Amazing Grass Energy Bar Review, Loosening Boundaries, Testing Tolerance and Always Reading the Labels!

I was sent four flavors of Amazing Grass' 'organic green superfood' bars to try, as well as four flavors of their 'amazing meal.' The latter will be reviewed tomorrow or the day after, but today I'll talk about the bars.

First, a couple comments about both of these products. The way I see it, Amazing Grass' basic product is the green superfood powder, which has a wonderful mix of greens, antioxidants, fiber and superfoods. The bar and the meal are both vehicles for this basic product. Now, as I've repeatedly said before, it usually works best for me to create my own such 'vehicles,' since commercial products usually contain too much sugar and have other issues too.

However, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to sample these, as because of that boundary and belief I have, I probably wouldn't have tried them otherwise. There's a boundary issue that's been going on for some time: I still have yeast issues. But the ND has been telling me that since we can't deal with those until the mercury chelation is done, I shouldn't be too uptight about avoiding every last bit of sugar. In particular, he wants me to eat my daily apple, berries are ok, etc. My preference is still to avoid sugar mostly, to control the yeast symptoms as much as possible, but Phil has been encouraging me to try some higher-glycemic foods to see if it'll help with my blood sugar. 

Here come these samples to review, and since the bars have dates and agave as their first and second ingredients, you'd be right to think that I'd never have gone near them if I didn't have this review to do! So, we got to try out Phil's sensible experiment suggestion. 

These bars fall into two pairs - the 'original' and 'berry' flavors, which are uncoated, and the 'chocolate' and 'chocolate-peanut butter' flavors, which have a chocolate coating. They also fall into a threesome and a singleton: the 'chocolate-peanut butter' version is different in a very important way - an illustration of why you should always, always read the label, which I'll get to in due course. They range from 210 calories (berry flavor) to 260 calories (choc-pb flavor) and all but the choc-pb flavor contain five grams of protein. The choc-pb flavor has twelve grams of protein. They all contain mid-30s grams of carbs including four or five grams of fiber, and eight or nine grams of fat.

Now for some comments about the individual bars.

The berry wholefood bar has a lovely texture, and well-nuanced flavor (it's nice that there are more 'savory' seeds like pumpkin and sunflower to cut the sweetness of the dates, agave and berries).  It's a little lower-calorie than the chocolate bar, probably because it doesn't have a coating. The berry flavor is intense and pleasant. I love that the recipe includes green foods, herbs, probiotics and enzymes. This makes the bar work better for me than anything else that high in sugar might. That said, the sugar content is too high and the protein too low for me to consume on a regular basis. It seems like everyone else knows how hard it is to make no-sugar raw energy bars! I keep working on it, but dates and syrups are such wonderful binders and preservers!

Most of the same comments go for the plain whole food bar - it's pretty neutral, without the intense berry flavor. The pumpkin and sunflower seeds dominate a little, which makes it seem less sweet than more nut-based bars.

The Chocolate energy bar: I actually tried this one first, shared it with Phil.  I haven't had dates in so long, so it was extremely sweet to me, but had a lovely gooey texture I haven't quite been able to achieve with 'chia sweet.' 

I liked that I could taste the different nuts and seeds in it, but also enjoyed the 'green' taste, which gave it a certain subtlety. This bar is fairly high in protein but is too high in sugar to be something I could eat regularly. Phil also thought it was very sweet, which surprised me. He liked it a lot but didn't love it.

I was excited to try the 'chocolate-peanut butter' flavor, especially since it has so much more protein. I had already accepted that I was going to eat more sugar than my usual comfort zone and that there was going to be some cacao consumption. But of course, I still read the label - and it turns out that the chocolate-pb bar is made with whey protein! It also contains rice crisps, so it's quite different from the other three. If you look at the photo, it clearly says 'whey protein' in large print - I like that it does that so that even if you're not an avid defensive label-reader, you shouldn't have to get an unpleasant shock.

