Hi folks, Dana wanted me to let you all know that she's still in Vermont, sitting bedside with her godmother, who had a major stroke earlier this week. She expects to be home late Sunday night. If you're the sort that prays, you might add Mary Conger to your list. Thanks!

Also, there won't be a digest this week, since there's been little activity on the blog. We'll get back to that next weekend.

You may recall that a few weeks ago I said that if you wanted to make That Nice Boy I Married sad, you would throw away egg yolks. I'm afraid something else has come to my attention that makes him and me sad, both, and will likely sadden you as well: Apparently peanuts are atherogenic. In other words, cause plaques in arteries. It is to weep.

I'm fascinated by what scares people and what doesn't. For example: Trick-or-treating, one of the great childhood institutions of my childhood, is fading away due to modern fears. Parents are afraid of their kids going out after dark. They're afraid to have them knocking on doors They're afraid the candy may have been tampered with, some to the point where local authorities will x-ray Halloween candy for anxious parents.

Here's from the Cooking Low Carb! section of Lowcarbezine! back in the day. Come to think of it, some chunks of green pepper would be good in this, too.

With all those end-of-summer tomatoes coming in, I thought I'd give you a great salad to help use them up. This one is easy, delicious, refreshing, and looks really beautiful, to boot.

Cucumber-Tomato Salad

1 medium cucumber

2 smallish or 1 really large ripe tomato

1/2 medium red onion

1 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, crushed

I can't find the email, but a reader recently wrote and said she was allergic to coconut, what could she substitute for coconut oil? Would canola do? Calls for a slightly more complex answer than you might think.

It depends, you see, on what you're using the oil for -- are you sauteing? Or are you using it for shortening in a baking recipe? These are my two most common uses for coconut oil.

Email from a reader a few weeks back:

Hi Dana,
Gosh, love that email address.. :)
I have been talking back and forth with Ann Canlin about cholesterol recently because I just had my physical and even though I always ran a little high with total and LDL, my HDL and trig. were always very good and the ration was usually around 2.8

You hear it over and over again: Cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease. Low HDL is a risk factor. High triglycerides are a risk factor. Obesity is a risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer. Being over 50 is a risk factor for all sorts of things. But what does "risk factor" mean?

It sure sounds as if a risk factor increases your risk of something happening, doesn't it? It doesn't.

I have no kids, but I can't help but notice that it's back-to-school season. It's been so hot around here it seems really odd, but the notebook and pencil displays are in the stores, the flyers for school clothes are in the local paper, and those stupid talking Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheat squares are talking about keeping kids "full and focused" again.

Thank you to April Walker for posting this article to Facebook; I had to share!

All that glitters is not gold. (Yes, yes, English majors, I know it's really "glisters.") Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing. Surely there's some other hoary old cliche for the inside not matching the outside? Oh, yeah: Don't judge a book by its cover.

There it was at the Goodwill the other day: A pretty, shiny hardcover book, complete with dust jacket and bright pretty pictures, with the title splashed across the front: The Low-Carb Bible. For $1.98, I had to pick it up.

What a disappointment. Beyond that: What a crock.

Once again, comedian and blogger Tom Naughton has hit it out of the park.

Back in the day, there was a "tonic" called Hadacol. It was hyped as vitamin elixir, a dietary supplement, a source of vitamins B1 (thiamin), B2 (riboflavin), and B3(niacin), plus iron. Hadacol was advertised as something you would take for your health, that would relieve the root cause of many ailments, from heartburn to nervous disorders.

It's always interesting to me what foodstuffs are available where; it's a down-and-dirty gauge of the public's interests in nutrition. When products that not-so-long-ago were hard to find show up on the shelf at the local big-box grocery store, clearly the public is demanding them. The fact, for instance, that WalMart is now the nation's largest purveyor of organic produce says volumes about how very mainstream the demand for organically-grown food has become.

Very likely I watch too much television. In my defense, I'll add that only very rarely do I sit down and simply watch TV (except perhaps for Mad Men, which I stare at, transfixed, absorbing every word, trying to take in every period detail, and notice the symbolism I know it's loaded with.) I have the TV on while I'm cooking, folding laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, exercising, even sometimes while I'm working, especially when I'm doing very basic editing work that takes little thought. Still, it means I get a lot of exposure to television advertising.

Chances are you've seen the news already: Fructose can cause cancer. Specifically, this study looked at pancreatic cancer, a particularly deadly and intractable form of cancer, and one that has been increasing in frequency. I was unable to find the full text of this article, but gleaned that it demonstrated that cancer cells are particularly able to use fructose to reproduce, fueling tumor growth. Some thoughts: