Registered Dietitian
Hey Guys! This is a super short post today because I want you to check out my first guest post on Lauren’s blog, Whole Wheat or Bust. Check it out! I talk about some sugar-substitutes and a yummy sugar-free recipe at the end 🙂
But here are some of my eats the past couple days…I’ll give recipes to some of them later. If I don’t and you want the recipe, just yell at me!
So… What do you think?
Ok guys, I have a job for you. Here goes:
A very close friend of mine has fibromyalgia. Recently, it has started getting really bad. Here whole left arm has been swollen for a week and it twitches and shakes. She can’t do anything with it! She can’t even type on the keyboard because her hand has swollen too large!
So, she had to start taking a prescription drug to help calm down the effects. But….the drug is supposed to cause the face to swell, and get puffy. Ugh…She is going on a wheat-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, chocolate-free diet. She called me last night to ask for suggestions and recipes. I gave her some ideas (she is a great baker by the way. She plans on going to culinary school to be a pastry chef, so she enjoys cooking), but I would really like to give her some more.
This is where you guys come in! I know a lot of you foodies out there have amazing recipe ideas that don’t include wheat, sugar, dairy, or chocolate. (I know what you must be thinking, Katie!) She is experienced with stevia, and I think she can eat small amounts of honey, though.
Please spread the word, and try to get as many people as you can to submit recipes for her! I know she would appreciate it greatly!
Simply send me a recipe to my email, or just tell me in the comment section. You can also send me links from your blog if you have one. My email is spoonfulofsugarfree@gmail.com
Thanks so much guys! I can’t wait to hear what you come up with!
Before I go…
I hugged some fruit!!! (well, actually I devoured some…..)
Fruit is so great for you! My favoriite right now has to be mango-so fresh, so juicy! Fruits contain antioxidants like poly-phenolic flavonoids, vitamin-C, anthocyanins. These compounds protect us from oxidant stress, diseases and cancers, and help our body develop capacity to fight against these ailments by boosting our immunity level. They provide plenty of fiber and vitamins to help our body feel strong, and our mind happy!
Besides, they taste good, too! When is the last time you took a bite out of an apple and were surprised by how fresh it tasted? Or the last time you made some Magic Banana Ice Cream, and were fooled into thinking it was made out of milk and sugar?
So start eatin’ those fruits!!
What is your favorite fruit?
And don’t forget to find some sugar-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, chocolate-free recipes for my friend!!
Remember my Favorite Things post where I posted pictures of my ten favorite things? Well anyway, Peanut Butter was one of them.
The past couple weeks I’ve been going to a tennis camp from 10-11:30 (30-minute break) and 12-1:30. During my 30-minute break, I eat a quick snack before going back onto the court again. (Thirty minutes really isn’t enough time for a full lunch, especially when I’m going to play tennis in 100-degree weather right after!) This snack usually consists of a piece of fruit (peach, apple, or a smoothie) and some pretzels dipped in peanut butter.
Today I had my strawberry-banana-papaya-orange smoothie all ready to eat, and a bag of pretzels, too. But when I searched my cooler for peanut butter, it wasn’t there!!!! How horrible! My poor pretzels couldn’t be bathed in peanut-buttery goodness before they met their doom!
So when I came home today, I ran to the fridge for a snack: peanut butter and cacao nibs. That’s right, I dipped a HUGE spoon into the peanut butter jar, and came back with a mound of creamy peanut butter. Then I took the spoon and dipped it into a big bag of raw cacao nibs, and rolled the spoon around.
And I give you the result:
Doesn’t it look so good? Well, I think it does. That’s why I went back for seconds.
And here is a picture of me devouring the last remains on my spoon:
Lesson-Learned: I can’t go a single day without peanut butter.
It’s like peanut butter is hard-wired into my system. It is something I MUST have EVERYday!
This reminds me of people who have coffee-addictions. They run around in the morning going, “Coffee! Coffee! I must have my Coffee!” (No offense to anyone with this addiction. I totally understand) Instead of coffee, I go, “Peanut Butter! Peanut Butter! Give me my Peanut Butter!”
Do you guys have an addiction like mine? It surprised me when I realized this today-it made me laugh!