I was really surprised by this, since so many of the other products are labeled 'vegan.' I know that whey protein is an excellent protein source for many people. It is thought to be one of the best sources of Branched-Chain Amino Acids, (in which I know I'm deficient). However, I also know that whey protein does awful things to my system. Aside from binding up my guts, which have been tending to be sluggish anyway, when I experimented with it in the past, it affected my mental and emotional functioning in a very adverse way. Interestingly, since I figured this out and quit all dairy again (it was a short-lived experiment) I have had an intense aversion to all things dairy. I can get Branched-Chain Amino Acids from Pea Protein Powder, which works much better for me. Fortunately, Phil was open to having it - he's not into smoothies or superfood powders at all, but he does like energy bars, and is a snickers fan. I had a tiny nibble just for the sake of the review - was afraid the whey taste would make it repugnant to me but actually it wasn't really detectable. The pb and the rice crisps definitely made it more attractive to a 'standard' palate, and Phil liked it a lot. It came with us on our beach hike on a warm day and got melted, though!

My bottom line on the bars: they're quite similar to 'organic food' bars, which I liked a lot before I had to avoid sugar. They're probably similar quality, although as far as I know, 'organic food bar' doesn't have a corresponding superfood powder sold as is that I could check against. I would love to be able to give these bars to my family as healthier snacks than they might otherwise go for. For myself, I love the idea of incorporating superfood powders into my own bar creations - and have blogged about doing so before - but these bars are too high in sugar for me to eat. The most I've eaten at once is a half a bar, and I found that that wasn't enough to fill me as a snack, but was right on the edge of feeling like too much sugar. I know that not everyone is like this, and both in terms of taste and of quality of ingredients, I would recommend these bars to people who can handle sugar (especially people looking for something better than trans-fat laden candy bars!)

Speaking of 'too much sugar,' how did the experiment go with trying these higher-glycemic foods? Well, sometimes it's hard to interpret,  when you are both the principal investigator and the guinea pig! Here's the current state of play, though: today, I took a day off from sampling the added-sugar items. On Sunday, I felt fantastic - I think I mentioned: the best physical and emotional-feeling day I can remember during a chelation spell. But yesterday I felt terrible. In terms of stomach upset, bound up guts, general yucky-bloated feeling and other chelation-associated malaise, I was in the dumps and even the steam sauna didn't help! On Sunday, I wondered whether more sugar had helped me to feel so good: yesterday, I wondered whether it had helped me to feel so awful. I can't quite believe that one minuscule nibble of the whey-protein-containing bar could have been responsible for binding my guts so badly, but wonder whether eating less flax because of eating these other things was a contributing factor.

I hope this doesn't sound like needless obsessing: it's really a complicated equation and it feels good to be gathering some data. 

Sweetness from the garden -

- raspberries, peas, cilantro, mint, parsley, arugula - and a poor cauliflower that got nibbled all over by slugs! We harvested hundreds of slugs the last few days and are hoping to get the population down. I'll probably kraut that cauliflower, since it's so much bitterer than all the others we've had, probably as a defense against predacious slugs! I made the herbs into pesto - parsley-arugula and cilatro-mint. Delicious!

The View From Here

We really do have a gorgeous view from our home! One of the chores that we've done since our town trip was to take out our old bed with the trough in the middle and replace it with padding salvaged from that mattress, topped with a memory foam mattress topper we got at Cost-co and have been leaving to air out for about a month. So now we're sleeping on the floor of our loft, which makes for more shelf and storage space! We've slept so well the past two nights!

Sun is out after morning rain - I have many errands still to accomplish today and am hoping to do the 'outdoor' ones of those for certain! 

Up For This Week

I just posted an update to yesterday's review of Amazing Grass Superfood Powders. 

Am somehow unable to get the fonts to match up - maybe I lack the tenacity, and certainly there are limits to my technology savvy these days!

Watch out for reviews of Amazing Grass' Energy Bars and 'Amazing Meal' protein powders in the next couple of days. I'll also post another 'confession,' as started last week, and another picture in the series of places I've updated my blog in the days before we had internet at home (still been less than a month)!

Other posts will depend on what else we get up to and how inspiration strikes. I sure hope I'll write something about words soon, though!

Yesterday I had an amazingly good-feeling day, the best I've felt during chelation. Today, I'm not feeling so hot and am going to go off and take another of those steam showers - I think that part of why I felt good yesterday was that I'd taken one the day before. I hope this week brings you sunshine, fulfillment and happiness.

Amazing Grass Product Reviews #1; Are You a Pessimistic Label Reader?

