The beautiful fallish weather spurred some home cooking this weekend: eggplant parmagian with the 4 eggplants in the garden; a peach pie and an apple pie; and salsa. They are all a memory now.
Having finished Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I will once more urge you to run to the library or bookstore and read it. (I had tried to renew the audiobook at my library, but there were over 100 holds on either the audio or print versions of the title.) In life's typical serendipity, since reading the book I keep coming across related information. Do you know the scoop on high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener that wasn't even around 40 years ago but is now an ingredient in so many processed foods that the average American eats more than 60 pounds a year? Read here and here for more disturbing info. HFCS is a likely culprit in the obesity epidemic. It is not metabolized the same way as sugar, and actually causes you to feel more hungry rather than sated after eating. Janet Szabo blogged about trying to eliminate HFCS from her family's diet (see her Sept. 1 post), and included an energy bar recipe in her Sept. 2 post. I'm going to have to try the recipe. I have a favorite granola bar every day for snack at work and unfortunately it contains HFCS.
OK, enough lecturing and a bit of knitting: I've started the heel flap on Carolina; finished one Cobblestone sleeve and started the second. 
Last call for mileage contest entries - see the Sept. 9 post and email your guess by Sept. 20!
Yummy pies! That sock yarn is lovely. I try to avoid corn syrup and obsessively read food labels, but it is in some of the energy foods I sometimes eat while cycling. Trans fat is the other thing I stay away from!
Posted by: Sarah | September 18, 2007 at 04:01 PM
I've got a date with 100 tomatoes and a dozen eggplants today: It's eggplant parmigiana on the production line and into the freezer.
I need to get Kingsolver's book, but it will have to be on tape as I don't have time to read much lately.
I'm all over the corn syrup thing; it's really hard to avoid even in things you didn't even know had sugar in them. But I don't care for soda and we don't eat a lot of processed foods, so I think we might be under the 60-pound average. By a few pounds, anyway...:-)
Posted by: jessie | September 19, 2007 at 05:33 AM
Those pies look great. Why folks think it necessary to eat so much processed food is beyond me. I have never failed to get dinner on the table in over 30 minutes using whats in the produce aisle and the meat case. We are planning our winter garden here in Florida. Summer gardens are futile.
Posted by: Patricia | September 19, 2007 at 07:33 AM
Thank you for the article links. I had not heard about this, though I do read nutrition labels pretty closely. It's scary what the manufacturers are trying to hide in our food and that of our pets too.
Posted by: Debby | September 20, 2007 at 10:31 AM