I know, you’re like: where are the essays on current world events? Where are the personal illuminations of Diane’s current life? Where are the photos of the new wood floors?

Screw that: let’s talk food.

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One meal I make probably every week or two is pasta and meatballs. Not spaghetti and meatballs, because I let the kids pick out the pasta shapes they want and strangely enough, they rarely choose spaghetti. So this is more accurately “Wagon wheels and meatballs.”

And since you can probably follow the instructions on a box of (Di Cecco or Barilla) pasta by yourself, I’m not going to cover that part.

The meatballs I make are so tasty that this has become one of my favorite dishes. Beyond that, I now won’t eat meatballs at a restaurant—why would I? I can’t stand those big bready softballs any more.

This recipe for meatballs and sauce comes from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything. Since this is how I make it now, this is pretty much a free-form recipe:

1 lb. ground meat (beef, lamb, pork, veal—sometimes I mix it up and do half-and-half)
1 tbsp. chopped garlic (or more…)
1 egg
1/2 cup matzoh meal
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
some chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

The original recipe actually calls for bread crumbs instead of matzoh meal, but a)I have matzoh meal on hand, b)have you read the ingredients for commercial bread crumbs? Blech! and c)I am way too lazy to take out the Cuisinart just to make fresh bread crumbs.

Mix all these ingredients together. Use your hands. Just feel the gooey meat slipping through your fingers. It’s fun. It feels vaguely illegal.

Now comes the fun part: make very small meatballs. I think Bittman uses the guideline “walnut sized.” I think mine may be smaller than that: an inch in diameter, roughly. You’ll have quite a few meatballs when you finish.

Fire up Ye Olde Saute Pan. You’ll either need a)a big pan or b)to do this in two batches.

Pour in:

2 tbsp. olive oil

Get it heated up. Now, put the meatballs (or some subset thereof) into the pan. And don’t touch them until the side on the bottom has become a deep copper, on the verge of burned. If the meatball is only slightly grey on one side, leave it. Then rotate the meatballs to do the other sides so that you end up with a lovely dark copper meatball with a tasty, crunchy exterior.

Yes, I said “crunchy.” You are going for crunchy. None of this large soft bready softball crap. You want little crunchy golfballs, only smaller than golfballs.

Now it’s time to saute

one onion, sliced
one green pepper
one package sliced mushrooms

Or whatever other veggies you like in your sauce. Saute, though preferably not all at once. We want to see the brown marks on the sides!

Remove vegetables. Now put:

1 can 28-oz. whole tomatoes
1 tbsp. chopped garlic (or more…)
Some spice, like oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

into the saute pan. On medium heat, cook the tomatoes until they break down. This will take a while, and I like to help it along by breaking the tomatoes in half. You can also use a can of chopped tomatoes, I suppose. This step should take 15 minutes roughly.

When your sauce is nice and bubbly, put in the vegetables. Now you have to decide: do you want crunchy meatballs in the final dish? If you don’t, add the meatballs to the sauce. The liquid of the sauce will soften those crunchy sides right up.

Turn down the sauce and let it simmer. add:

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

This thickens the sauce and gives it a lovely salty taste. Stir the cheese in well. Put the cover on. If the sauce gets too “dry,” you can add maybe half a cup of water or a small can of tomato juice.

Make the pasta while the sauce simmers. Make garlic bread. Make more grated cheese for the finished dish.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I do a lot of reading of labels these days, and I’ve discovered the easiest way to avoid additives is to start from scratch. That way, I know exactly what’s in my food (and I can calculate the actual nutritional information for myself, unless I’m trying my damnedest not to know). I do have a few foods I haven’t found substitutes for, such as the sorbet I like to eat (contains high-fructose corn syrup, sigh).

But it’s tough to read every label, and it’s tough to know what’s important and what isn’t. What’s good for you? What’s bad for you? Seems like it’s changing every damn week. In the New York Times yesterday they had an article about the new bugaboo of nutrition: sugar.

Last summer, as the low-carbohydrate dieting craze began to fade, executives at Stonyfield Farms decided they had to make a change to their Moove Over Carbs yogurt.

What they came up with was simple and painless: In January, they pulled Moove Over Carbs from the shelves, and this month, Moove Over Sugar takes its place. Except for the name, the product remains exactly the same – sugars are, after all, also carbs. Both yogurts contain a sugar substitute and have at least 40 percent fewer calories than Stonyfield Farm’s regular flavored varieties.