Are you a pessimistic label reader? I know I am - I read every label pretty much in the expectation that sooner or later, I'm going to run into something that rules the item out for me. Too much sugar, some gluten or dairy, soy, rice - almost everything has something like that. This is why, when I first came across Amazing Grass Green Superfood, I thought it was too good to be true!

Not only is it full of good quality powdered greens: it also contains antioxidants, probiotics, enzymes and  fiber! And it is sugar free, and uses stevia (several other sugar-free mixes use alternatives that I really wouldn't prefer!) The type that grabbed me was the chocolate flavor: as I mentioned the other day, mixing chocolate with tons of greens and superfoods is the best strategy. I was a little hesitant about the small amount of oat fiber in the fiber complex, but gave it a try anyway (gluten is a protein, and is unlikely to be present in the fiber). And the product is certified gluten free (which gave me more courage around the oat ingredient) and vegan, and seems to be raw too. So, this pessimistic label reader found something to try after all!


It is a little pricey, but I love it so much that I get it anyway. It featured in my no-sugar raw birthday pie, and I often add a little to my morning smoothie (except when I'm completely avoiding cacao). Sometimes mid-afternoon, I have a tablespoon of it with a little nut milk or herbal tea - it's remarkably filling and satisfying for the low calorie count. I really enjoy the complexity of the green-ness and how it balances the chocolate flavor.


So when the folks at Amazing Grass sent me a package of samples to review, I knew I had a delightful opportunity. I think it's going to take several posts to cover all the products they sent - what generosity!

There are energy bars, superfood powders of several different kinds, and meal replacement powders. I couldn't possibly have tasted them all in one go, let alone given a fair reflection of how they felt after consumption, so I'm going to do several review posts over the next few days once I have tried them. Since the green superfood powder is where it all started for me, and since I've already reviewed the 'chocolate infusion' green superfood powder above, I'll start with those powders.


I started out by trying the wheatgrass powder. It's labeled as gluten free and vegan: this is reassuring to me, since I'm very much allergic to wheat and have often been nervous about trying wheatgrass products even though I understand that gluten is a protein formed within the grain, not the grass.

This powder was a rich, dark green - much darker than my wheatgrass powder from Wilderness Family (I don't know if this is a good thing but I enjoyed the color). A little taste of the powder 'straight' showed it to be sweet and full-bodied in flavor.


I mixed it up with my little balloon whisk (works best if you put the water in the glass first).

I really enjoyed the taste and that calm-buzz feeling of having just had something very green. I have to say, this is a big serving of wheatgrass! In retrospect, I should have had it on an empty stomach: I had it as part of my mid-afternoon snack, after I'd had half of one of the energy bars (to be reviewed soon) and one of my own no-sugar cookies, and my tummy felt a little insulted by doing things in that order. Wheatgrass is so detoxifying... I think that in future, I would take this on an empty stomach, and maybe only take half the serving at once, until I got used to it.

Well, wheatgrass is the very basic, but the next most basic is their unflavored Green Superfood powder. 

I've talked before about how I generally prefer to add my own flavorings/protein powders/superfoods to something basic, rather than using someone else's formulation, but I love the mix of ingredients in this green superfood. I wanted to try the unflavored version to see how it is without the cacao (to see whether potentially I could get this kind and add my own cacao at times when I'm actually able to tolerate a bit of it). This would be a great addition to a smoothie, I thought - but this afternoon, I tried it straight up, mixed only with water. This was part of a mid-afternoon snack, but I ate my no-sugar cookie when we were hiking on the beach and drank this when we got home, a little later.

Whisked it up with my balloon whisk just like the wheatgrass - and whoops! Had drunk half of it before remembering to take a picture! Yes, it was really good. I love the addition of peppermint to the formulation. I love the slight grittiness of the texture - it disperses very well in the liquid but has enough of a texture to remind you to really 'chew your juice' - to savor every mouthful. To me, this is an important feature when you're taking in green products: mindful consumption, whole body at attention.

It tastes satisfyingly 'green' without any bitterness. I felt a clear, calm energy after consuming it, fairly satisfied without being too full to eat a few raspberries from our garden! (There are still two more flavors of green superfood powder I have to try: I'll update this post when I've tried them.)

