.”

Her QuirkOut tips make it simple:

1)  Shop what’s on sale and stock up.  Don’t go the store thinking, “I’m in the mood to make Beef Wellington.” (Really?)  Instead, work your menu around what’s on sale.  Or better yet, use your Applebee’s coupon and go out to dinner.

2)  Save coupons for your favorite items until they’re on sale.  So, when Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup is 2 for $1.50, use the 75 cents off coupon on double coupon day.  It’s actually free.  And so is sampling candy from the big bins (but watch out for the store manager.)

3)  If you discover a coupon after you bought the product, return to the store and ask for the discount.  Are you kidding us?  Isn’t it miracle enough we even got to the store in the first place?

Expiration Dates are Exasperating

You’re great at collecting coupons.  From the newspaper.  From the internet.  From your neighbor’s garbage.

But when it comes to redeeming them, not so much.

Using your coupons is like Arnold Schwarzenegger promising Maria he’d stop cheating.  It just isn’t going to happen.

Your kitchen drawer is filled with coupons.  Or you’re the kind of freak with an organizer wallet that separates coupons by categories.  Still, it’s not until you’re unloading the groceries that you remember, “I have a coupon for that.”

Cecelia’s QuirkOut idea is to keep all coupons in her purse.  Triumphantly she pulls them out at checkout, only to hear, “Sorry ma’am, these are expired.”

Sorry doesn’t begin to describe our thoughts, which thankfully expired before we could put them into print.

Spending More to Save

Retailers really understand how women think, which is why they make us spend money to save money.  (Our husbands are still scratching their heads over this scam.)

We can’t resist their QuirkOut offers.  You get Kohl’s Cash (see, it’s called cash) for every $50 you spend.  So you keep buying until you hit $50 or $100 or $150.  At the register, it’s like the running of the bulls in Pamplona when women rush to grab socks and push the total to the next level.

Or how about The Dress Barn that gives you $5 in Daisy Dollars for every $25 you spend.  Since they must be redeemed in a few days, we set our iPhone alarms in multiple reminders.  Then watch us dash out of client meetings to get to the store before the dreaded deadline passes.

But our favorite QuirkOut coupon is from the Chico’s catalog.  You get $50 off $100 purchase.  Fifty dollars!  Don’t ask, “How do they make money?”  Just scoop up jewelry in both arms and kiss the sales clerk on the lips.

Maybe we drank the Kool-Aid, but that Country Time myth turns out to be true.

Just ask Charlie Sheen about his $100 million contract with Fox for “Anger Management.” (Guess it pays to act out.) Or what about poor Britney Spears, who sunk like the Titanic, then rose from the ashes to show us she really had the X Factor all along.

So measure out the sugar for our QuirkOut recipe about things women do to make the best out of anything life throws at them.

CAN YOU SING

“D-I-V-O-R-C-E”

Divorce! The Musical

Divorce may be the end of a marriage, but for Ruthe Ponturo it’s been the beginning of a new career.

When her husband of 34 years left her, she didn’t pour her sadness and anger into cartons of Ben and Jerry’s. She turned them into songs.

“I started making them up while I was in the shower,” says the dancer, choreographer and singer. Working with composer John Fischer, they wrote one song, which led to another, which led to “Divorce The Musical: Better Mad than Sad,” a show that premiered recently in New York. (divorce-themusical.com)

We love the titles “God Bless Viagra” and “You Were a Whole Lot Cuter When I Loved You.” But our favorite lyrics come from “If Only You Were Gay,” where she dreams that “Jonathan Adler could have done both our bedrooms.”

On behalf of all the divorced gals, we thank you, Ruthe. You transformed singing the blues into a happy tune.

SLOBS UNITE

Slobproof Paint Pen

Two slobby sons and a husband could have forced Debbie Wiener to become bitter — like the rest of us — but instead she became an inventor.

How bad was it? The drapes were covered in orange stains where her husband wiped his hands after eating Doritos. (And to think we get angry when our husbands use the good towels.)

The walls were a mess from the kids’ ricocheting shoes, backpacks and sports equipment. To cover the scuffs, she used Wite-Out on the white trim and Sharpies for the rest. But just try finding a Sharpie with a perfect color match to Crème Brûlée by Martha Stewart.

So Debbie came up with a million dollar QuirkOut idea — the Slobproof Paint Pen (slobproof.com). You fill it when you’re painting the walls and then use it later to undo what your family does.

We’re all over this idea, Debbie. We just hope you’re coming up with a solution for pizza stains on the white couch. Then we’ll paint the town with you.

CUPCAKE WARRIOR

When Stefani Pollack’s friends complained about how expensive it was to serve cupcakes at their upcoming wedding, her QuirkOut response was, “I’ll bake them for you!”

Although she’d never baked a cupcake in her life, they were about to change her life. Every week until the wedding, she tried a different flavor for her friends to sample. To keep track of all the varieties, she started Cupcake Project, a blog that today has 700,000 page views a month (cupcakeproject.com).

The winners were root beer with cream soda frosting, margarita and gingerbread latte. (What, no champagne?)

Those sound tame compared to her Buffalo Chicken Wing Cupcakes, which were featured on the CNN website during the Super Bowl (don’t ask, just Google). “Everything inspires me. Anything I encounter could become a cupcake,” says Stefani, mother of a 3-year-old son.

She’s cupcake crazy, and everyone’s crazy for her cupcakes. Now a regular guest contributor for Paula Deen’s website, she’s also been featured on the Food Network and the Bon Appetit website, just to mention a few of her followers.

Hey Stefani, can we volunteer as taste testers? Any flavor but the Cupcake-wurst that you made in a sausage casing. We’ll stick to brats and beer at the ballpark, thank you!