Raw, Non-Dairy Hot Chocolate (has an awesome bonus result)

While cruising around for a recipe for a raw, apple-pie smoothie today (how many other people use Google as their main cookbook? :), I stumbled upon Karen Knowler's blog, and after checking out her (okay, actually Nina Dench's) recipe for it, I browsed her homepage and found her recipe for Spiced Hot Chocolate. So, as a snack for the family today, I tried it out.

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Real Hot Chocolate *not instant!

Recently, Lifehacker had a post about how to make a better-tasting instant hot chocolate mix, linking off to Cook's Country that revealed the recipe as including dry milk powder, confectioner's sugar, salt, white chocolate chips, and Dutch-processed cocoa powder.

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Hungry Gamer? Buy Somethin' Will Ya?

Image by pinguino via Flickr

Having grown up with a love of video games and also having a love for Real Food, I felt a bit insulted when I came across a new snack being aimed at game players everywhere. It's called Gamer Grub and it's essentially cheap sugars and carbohydrates in a convenient but wasteful package.

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Who Told You About Girl Scout Cookies?

Image by The Suss-Man (Mike) via Flickr

As a result of my recent post about Girl Scout cookies, a couple of conversations came up from friends and acquaintences of mine, and it occurs to me that a lot of people might have similar questions.

Dan, a guy came into our office today helping his daughter with her girl scout cookie sales so I looked at his sheet tallking about all the kinds of cookies and EVERYONE of them stated that they had 0 trans fats. So who told you they were loaded with trans fats?

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Those Relentless Girl Scouts!

Image via Wikipedia

Once upon a time, young scouts, wanting to help raise money for their troop, baked cookies on their own or with the supervision of their mothers, using simple ingredients like butter, milk, eggs, sugar, and flour. And so it went for almost twenty years until somehow ... something went wrong. In this real-life story, around 1935 the Girl Scout organization began to license the creation of these cookies to manufacturers and thus began the subtle shifting of ingredients from mainly tolerable snack-quality ones to those that are more economical than healthy. Now their recipe has more unpronounceable words than is easy to count.

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Today Ice Cream is More than Just Frozen, Sweet Cream!

Image via Wikipedia

The subject of ice cream came up recently in a conversation and as I also have a sweet spot for the stuff, I thought I'd put my response out here for more to share.

Ice cream should be an occasional treat and we can probably all start in agreement on that point. It's typical high in calories considering the concept of it is frozen, sweetened cream. In America it's probably eaten more often than it should. Working in a downtown area, it is unsurprising to see people eating as they walk down the skyways at any particular time of the year. So what exactly are we eating when we devour this evilly-delicious stuff?

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Food or Foodstuff?

Image by elmada via Flickr

Just after high school, I once worked for a hotel chain. Not the most glorious job, but it was something. You get to see all sorts of human behavior, good and bad, when you work somewhere that people typically hold in their minds as a temporary residence. I wish I could remember the name of the nice, older lady who always smelled of Jessica McClintock perfume as she was such a delight to chat with.

On the other hand, I certainly won't miss the party-loving folks who seemed to assume that you just love to pick up after them because hey - you're getting paid to do it, right? (Based on the amounts of mess, sometimes and often you can answer that: WRONG.)

After one particularly large, but thankfully not too rowdy, group left, we found mountains of leftover "food." The typical party faire; there were bags of Doritos, 2-litre bottles of pop in many varieties, pizza boxes, and so forth. There was something a little extra in this case, too: A huge stack of Lunchables. You know what I'm talking about - those prepared lunch snack packs that are marketed to busy parents of schoolage children. They contain an amazing variety of non-food food nowadays, but back when this happened it was mostly limited to lunch meat, cheese, jello, crackers, and so forth.

Usually when a guest left something important, or if they left as much unopened food as they did this time, they would be back soon to claim it, so we did what we usually did: We set it in a back room and forgot about it.