OK - Update #1 - Lemon-Lime Energy Drink Green Superfood. With mate and green tea. Sugar free, stevia sweetened, but 85mg caffeine in the serving - I'm supposed to avoid caffeine. A point I'll probably make a couple of times during these reviews: aside from the superfood powders, there are ingredients in some of these samples that I ordinarily have to avoid (caffeine, sugars, rice). I am exercising caution and sampling them anyway, so that I can give a good reflection of each product. However, products, like the bars and meal replacements, that contain extra sugar, will inevitably taste very sweet to me. I also have a high tolerance for gritty textures (because, as I mentioned above, I generally think they enhance your appreciation). So please bear in mind that my reviews are inevitably going to be somewhat subjective and idiosyncratic.

I love green tea but it's hell on my adrenals at the moment, and whilst I like the taste of mate, I really don't do well with it. I know that this is not the standard story, so please understand the idiosyncrasies of this tester! I tried this mid-morning, and just used half the package with a small amount of water. Straight up, the powder has a pleasantly 'green,' citrus-enhanced taste. Mixed with water, I found that it didn't disperse quite as well as the 'original' green superfood powder. The mate flavor was intense to me, as were the citrus notes - a good combination, I think. I was surprised that it didn't seem to mix as well, considering that I only had half the amount of powder - but it could have been that I didn't whisk it as well! Just this small amount definitely put me on the 'adrenal edge,' like drinking green tea or eating a lot of cacao, but I suspect that for a person without adrenal problems this would be a great, and great-tasting energy boost!

Just one more flavor of superfood powder to try - berry - and then this post will be complete!

And for my final update: Green superfood drink powder - berry flavor. Again, I simply mixed this with water. I'm sure it would be great in nut milk or smoothies too. I noticed that they say 'natural flavors' in the ingredients, without divulging what these ingredients that produce the berry flavor are. In addition to the acai that all the flavors have, this one also has goji berries in the antioxidant blend. 

Just like the 'natural' and 'chocolate' flavors, I liked both the taste and the texture of this - I enjoyed how well it dispersed and yet how it retains enough of a texture to remind you that 'this juice is food.'

Another thing I noticed was that only the chocolate flavored superfood powder contains oat fiber in the fiber blend. The rest of them contain just flax and apple pectin. For me personally, this is yet another signal that I should get the 'original' flavor and add my own cacao when I'm actually better able to tolerate it (or use the flavor essence!), since the cacao flavor alone has that one ingredient that is questionable for my system. I do think that this is a wonderful superfood powder.

Speaking of our garden, we're still harvesting herbs, beets, lettuce, chicory, cauliflower, broccoli, those weird carrots, kale, chard, peas, raspberries. We've been making delicious mint tea with fresh leaves from the garden. I froze some raspberries today and am going to make raspberry jam for Phil this evening. I've been eating massaged chard/kale salads lunch and dinner the last couple days. 

And we're taking advantage of the fall tides to fertilize our gardens in preparation for over-wintering and for next year! Phil loves any excuse to do some more strenuous, heavy work, so our beach hikes have been featuring the truck and a pitchfork, he loads up with kelp (sometimes has me drive alongside the tideline very slowly as he loads) and has been putting it on the garden beds back home!

It was a beautiful day here again! Happy Sunday...

Trip to Town/Vertical Hike, Blueberries and Invasive Species

I hope everyone's having a great weekend! The last weekend of August, rainy and overcast - the mini heat-wave that so many places seem to have caught is gone from here.

Fortunately the rain held off, mostly, for our overnight camp on Thursday night - here's a very familiar picture for me: Phil's receding form on the way to our nightly shakedown!

We got home late last evening from an overnight trip to Anchorage for appointments, errands and - we hoped - some blueberry harvesting! Phil's favorite place to harvest blueberries is over a mountain pass a little way north of Anchorage.  It is a very strenuous hike - extremely steep up and down, and I was apprehensive of the prospect of hiking up fast starting at 8pm, harvesting blueberries until dark, falling down exhausted (having set up camp!) and then being ready for my 10am appointment on Friday. I also had memories of being stiff and sore for days after the hike in previous years - it's the descent that kills you! And this year is no different in that regard, although really anxiety was unnecessary. Here's the view from half-way up.

It's a mile up to the pass and maybe 1,000ft of elevation gain! So, Phil and I went at our own speeds, Phil carrying the tent, sleeping bags and almost everything and going very fast, dumping the camping gear in a camp spot and on through the pass. I was surprised that I made it to the top in about 38 minutes! It was an intense 38 minutes of hyperventilating and staving off cramps, but it felt pretty good. Imagine how fast Phil went... And going back down, he ended up carrying my pack to - my legs were jelly.

