Everything has HFCS in it. Bread. Tomato sauce. Salad dressings, ketchup, mayo. Canned beans.

This is what I've been saying for a while. It's very annoying. Shopping at Trader Joe's cuts down on that a little bit, but reading all of the labels all of the time gets exhausting.

I have a neighbor who makes her own yogurt all the time...and this is a woman who can't be fussed to recycle. I should try it. But everytime I think to do so, I remind myself that I don't 'do that much dairy.' Then I get a huge craving and go buy the mondo-spendy stuff at the healthfood store. Speaking f which, 7 Star Farms is my absolute favorite and their maple flavor has no hfcs.

Oh Sparky, it did look like Babyfrass was giving you a workout. I can't imagine what that is like...plus the sore hip. Ugh. You were a real trooper.

Maybe extra activity in utero will translate into atheletic prowess and B'frass will end up supporting you in your dotage off of Beckham sized endorsements. Then, you'll look back and think it was all worth it...um, right? It could happen!

What's driving me crazy is how hard it is to get a salad dressing of any sort that isn't loaded down with sweetener of some sort. I dislike sweet salad dressing and I'm usually too lazy (or pressed for time) to make it from scratch.

I'm eating organic barley (99 cents a pound, bay-bee) with organic agave nectar (okay, that was a little pricier, but I don't use much) and (non-organic, Costco-purchased, cheap) cinnamon for breakfast, AIFG.

I've been thinking about making sour cream substitute (plain yogurt strained through cheesecloth) for recipes.

Worth it! (Although, okay, I strain mine through a layer of coffee filters over a mesh strainer, but same idea.)

I really need to start making my own yogurt. I have the maker from the House of Mom Kitchen Supplies Emporium (also where I got my Cuisinart, my food mill, and a lot of my canning jars--never say there's no silver lining to parent who hoard!), so it's just a matter of doing it.

I'm about to pull the trigger on the food/sustainability/gardening/conscious eating blog that's been swimming around in my head, thanks to last night's discussion. And I need a blog name. And I have NO ideas.

Let's see...I started with Eno's album Another Green World.

Then I thought of some bad puns off that that didn't work.

But it brought to mind the Green World theory of Shakespeare scholarship.

Green World is a literary concept coined by critic Northrop Frye. In some comedies by William Shakespeare, the main characters escape the order of a city for a forested and wild setting adjacent to the city. This natural environment is often described as a green world. It is in this more loosely structured, fantastic environment that issues surrounding social order, romantic relationships, and inter-generational strife, which are a prominent part of the "city world", become resolved, facilitating a return to the normal order.

So I'm wondering if there's a Shakespeare quote that can help. Something set in the forest of Arden maybe.

eta: Or, you know, work in the Jossverse ref with Illyria.

Back to the Garden of Eatin'

Okay, I think the fruit is mixed up enough that this tastes like strawberry yogurt instead of yogurt with strawberries. The consistency is different than I'm used to, though. It's runnier.

Kathy- the article I read was in The Little House Sampler (http://www.amazon.com/Little-House-Ozarks-Rediscovered-Writings/dp/0840775970/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237224716&sr=8-1) but it may have been produced online as well.

Also, there is High Fructose Corn Syrup in bread crumbs. WTF!

I also get unreasonably angry with the attitude that in order to lose weight or be healthy you need to restrict your intake of things that are actual food. Like fruit juice, milk, and yogurt with neither HFCS or artificial sweetener.

And I go to a super market in the lower class area of town, and while there is a good variety of vegetables (including ones from South America that I have never seen before) , there are no organic or free range anything available. but I can get a pack of chicken feet or tripe or pig hocks.

Hmmm, and Northrop Frye got the "Green World" from Keats' Endymion.

Down whose green back the short-liv’d foam, all hoar,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.

See now you've got "green backs" bringing in the monetary aspect. How it's not all just fresh basil but an economic critique as well.

Everything has HFCS in it. Bread. Tomato sauce. Salad dressings, ketchup, mayo. Canned beans.

Yep yep yep. I've seriously tried to quit HFCS twice so far (and backslid again, because I'm that backslidey girl, yo), and it was infinitely easier the first time, when it was basically only in sweet things (soda, yogurt, "juice" made of mostly sugar-water); by two years later, it was in sausage! and bread! and ewwww!

reading all of the labels all of the time gets exhausting.

It really does. And that's the thing -- I'll read labels because it's something I get crazy about, but it shouldn't be case that you HAVE to. And that's not about thinking everyone would magically be a foodie if only they knew, the truth or that it's as easy to be an unblemished locavore in Idaho as in the Bay area. It's about better options being available in any store.

Damn. I'll shut up now. I think my popsicle stand reopens today.