Low-sugar has become the new low-carb. Food makers are rushing to meet demand from consumers concerned with their waistlines and healthier eating by providing an array of new products, some of them aimed at children. But scientists are divided over how positive this development is, questioning whether the change will help people lose weight, and how healthful the artificial sweeteners are.

According to a survey done by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a food industry trade group, almost 50 percent of all grocery shoppers said they were looking for products with reduced sugar.

“Carbs was a trend, but the concern about sugar is here to stay,” said Cathleen Toomey, vice president of communications at Stonyfield Farms, which is owned by Groupe Danone of France…

Okay, sugar = bad. So we’ll just replace it with a sugar substitute, and everything’ll be hunky-dory, right?

While many nutritionists champion artificial sweeteners as a way to cut calories and reduce sugar, others say these products are not the answer to America’s weight and health problems. Some critics voice concern about the increased consumption of what are essentially chemical sweeteners, especially among children. New low-sugar products, like breakfast cereal and fruit juice sweetened with Splenda and vanilla milk with neotame, a new intensely sweet sugar replacement, are consumed heavily by children.

Dr. Susan Schiffman, a sweetener specialist and professor of medical psychology at Duke University Medical Center, says she has safety concerns about sucralose, which is the nation’s fastest-growing sugar replacement, according to the Freedonia Group, a research firm. She points to the Food and Drug Administration’s 1998 report giving approval for sucralose, which said the compound is “weakly mutagenic in a mouse lymphoma mutation assay,” meaning it caused minor genetic damages in mouse cells.

The report also said one of the substances produced when sucralose is broken down in the body is “weakly mutagenic in the Ames test.” An Ames test is the standard method used to detect possible carcinogens.

“The sucralose people keep saying ‘It’s just a little bit of a mutagen,’ ” Dr. Schiffman said. “Well, I don’t want a little bit of a mutagen in my food supply. How do you know what happens in a long life span or to the next generation or to your eggs and sperm? I don’t feel like the issues have been answered.”

I stick with my earlier advice on this: if you’re going to eat sugar, eat sugar. There are no short-cuts. (Weakly mutagenic? Yick.) Also, sugar substitutes tend to taste like crap—I picked up some Diet Root Beer from Trader Joe’s that was sweetened with Splenda, and wow, was that bad—and if you’re going to eat or drink the sugary version, you’ll have to decide whether you really, really want it or not. You get to make choices.

…Some of these products, in fact, have as many calories as the original, making things confusing for the consumer. According to information displayed on box labels, 1/3 Less Sugar Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops, 75% Less Sugar Cocoa Puffs and Trix, and 50% Less Sugar Fruity Pebbles cereals are not significantly lower in calories than the original versions. Neither are Sugar Free Milanos or Arnold Smart & Healthy Sugar Free bread.

Christine M. Homsey, a senior research food scientist at Food Perspectives, a consulting firm in Plymouth, Minn., explained that because sugar provides bulk, manufacturers add more flour or other grains to make up for the loss, putting calories back in.

In March, a woman in San Diego who said she thought the reduced-sugar cereals she bought for her children were lower in calories sued Kellogg, General Mills and Kraft Foods, saying that the companies used misleading marketing to sell the products.

Americans have never been able to read labels: check out regular Oreos versus reduced-fat Oreos. Guess which one has more calories? That’s right: to make up for the lack of fat, there’s a buttload of sugar in the reduced-fat ones.

Companies always use misleading marketing to sell their products. Your inability to figure out nutritional information is not their problem. Their problem is selling gigantic units of food. Your problem is to start figuring this stuff out and learn to read between the lines.

…Despite the concerns of some scientists and doctors about artificial sweeteners, the trend of low-sugar foods and beverages shows no signs of slowing. While stores like Whole Foods do not stock products that contain artificial sweeteners, a majority of consumers have welcomed these food additives into their diets.

Katherine Tallmadge, a registered dietician in Washington, said she did not encourage her patients to use artificial sweeteners, but some do anyway. “People are hooked on sweets and they want to eat sweet foods without the calories,” Ms. Tallmadge said. “It’s a classic case of wanting your cake and eating it too.”

TANSTAAFL.