The view from the top -

- and turning around, through the pass -

We slept pretty well in the deep silence of the mountains,

and there was a patch of wild valerian just above our camp spot!

Unfortunately, blueberry picking was pretty much a 'bust.' Between both of us, this is all we gathered - and the black, shiny ones are 'crowberries,' another low-bush berry that is god but much less tasty. 

Usually, we'd expect to get several gallons. We pick with these 'harvesting combs,' which strip the berries off the stems, and you can then knock them down into the holding area.

Why is this? There is a new invasive species of caterpillar, that has been proliferating and systematically defoliating low bushes and trees in that whole area! The many white moths fluttering around in the twilight bore witness to this. Back on the 'invasive species' issue that was such a constant topic back in Hawaii. 'Invasive' introduced species are a problem when they do so very well in their new environment and have no natural predators to keep their population in check. Aside from humans gathering the blueberries, many varieties of bird depend on them in the Fall, and they are an important food source for the bears before hibernation also. Birds preparing for migration especially target berries.

If these moths lay tons of eggs and if the eggs survive the winter, and if the caterpillars eat all the leaves again next year, within a year or two, the blueberry bushes will die and those animal populations will be severely impacted. Meanwhile, the moths can just catch a wind current and fly off to decimate some other area. Sounds kind of like humans, doesn't it?

I was very glad of all those goodies I made the other day, to sustain me with all that hiking. It was good to feel self-sufficient with food in the big town, without needing to compromise on what works for me. 

But we're flapping our ears for some alternative blueberry-picking spots and on the long 'to-do' list we put together, now that we're done with guests, a trip across the bay to harvest currants is also featured!

After all my chia-based recipes lately, it's cool serendipity to see that Averie is giving away 2lbs of chia seeds on her blog - check out and enter here!

Have a great weekend and please stay tuned for some product reviews!

What If I Can't Have Cacao? Acceptance, Rule-Bending and Some Creative Alternatives

I mentioned recently that I'm avoiding cacao at the moment, on the advice of the ND and in recognition of my body's own response to it. I've been learning that it pays to do as the ND says - but - it seems awfully unfair that the one thing that really interests my taste buds also jolts my adrenals in a bad way and builds itself into an addiction whenever I eat it regularly. I've now gone through several cycles of eating it regularly, noticing addiction, starting to experience physical symptoms (like sleeplessness and skin irritation) and made myself quit it completely. There have also been times when I've been able to 'stay on top of it,' being very strict with myself about only eating it a few times a week, only eating it in the morning, etc. I'm hoping that eventually my adrenals will recover to the point that I can eat cacao with impunity, but the ND says not to hold my breath for that! (Even raw cacao? 'Fraid so. Although I do notice that the nibs (the whole bean, fat and all) have less impact than the powder (concentrated, minus the fat).

What to do, then? If you don't have a major adrenal issue, the very best advice is that given by Christian, to have your cacao with other superfoods that balance it out. Reishi powder, maca, algae - they all taste great together too. When I do have cacao, I always do that.

But if you have to avoid it completely, until you are recovered to the point that you can experiment to see how much bending of this rule your body can handle - ;) - here are some strategies and recipes!

One strategy is to remove chocolate from the picture altogether. The first three or four years I was into raw foods, there was no raw chocolate and everyone seemed to manage! There are so many other delicious flavors. For some, it's all about the berries and fruits. For others, like myself, the spices are where it's at (and isn't it interesting that both berries and spices are super-high in antioxidants?) I love making barks and cookies with lots of cinnamon, ginger and my favorite cardamom. Nutmeg is great too. And although mint chocolate is unbeatable, mint by itself is a wonderful flavor. Mint with lots of spirulina and chlorella pleases the eye with the minty green and pleases the body with all that wonderful chlorophyll and protein. Somehow, if you can find other things that are delicious to your taste buds and nourishing to your body, it doesn't seem as much of a hardship.

But what about when everyone is eating chocolate, when it seems like chocolate is coming out at you everywhere you look? What about when, no matter how much you remove your energy from it, it comes looking for you - whether through a habitual hankering at certain times of the month or the evocation of a social custom of sharing? Part of my playing in the kitchen yesterday was to find some answers to this.

