Cornbread Take Two and A Summer Soup

I'm trying to cut back on the refined sugar in my life, mostly in an attempt to reduce my arthritis pain.  Really we're figuring out a sort of elimination diet and we're starting with sugar because it seems pretty do-able.  I like my sugar, I must say.  I am a bit of a sweet tooth.  Actually, strike that, I am a huge sweet tooth.  I don't sweeten my tea, but I'm hard pressed to stop myself with a plate of cookies or a cake.  I've heard from a few personal friends and acquaintances and read extensively online that reducing sugar, especially refined sugar, really seems to help a lot of people with arthritis and inflammatory conditions. We've been using organic, raw granulated cane sugar for years in our baking and cooking.  Its not like its as refined as it could be, but still, refined enough.  And from South America.  So, to that end as I've been baking and cooking lately I've been tweaking the recipes to lower the amount of sweetener in general and replace the granulated sugar with honey which is supposed to be gentler on the body and which I can purchase locally in bulk.  Time will tell if it helps with the arthritis, but in any case I thought this cornbread recipe was just as good as my original.  Even if the arthritis doesn't improve I don't see why I'd go back to the other recipe.

Cornbread Take Two
1 C whole wheat flour (or a mix of wheat and white)
2/4 C cornmeal
2 T honey
1 T baking powder
1/3 C applesauce
1 C non-dairy milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Mix together all dry ingredients.
Add in wet ingredients and mix until well combined.
Pour into a baking dish and bake for 18-20 minutes or until it has achieved your desired level of golden color.

We baked up some cornbread last night because we had out friends Casey and Kelly come over for dinner.  We hadn't seen them in so long!  Matt, needing to use up some zucchini in a bad way let it get ahead of us in production, came up with a really simple soup that was quite superb.

Summer Squash Soup with Corn
3-5 small leeks, chopped
1 huge zucchini, chopped
6-10 cups vegetable stock
2 eats of corn, cut off the cob
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil, for sauteing

Saute leeks and zuchini for several minutes,
Add stock.
Cook until all vegetables are tender.
Blend until smooth in blender
Add corn and continue to cook another couple minutes until the corn is done.
Serve (with cornbread!)

This was a particularly satisfying soup because the zucchini and leeks came from our garden (those were the first homegrown leeks we've ever had, actually).  The corn came from the community garden.  The stock was homemade and comprised of many homegrown vegetables, including like 30 papery skins of roasted garlic heads which gave the stock a lovely hint of roast garlic flavor.  So simple and mostly local and that makes me happy.