Thrifty-Wonderful Exotic Fruit Soda

Warning: non-nutritarian content below, though the main concept is pretty sound :-)

Being the miserly mom I am, it just kills me to "discard" valuable things in recipes. So I have a container of ten egg whites in the fridge right now, waiting to have something done with them, for instance. But even more valuable are the products of our garden, especially our fruits, which have uncertain yields from year to year and are usually available for only a short time.


So in the process of making Raspberry Ripple ice cream for Father's Day, using two to three cups of fresh-picked raspberries that grow wild by the old barn that adjoins our property, I wound up with a good cup or more of slightly sweetened raspberry seed pulp that wasn't going into the ice cream but should NOT have been wasted. So I grabbed a handy bottle of seltzer and slowly poured it over the pulp in the sieve, "rinsing" it through with additional seltzer a couple of times more. The resulting jeweled raspberry soda over ice was a kingly pre-Father's Day treat for the dad (and tasting family members). What a treat!

Now I have plans for the similar seedy-but-flavorful "discards" of our summer processing of elderberries and blackberries, when those are ripe. I think this technique could easily be adapted to ginger ale, tonic water, Sprite, club soda, and even plain/filtered/reverse-osmosis/certified-elite WATER. I'll let you know how it goes.

Exercise is Good, But Food Makes the Difference

Just read a post at "Weighty Matters" on an interesting study. Here's the relevant commentary:

The folks who reported a marked increase in exercise over a decade found themselves a whole 1.2lbs lighter ten years later than the folks who didn't and had waist circumferences half a centimetre (roughly a fifth of an inch) smaller.

Huzzah?

This of course leads me to conclude that this study is in fact consistent with the bulk of the evidence which suggests that in the absence of dietary interventions exercise does not dramatically impact on weight over time. It also leads me once again to beg researchers to stop focusing on weight as an exercise study's primary endpoint and instead focus on those things more likely to demonstrate the incredible benefits of exercise - things such as high blood pressure, cholesterol levels, arthritis, cardiovascular fitness and overall quality of life.

This is a good reminder to me of what I (and Dr. Freedhoff) know by experience is true!