Well, the first piece of good news is that cacao butter has none of the caffeine in it - that's all in the powder.

Cacao butter tastes wonderfully chocolatey and provides that special mouth-feel, because it is mostly a (good) saturated fat and its melting point is right around the human body temperature! For myself, I'll probably use cacao butter in combination with coconut oil for the most part, because coconut oil is what my body 'needs.' But just a little cacao butter will give that flavor and texture, and increase the melting point a bit too.

Next up - Carob! Wait! Don't dismiss this out of hand! 

Yes, I know, I hate it when people say that carob is a substitute for chocolate - because I don't think it's fair on carob! I love carob - even feel an affinity for it as a fellow-transplant from the Mediterranean. But I'm the first to say it tastes nothing like chocolate. It's also much lower in fat, which means higher in carbs, which is less optimal for me. However, it's super-high in calcium (so could be said to balance magnesium-rich cacao).

Even though carob is not chocolate and does not taste like chocolate, in combination with cacao butter and the next ingredient I'm going to talk about, it does offer the color and texture of chocolate without the caffeine, and (if you like carob on its own merits) adds a special, sharply-sweet flavor of its own. (Note: I've been using toasted carob because I haven't been able to get hold of raw carob, and toasted carob has a much finer texture and flavor. I'm ok with this in small quantities.)

Imagine taking chocolate and distilling it to an essence, and then being able to take a drop of that and evoke the whole thrill of chocolate. Well, that's what the folks at Medicine Flower claim to have done with their dark chocolate flavor extract

. 

It's a bit expensive and I was skeptical, especially having tried chocolate flavored stevia and liked it, but not as a 'real chocolate' flavor. But I'd seen good reviews of this flavor essence, and got some to try.

Yes, it's very concentrated indeed! On the side of the bottle, it recommends using one part essence to 10,000 parts finished product! That's a lot of zeroes. Trying a drop on the tongue is just overwhelming. Unfortunately, the dropper 'drops' by itself, without you even squeezing the bulb, so it's good to ensure that the dropper is almost empty before removing it from the bottle, if you don't want waste/overwhelm.

In water, it definitely imparts a chocolate flavor - but not a full-bodied, full-on chocolate. That's what you need the fat for! 

So, my theory was that using cacao butter, a few drops of this flavor essence, and carob for color and binding would make a decent chocolate replacement. I tried it out to make a no-sugar version of Larabar's 'German Chocolate Cake' - a bar I've only tried once but have had a hankering for ever since. 

My challenge was to use only the ingredients listed in the bar plus my substitutions. The ingredients are: dates (I subbed chia-sweet), pecans, almonds, shredded coconut, virgin coconut oil (I used vco plus a little cacao butter), cocoa powder (I used a little carob).

I know that for the larabar, the dates predominate: it's about two parts dates to one part nuts. So I made two cups of chia-sweet from water, two teaspoons white stevia and about three drops of dark chocolate essence. 

Whoops - I ran out of chia seeds! This gel has only 5 tablespoons of chia - seven or eight would have been optimal to make it really thick…

Here's the chia-sweet mixed with the melted coconut oil and cacao butter, with the ground-up (soaked and dehydrated) pecans, almonds and shredded coconut going in.

And here it is with the addition of the carob. With the slightly gloopy chia-sweet, it looked like a big chocolate pudding - and tasted like one too!

Here it is going onto trays to be dried out. I gave it a couple hours in the oven on lowest setting with the door open, because it was so wet, and then went back to my fan contraption. By this morning, I had delicious no-sugar cookies! I made them flatter than I'd prefer, because I was worried about drying, but this was the first time! Next time, I'll have more chia seeds (I ordered them already) and will probably add some flax meal too. 

So, delicious, no sugar, no chocolate, full of good things!

And while I was at it, and since I've been feeling inspired by other bloggers, I also made the beautiful Twins' tahini bars! How's this for serendipity - they mentioned those bars in their blog yesterday too!

Yes, I own no mixing bowls, I mix and serve in our baking pans...

Again, I subbed chia-sweet (I had some in the fridge) for their date paste, omitted the cacao nibs and used extra shredded coconut (with the chocolate essence, the chia almost feels like chocolate chips), and made the topping with coconut oil, cacao butter, carob and vanilla. I didn't make it look nearly as pretty as they do, but the taste is just to die for! I adore carob and tahini together - they are both squarely in the middle of that nostalgic Mediterranean spot that I hit with Lisa's dal yesterday too! I also love that the omega 3-rich chia-sweet balances out the tahini, which is heavily omega-6.

