12.09.2006

Liquid Stevia

So I finally broke down and bought a cute dropper bottle of my favorite stuff... I have finally got liquid Stevia! I'm very excited. It probably amounts to being more expensive, but I wanted to see what would happen if I used this in my tea instead of the powder- and save the powder for cooking.

I'm pleased so far; I have bought the "NOW" brand, from my favorite LOCAL health food store... (support local businesses!) which is Simple Enough Natural Foods in Westborough. Anyway there is no unpleasant after taste (they do claim this on the bottle, which I will say swayed my opinion) and it works quite well. The serving suggestion is 1 to 4 drops per cup of tea, but I guess I have big mugs because I require 6 drops. I went slow- literally drop by drop!- until my threshold was reached.

I wonder if I have developed a higher tolerance for the taste anyway? I can generally tolerate more than folks who I have newly introduced to it. It is an acquired taste- you have to WANT to like it; have to WANT to not be eating sugar enough to adapt to this amazing herb.

So yes- this will be my new tea regimen. I am still searching for unsweetened Almond milk and have yet to be successful. I do tolerate the one with Barley malt but I'd prefer just the straight stuff, and am too lazy to make it myself. Next on my shelf is Oat milk, which is unsweetened. Yay!
Happy tea hour!

12.06.2006

Lara bars

I will be hitting clinics soon, and one of my worries is the comment in the handbook:

"You will be experiencing lack of sleep and a suboptimal plane of nutrition..."

So it's openly acknowledged by the school that we will be eating like crap, becoming vending machine hunter/gatherers... ugh. So many people get skinny and grey fourth year.

Most students keep stashes in their pockets and lockers- granola bars, candy, crackers, trail mix. You may have noticed, if you are on this sugar free journey, that these things are full of sugar. Granola bars look like health food, but they're really candy in disguise. (Raw rolled oats give me gas anyway- I can't do it...)

What's a sugar free girl to do?
You may have seen these new health food bars on the market, "lara bars" or "maya bars" etc. They are truly wonderful, with straightforward ingredients and so on. But horribly terribly expensive. They range from $1.25 to $2.00 a pop! That's an expensive way to keep from becoming braindead on a busy day in the clinic.

Either way I bought some to try them out, and I like them a lot. They're very calorie dense, but that will be fine if they are a rescue measure- most likely not something I will nibble as a 10:00 snack on a regular basis. But how to get them cheaper? How?
Well- I'm savvy... why not make some? I could invent a recipe, but I went online to see who has beat me to it, who's been clever and figured it out already.
check it out:

http://bunnyfoot.blogspot.com/2006/02/homemade-lara-type-bars.html

I will be experimenting today or tomorrow and let you all know what happens.
I'm very excited- especially since I can chocolate them out to my heart's content.