Unprocessed October Days 1 and 2: how I learned that not all canned/boxed foods are evil

Day 1 was sort of a comedy of errors.

I don't usually eat breakfast, so that was easy enough. Coffee, milk, raw sugar. Done. One could assume that I have this every day for breakfast unless otherwise noted.

Also I had some home made banana bread at work. I'll post that recipe in the future.

I thought I was being good by bringing some leftovers that I had made over the weekend, a dish my grandma makes that I will lovingly refer to as "eggplant goo" because I have no idea how to spell it in italian:

4-5 cups of eggplant chopped into cubes
6 small sweet peppers
6 cloves of garlic
4 oz can of tomato paste
12 oz can of diced tomatoes

Salt the eggplant cubes and set aside while you're chopping/cooking the other stuff.  I used 4-5 long skinny Japanese eggplants from the CSA. One regular large eggplant should do it. I don't bother peeling them. Chop the peppers into small pieces. I used red italian roasters, yellow flavorburst, and chocolate peppers (CSA). Heat about a 1 tbs of olive oil in a skillet, and sauté bell peppers till they get soft on medium heat. (Covering them speeds up the process, because they get sort of pseudo steamed.) Add the garlic and the eggplant and sauté until the eggplant loses structural integrity. Then add the cans of tomato goodness, bring to a boil, and let simmer on low for 20 min or so. This dish gets better the longer it sautés or ever sits in the fridge.

I would typically eat this spread on fresh bread but i was lazy and didn't bake, so I had it with some whole wheat noodles. Seems legit right?

So I'm eating lunch on October 1, and I'm thinking that I made this stuff on Saturday and did not check an of the labels of the things I used. I assumed that they were all chock full of some sort of preservatives. I was sad and we had a Groupon so we went out for sushi, which seemed relatively clean but who knows what they put in those delicious sauces. And I had some very clearly processed Boy Scout caramel corn. Only later did I decide to check the labels:

Organic Costco brand tomato paste and diced tomatoes only had one ingredient: diced tomatoes.

Barilla whole grain noodles: Whole grain durum wheat flour, Semolina durum wheat flour,  oat fiber.

Evidently, lunch was preservative free. Lesson learned.

Day 2 was less interesting. I ate the same thing for lunch and then had potatoes that I coated in olive oil and dill and cooked in the oven, topped with home made giardiniera.