If nightshade veggies don't bother you, try this yummy dish I made a couple of weeks ago. It's perfect for the last of the garden stuff. Eggplant chickpea stew with tomatoes from the Williams and Sonoma Vegetable Cookbook 2 small to medium eggplants about 1 1/2 - 2 lbs. total weight. (Note: I just used one big one because that's all I could find, but the littler ones are less bitter, supposedly) 4-5 TBLSP olive oil 1 red onion, cut into wedges 3-4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped 1 lb. fresh tomatoes pureed with a grater or shredder (Yeah right . . . NOT! I just chop them up, or use another can of chopped tomatoes in the off season) 1 1/2 cups canned chickpeas (I usually cook my own, put them in pint jars and freeze, then thaw or microwave to use) 1 lb. diced tomatoes with juice (Like I said, I usually just use one big 24 oz. can of the diced tomatoes, or buy a snazzy can of San Marazano tomatoes and dice them myself before adding) Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste 1/4 tsp. of sugar 1/8 tsp. crushed dried thyme Pinch of ground cinnamon (Don't leave this out, it won't predominate and will give this dish the needed oomph) 1/2 cup dry red wine (Or use a dash of balsamic vinegar if you don't do wine) 2 TBLSP chopped fresh flat leaf italian parsley. (I often don't have fresh parsley, I sub 1 TBLSP dried parsley) Juice of 1/2 lemon (Again, I often sub reconstituted lemon juice, like maybe 1 TBLSP) Sautee the eggplant in half the oil until it is soft, then set it aside. Then sautee the onion in the remaining oil til soft, and add all the other stew ingredients except for the lemon juice. Cook gently to thicken, about 10 min, stirring occasionally and taking care not to smoosh the chickpeas too much. Adjust seasoning to your taste. I DOUBLED the seasoning and might even have added in some oregano. When the sauce is thick and tasty, add the eggplant back in and reduce the heat to med. low and cook 10-15 min. more. Add the lemon juice to brighten the flavors just before serving. (This is not absolutely necessary) I served it with some goat cheese sprinkled on top. Would be great with brushetta with tofu pesto, or pita with spinach dip, but I usually serve it with rice. Goes good with whole wheat pasta too. BF loves this stuff. Oh, and I peel eggplants because I am not a fan of the peel. I also salt them for 15 min. and rinse them afterwards, before sauteeing. I can't usually find good fresh eggplants. Here's another salad I am making later this week to use up my stash of cukes. I probably won't use 4 cukes in it though, and will adjust the ingredients to suit my taste. I usually find that these Eating Well salads don't have enough dressing, so I end up doubling that. Skimping on the dressing is how they cut the calories! Plus I use lowfat feta, or goat cheese crumbles I can get, which supposedly aren't as inflamatory as cow's milk cheeses. Cucumber & Black-Eyed Pea Salad from "Eating Well." Ingredients 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons lemon juice 2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried Freshly ground pepper to taste 4 cups peeled and diced cucumbers 1 14-ounce can black-eyed peas, rinsed (I will use canelinni beans becuase I have a ton of them. Plus, that's the kind of bean I usually use for this salad. Could use garbanzos too.) 2/3 cup diced red bell pepper (I almost always use green peppers, red are too expensive) 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese (or less or leave out) 1/4 cup slivered red onion 2 tablespoons chopped black olives 1 can of tuna (LR's addition) Can also add celery and garnish with cherry tomatoes just before serving. Fine to just use bottled italian dressing for this, and you can serve it over lettuce garnished with croutons too.

I thought this was an interesting topic -- I recently had to completely reform my diet, due to high cholesterol. I cut out red meat completely, and am only occasionally having chicken or fish. This is actually something I had been wanting to do for a while, as I've always felt uncomfortable eating meat...but the thing holding me back was that I don't like vegetables very much! Well, when you're hungry enough, even peas and carrots look yummy ;) The thing I've found that works well is finding substitutes for as much as possible; a lot of the meat substitutes are actually pretty good. I've even learned to like tofu (it really tastes kind of like bland chicken). The hard part for me is that I've never been much of a cook, and so ate mostly prepackaged meals. That doesn't work very well anymore, since most tv meals are far too high in fat to fit into my diet plan...so I've actually had to start cooking. It's fun now; give it another few months, and I may feel differently. The other hard part has been getting my husband to go along with it (he has high cholesterol as well). He's turned up his nose at most things I eat, but we've managed to find some compromises: home-made veggie pizza, or tacos made with crumbled soy are a couple of surprisingly good meals he'll eat. I'm going to take a gander through this forum and see what else I can find :)

There's also a huge difference between the fats in whole vegetable items (avocadoes, beans, nuts, seeds, etc.), fish fat, animal fat, and refined oils. Cutting down on French fries because of the overuse of bad fat (animal or vegetable (which goes weird in the heat)), salt, and empty starch is a good result. Replacing the oil in peanut butter with sugar is bad. Cutting back fats too much screws up the endocrine system and can be bad for nerves as well, let alone the problems with digestion. Eating chicken without the skin, or cutting the fat cap away from your red meat might be a good idea, giving you more fat allotment to spend on seeds. Living on cheese (some folks eat nothing but pizza, it seems) isn't good. A serving of yoghurt daily could be good. Similarly, there's a huge difference between the carbohydrate in beans and squash and the carbohydrate in refined sugar. Both are used by the body as glucose, but the sugar is "empty" and the beans and squash (etc.) are full of all kinds of other nutrition. I always look at the proportions of fat, carbohydrate and protein in beans, nuts and seeds as a good guideline. :) I actually need more protein than that but it's a starting place. :) It's taking me a long time to get there, but I'm trying to replace most of the cheese in my diet with beans. :)

Yes, fresh is suppose to be in the back, but when they have to throw 85 cases in an hour, they don't. I used to reset stores. Go in, move things around in that section and clean the shelves etc. Well.... you will be amazed at how out of date a LOT of items are in a store in the very back of the shelves. If you ever shop at 6am, watch the stockers... they pushed everything back and load up the shelf. Rarely do they have time to move everything off the shelf, load newest cases on and put the older stock in front. I am talking about shelf stable items. Boxed goods and canned goods. Always check the dates if you are grabbing from as far back as you can. Now fresh items, produce and milk and meat, yes, they get rotated, the cases are usually bigger and you can move things over, but think on that 22 inch shelf that is 4 feet wide and holds about 100+cans of something. You can't remove all that and put up the 2 cases you have in the back.