Hey all! I’ve been hearing a lot about juicing these days, so my mom and I finally made one the other day.
Dr. Ben Kim, a chiropractor and acupuncturist living and working in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, just sent out a newsletter last week addressing this. If you haven’t already heard of Dr. Ben Kim, I highly recommend checking out his website (click on his name above for the link) because he has a TON of great information to share!
Anyway, here’s the link to his Juice post:
I also saw a video on orange juice yesterday. It talks about how “Two-thirds of households buy orange juice in the U.S. and most don’t know that “fresh” juice that is not made from concentrate loses its flavor when stored and shipped in giant tanks. Juice companies then put flavor packs in the stored juice. These flavor packs have been engineered by flavor and perfume companies. It is not so much that this is bad for your health (I’m not sure if it is or not), the big issue is that you don’t really know what you are buying and you have a right to know. Your “fresh” orange juice is processed and flavored.”
Here it is if your interested:
So after all this talk about juice, I made my own:
My mom likes to call it “liquid gold” because it tastes sooooo good, and it is sooooo good for you!
I use Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer Deluxe. It works really well. The only reason why we chose this was because we knew Jack sold really good juicers, and Costco sold the Deluxe version for a discount!
Do you guys Juice? What are your favorite ingredients to put in your juices?
If you do juice, How does juicing make you feel, and why do you choose to juice?
I know I love juicing because it tastes good, I can feel my body feasting on the vitamins of the juice, and I feel energetic, too!
The new sugar-substitute, stevia, has been getting a lot of attention lately as more and more health food products have been adding it to their ingredient list. What is it exactly, and is it safe for me to use?
Well, stevia is actually an herb that’s extracts can be up to 300x sweeter than regular cane sugar. Stevia also does not raise blood sugar. So far, scientific tests that have been done with stevia has not proven that it is unsafe, but I don’t think enough has been done to prove anything yet. Since it is an herb, it has no calories or grams of sugar in it. In the laboratory, steviol can be converted into a mutagenic compound, which may promote cancer by causing mutations in the cells’ genetic material (DNA). “We don’t know if the conversion of stevioside to steviol to a mutagen happens in humans,” says Huxtable. “It’s probably a minor issue, but it clearly needs to be resolved.” This would be with high doses, however, and there is not enough scientific data to confirm this yet.
What I think: I have bought one bottle of liquid stevia to try. So far, I like the taste of it (I tried the french vanilla kind), and it is easy to use. I only need a a couple drops of stevia to make foods sweet for my taste. Also, I have not had ANY reactions to it whatsoever. No headaches, no rashes, no stomach aches…. So this made me really happy. I’ve tried it in my oatmeal and other desserts, and i has been fine. I eat just a couple drops at a time, and use it minimally. Â Its still an experiment to me, and I would like to see more tests done on it. The bottom line: a few drops a day won’t hurt you.
Anyway, onto a lighter subject: Breakfast! My favorite time of day. Today, I had strawberries and cream oatmeal. Mmm…Summertime gets me in the mood for this kind of stuff:
Strawberries and Cream Oatmeal:
Boil the oats and milk together in a saucepan. Then, add vanilla, ground flax (if using), and strawberries. There we go! Perfect for a summer day.
After this lovely breakfast, I went out to play tennis for a couple hours with my sister. We got a good sweat in! Then, back home for lunch:
Morning-star Black bean burger over a bead of spinach, topped with cherry tomatoes. With a nice glass of a strawberry-mango smoothie. I love these black bean burgers because they are super fast to make, and taste good, too. I get them in bulk at Costco. To heat them up, I simply throw them on a pan and heat over medium-high for about 5 minutes.
The smoothie was super simple, too:
Strawberry-Mango Smoothie:
Simply blend ’em up! The mango pulp I use is from Goya. I recently found this in the frozen food section at Sweetbay. It was only $1.50 for one packet, and the only ingredient is mango. The packet lasts a while, too. It could probably make about 5 good-sized smoothies.
Whew! This was a long post today! I hope you got something out of my rambling!
Thought-provoking, mind-prodding question of the day:
What do you think of stevia? Have you tried it before? Do you like the taste? If you know any more information about it, please tell me because I would really like to learn more!
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