Great piece from Dr Khandee Ahnaimugan about we ight loss and exercise on the Huffington Post.

 

Gorgeous looking Persian Eggplant recipe on the Fig and Quince blog - "grilled eggplant, garlic, tomato and egg dish which melts in your mouth, as you scoop it in with fresh Persian bread". Sounds good to me.

 

Rachel Eats has cooked a beautiful tomato dish to go with pasta which "involves the saving grace of many-a-mediocre tomato: a flesh shriveling, flavour intensifying roast". Tomatoes are paired with anchovies, garlic and topped with breadcrumbs and rosemary.

 

I love that Wendy from A Wee Bit of Cooking gives two different dressing options for her Shredd ed Beetroot and Carrot Salad. You can choose between the kick of mustard or the zing of ginger.

 

On Twitter Elaine directed me to this practical, clever and idea-packed article on how to plant a personal garden in even the smallest of urban spaces.

 

 

For many, a trip to the movies is not complete without a bucket of popcorn. However researchers from the University of Southern California have used movie-goers and popcorn to highlight the way eating is affected by our habits and location.
 
The researchers gave a group of movie goers a bucket of popcorn as they entered the cinema. However not all the popcorn was the same. Half the group were given freshly popped popcorn, while the others were given stale popcorn which was one week old.
 
The people who didn't usually have popcorn at the cinema ate less of the stale popcorn than the fresh because it didn't taste very good – what you'd expect. However for those moviegoers who typically ate popcorn when they went to the cinema, it made no difference if the popcorn was stale or fresh, they ate the same amount.
 
As researcher David Neal says "When we’ve repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and make us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present.”
 
The study shows some interesting things about the way we eat, why people over-eat and the associations which build up in our brains between what we're eating and what we're doing. Associations which may be part of the reason many people over-eat, even when they're not hungry and not enjoying the food.

As co-author Wendy Wood says "People believe their eating behavior is largely activated by how food tastes. Nobody likes cold, spongy, week-old popcorn. But once we've formed an eating habit, we no longer care whether the food tastes good. We'll eat exactly the same amount, whether it's fresh or stale.”

 

 

I don't drink a lot of milk. I used to buy a carton, only get round to using about half of it before the milk went off and then I'd have to throw it out.

 

Then I found out you can freeze milk. Now, whenever I buy milk I divide the carton into separate one cup portions and I put most of these in the freezer for another day – no more waste. 

 

 

 

 

Here are the best articles, recipes and healthy food info I've spotted on the web, over the last week.