Enjoy - I hope you have a beautiful day.

Strange Blogging Locations #2, Cooking Some Food(!) and Healthy Appetite

More strange places I've blogged -  - outside 'the Grog Shop,' a cute liquor store downtown that sells lots of local wines and beers and has a wi-fi shop next door. In the truck (it's seldom warm enough or appropriate to sit outside in that parking lot!)

Another glorious day! I was up at 5.30 (it was still dark - wouldn't have been, a month ago) to make blueberry muffins to send off our guests early. I also baked bread for Phil, who caught a ride north to hang out with a buddy right after we saw them off - we'll meet back up tomorrow, heading to Anchorage for appointments. So here I was with some instant alone-time at the end of the guest-marathon!

After my musings about salt yesterday, here is a Dr Mercola article explaining why mineral salts are good for you. He mentions loss of appetite and depression as being possible signs of sodium deficiency and I know I've had some of both lately, so a note to the wise... With this wonderful, unexpected warmth, though, salt seems like a dehydrating prospect!

Isn't it funny how certain things that are 'work' are also relaxing? I spent most of the morning working on one of the translation projects I'm on, which is serious work, and yet was the only thing I felt 'up to' doing.

Funnily enough too, after all the 'regular food' cooking I've been doing these past weeks, I also ended up spending a fair bit of time playing in the kitchen today, making raw/no-sugar 'Ela-friendly' stuff! I'll talk more about most of these experiments in my next post, but today I want to mention a cooked recipe I tried out from someone else's blog.

Ordinarily, I don't see the point of cooking for myself. I prefer to eat raw foods, and soon discovered that the kinds of cooked foods I like are not the kinds that Phil likes at all. So I'd rather make a salad that we can share and then cook him something he does like. But when I saw this post of Lisa's, all my middle-eastern genes and cultural background prompted me, reminding me of how much I enjoy dal and lentils in general, hinting that sprouted lentils (which I eat fairly regularly) are all very well, but don't quite hit the same spot as well-presoaked, slowly cooked yellow lentils with the spices well-infused. Plus, the tomato and the chutney are good raw complements and my garden is full of mint and cilantro…

So, I did it! And unusually for me, I followed the recipe quite closely. I omitted the cumin, because Phil's tummy doesn't like it and I'd love for him at least to try this. I subbed a dried chili pepper in the chutney because I had no fresh jalapenos. This was a milder dal than I would usually make, but as I expected, the spicy note of the chutney balanced it beautifully.

I couldn't make it look as beautiful as Lisa did - presentation isn't my strongest suite, perhaps because I'm not very visual myself. But I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of juicy but slightly dried tomato, spicy chutney with the epitome of fresh herbs, and the soothingly-textured dal, that wonderful creaminess that comes simply from the legume.

My sincerest thanks to Lisa for the inspiration to do this, and for the recipe.  

I've mentioned several times how careful I need to be with eating 'different' foods, and it was interesting to tune in to my tummy as I ate: there was an initial 'uh-oh, this is something different,' followed by a relaxing 'ah, we know what this is' settling into familiarity. It still feels a little strange - I was nibbling on leftover salad as I prepared this, and there was quite a contrast between how my tummy felt from a bite of salad and a bite of dal. I'll probably take some extra enzymes - between the cooked lentils and all the nibbles of my experiments earlier in the day, it's been a challenging day for my tummy.

But it must be a good thing, right, that I'm finding interest in trying out recipes again?! For months here, I've just been plodding along with salads and barks, coconut kefir and morning smoothies, with very little interest or variation. Admittedly, the sensation of having my tastebuds stimulated, the reaction 'that tastes good, I'd like another bite' is actually a bit scary - I'm afraid it'll lead me to eat more, with all the calamitous associations that that has for me. But the truth of the matter is that I've been stopping way short of 'full' for the most part and my tummy is pretty good at informing me when 'full' is reached.

I am encouraging and nurturing the idea that enjoying vibrant, tasty food, and having an appetite for it, is a good and healthy thing! Sound good?