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Avoid Soft Drinks: Phosphoric Acid

Another entry in the should-be-self-obvious category, Soft drinks contain phosphoric acid which changes the body's calcium-phosphorus ratio, upsetting its deductable chemical balance. A body in balance heals. A body unbalanced deteriorates. Sugar-free soft drinks are not acceptable substitutes for a variety of reasons. Besides the fatc that they contain chemical-based sugar replacements that should be considered poisonous, the phosphorus in them retains this same unbalancing properties, and the body may be tricked into producing extra insulin which will lead to a drop in the blood sugar levels.

A glass of mineral water flavored with lemon, lime, or a tablespoon of orange or apple juice makes a great soft drink replacement.

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Girl Scout Cookies are Deadly

ABC Smart Cookie - Cookie - Nutrition Facts

Look at the ingredient lists here: SUGAR is listed within the top two of each cookie, usually. They all have wheat flour, but it's "enriched" wheat flour. When you read that, know that it's flour that's been killed and then had synthetic vitamins and minerals added back in.

Then, of course, there's the trans fats. Even though it lists "0g trans fat" on the labels, shortening or partially hydrogenated oils are usually within the top three ingredients. THOSE ARE TRANS FATS. Don't believe their lies.

Throw in some artificial flavor, a lot more sugar of varying sorts including the always-evil high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, and more sugar for the heck of it, you've got a little, delicious, and deadly treat.

How many boxes do you eat each year?

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I hate soda

While looking through my sent emails on an entirely unrelated subject, I came across this email I'd sent to my work newsletter but it was edited out. So, rather than waste a good rant, here it is. (Yes, I realize this might be noticed by everyone at work ;)

http://www.waterforlifeusa.com/blog/uncategorized/8-ways-soda-fizzles-your-health/

We've (probably) heard it before, but seriously.

No, take it seriously. I mean, this affects us directly - we could have a fridge full of tea. Unsweetened, rooibos tea, which comes in many flavors, is delicious and good for you! However, we have 90% soda, 6% carbonated water, and 4% juice (half of which contains high fructose corn syrup. And don't get me started on that.) But if you're looking for a diet drink that's sweet, just put a tiny pinch of Stevia extract to the tea. Even a half-teaspoon of honey isn't going to kill you as much as aspartame or saccharin will.

And since I'm on the tea rant, we should just Spice Up the Office with something from TeaVana. That particular starter package is a little unnecessary since we already have a hot water tap and don't need the Zojirushi boiler (I have one at home - it's sweet). We could just send someone to the MOA to pick up ten different packages of rooibos teas and we're set. Or order them online. Anyway.

a quote:

Diet Soda Isn't Any Better
For those of you with a diet soda in your hands, the news isn't any better, in fact it's worse! ... One liter of an aspartame-sweetened beverage can produce about fifty-six milligrams of methanol. [y'know... antifreeze, solvent... -me]

And when it comes to saccharin, ...the last thirty years have demonstrated the carcinogenic effects of saccharin ... in some instances at doses as low as the equivalent of one to two bottles of diet pop daily.

With diet soda, you've gone from high calories to poisonous levels of methanal and an increased chance of developing cancer. Not a very good trade.

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A grapefruit note

My wife has a habit acquired from her mother or grandmother: When eating a grapefruit she will peel it completely to the point where only the prime, juicy contents of each slice are left for heavenly consumption. It really is the most delicious way to enjoy a grapefruit, made even better only by chilling the fruit prior to eating.

Prior to our marriage I would only eat grapefruit sliced in half, removing the contents of each slice with a grapefruit spoon. This method takes a little less time, regardless of whether you use your knife to free the flesh from the bitter skin before diving in with the spoon or not. On the other hand, it seems a bit messier and a little more wasteful as you're always left with but a little of the flesh stuck inside.

Both of these methods, however, fail to truly capture the benefits of this fruit in their entirety, because grapefruit have a layer of bioflavonoids such as hesperidin and rutin stored within the bitter white rind just under the outer skin. These bioflavonoids help maintain the body's small blood capillaries, and set the body's "fat thermostat" a little higher, making them especially useful in chemically "burning off" excess stored fat.

A great way to capture these elements is to peel the grapefruit lightly, leaving as much rind on as possible, and sending it through a juicer.

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