Fiber health

Last week my brother-in-law-to-be came into town for work. We all used to work together at the same company, so one evening (after dinner) he regaled us with updates on our former coworkers, and one in particular. This individual had been out on medical leave for an entire month, and when asked about his illness, he proceeded to share the gory details about his anal fissure surgery and the diverticulosis that necessitated it. I won't go into his level of detail, but suffice to say that it's a scarily common result of eating a low-fiber diet. My SO was so disgusted and scandalized, he has decided to turn over a new leaf and make fiber a priority in his diet. He had imagined that his thrice-weekly "Green Drink," consisting of two cups of frozen spinach and a cup of grapefruit juice, was an all-powerful fiber and vitamin tonic. This was quickly disabused with a trip to a nutrition web site, where, to his dismay, it showed that he was only getting about 1/2 his recommended daily fiber. This epiphany is a huge relief to me as vegetables are not his favorite food. It's even hard to get him to eat green beans without first scattering some bacon on top.

Anyways, while squash is another of his disliked vegetables, I decided I couldn't resist anymore. I've been subsisting on a diet of greens salads with my SO, but with summer over and temperatures starting to drop, I just HAD to have ratatouille before it was too late. So I bought the smallest eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash I could find, threw in a plum tomato, and voila, my beautiful rainbow-colored, late-summer lunch. Ahhh....