No-Sugar Superfood Cookies Again, Salads Again, Full Moon, Salt and Garlic - What do You Think?

It's coming up on full moon - here it was, rising in the southeasterly sky around 10pm yesterday, reflecting on runnels of water down on the beach. (The picture doesn't quite capture the color contrasts - it was that wonderful golden-pink.)

We're losing minutes of daylight every day, and as the sun and moon are so far to the south now, it is clear that these are the last days of long, warm evenings. Yesterday was warm enough that we had dinner outside, around the fire! And I wasn't even wearing a jacket! There have been very few days like that this year. Today's another one, though - it feels so good to just be, outside. One of those accidental tomato plants in our garden is even flowering!

The twins both ended up climbing our sixty-foot tall dead spruce tree. Add to those 60 feet its location at the top of a bluff, and it's an exhilarating view indeed. Not everyone who visits us is even interested in going there! Kudos to them.

I figured out what was the matter with those no-sugar superfood cookies! It was the wheatgrass juice powder clashing with the orange zest. The wg powder has a strong and slightly odd taste anyway, but in combination with orange zest, it's not pleasant.

I made another batch yesterday: here they are under the fan, drying out - 

- they are carrot-sunflower seed 'cookies.' All quantities are approximate!

1/4 c melted coconut oil

1 c carrot (ground up in a food processor)

1/4 c soaked sunflower seeds

3/4c pulp from making nut milk

1/3 c 'chia sweet' made with herbal chai tea, rhodiola and reishi

1/4 c flax meal

1/4 c shredded coconut

1/4 c mesquite

2 T maca

1/2 T wheatgrass powder

1 T fo-ti

cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg (lots)

Mixed all together, formed in balls, flattened and dried. 

I realized after I was finished that I'd meant to use poppy seeds as well - I love their flavor and their nutritional profile (super high in magnesium and calcium), and think they'd complement the carrot and chia well.

I'm hoping these will work out for me, as my tummy has been having trouble with carrots lately. I suspected there might be a problem after having upset stomach from beets and then sweet potato - it seems like there are periods of time where I'm just unable to digest any kind of starch and this may be one of those. A carrot before lunch today had me bent over double! Anyone else with 'part time' sensitivities like that?

Another repeat with variations: salad dressing - 

- 1/3c soaked sunflower seeds, 2 heaping T nutritional yeast, good shake of smoked paprika (I can't tolerate bell peppers and the paprika does the same 'cheesifying' that the bell peppers do), 2 T flax meal, shake of dried oregano. Blended those, then added that pile of chopped herbs - it includes cilantro, parsley, arugula and chives. Added kefir whey (more on this soon) and a generous pour of olive oil, whilst blending again.

It's going to make a delicious dressing for tonight's salad. No couch potatoes around here - but couch lettuce, anybody?

It's going to make a delicious dressing for tonight's salad. No couch potatoes around here - but couch lettuce, anybody?

No salt or garlic in this recipe, you notice? Many people think that those two are essential ingredients in any savory food (and many people put almost as much salt in desserts as they do in savory dishes too). But in health-minded movements, there are almost as many people who think both salt and garlic are evil and anathema as there are  those who hail both as essential panaceas. 

I used to be an extreme anti-salt and garlic person. Nowadays, I'm more moderate. I have a very sensitive palate: a little of either goes a long way for me. I also know that mineral salts like pink himalayan salt are likely good for my body, deficient as it is in minerals. And I know that garlic would be useful both for fighting the yeast condition and for the sulphur compounds to help with chelation. 

Ok, small, silly confession: I've been using less salt because I can't find my little himalayan salt shaker since I got back from Fairbanks! (Phil had to move stuff around while I was gone and it's hiding somewhere.) I have a larger jar of the stuff but am often too lazy to bring it out and then rationalize the laziness by 'maybe salt isn't good for me after all!' But as for the garlic, sometimes I can take it just fine; other times, it really rips me up. Perhaps even more so than starchy veggies! I really ought to get back into the habit of a few months ago, of always having a jar of apple cider vinegar full of halved garlic cloves - it makes wonderful garlic vinegar and takes the pungent edge off the cloves themselves so that I can eat them!

Where do you stand on salt and garlic? Or do you just think it's silly that people need to take a stand on condiments and spices? (Or will you lambast me for calling garlic a spice and insist that it's a vegetable?)

love to all