I don’t get it. If stevia is a high purity noncaloric powdered sweetener made from glycoside extracts of the leaves of the South American Stevia rebaudiana shrub, why add erythritol? According to truvia, they add the natural sugar alcohol produced by a fermentation process in order to balance stevia’s extreme sweetness, which is 200 times sweeter than sugar. However, in the Market Pantry sweetener I purchased, erythritol is the main ingredient. So, why add stevia at all? And why add “natural flavors” to “bring out the best” of Truvia Natural Sweetener? Is erythritol sweet, but with a nasty flavor? Is stevia? Oh, okay… I think I just found my answer from businessinsider: Chemical compounds found in the stevia plant interact with both the sweet and bitter receptors, leading to its signature bitter aftertaste. That bitter kick is why, at least so far, beverages sweetened with stevia extracts mix in other sweeteners as well—like erythritol, aspartame, or plain old sugar.
I tried some raw beets and they didn’t taste quite as bad as I’d remembered. But that’s not a surprise. I don’t really see the plus in cooking vegetables. The first time I discovered this was when I planted a garden with the children at a preschool where I was teaching (as a college student) and we grew a plot of peas. I figured if might take us a while to eat them…but no. The kids ate every single one of them all up the moment we harvested them. They were delicious! Much better than the frozen peas (or canned peas) I was always given at home or the peas I was served in any restaurant. To me, cooking vegetables just messes up their flavor. So, I grated up some of the raw beets and put them in my salad…no problem. So now that I know how I’ll get my iron from this source, I’ll turn my attention to liver. I looked at the beef liver at Food4Less the other day, but found the sight of it rather disgusting. Besides, there were too many in each package, and they weren’t frozen. I therefore checked the other day to see if Lazy Acres Market had some and they had veil liver that looked much more presentable. Moreover, though the liver wasn’t frozen, it did look fresh, and if I wished, I could have requested as little as a quarter pound, which is what I will do the next time I go grocery shopping there.
What the desert recipes that follow are NOT! I’ve seen a number of my male acquaintances gain weight (a few to such a degree that it was very concerning) after having gotten married. Others simply started putting on the pounds with age. My father, who was overweight, informed me that he was skinny like me when he was a kid, but that this all changed once he became an adult, and he warned me that I was going to suffer the same fate. My reaction was to think to myself, "Yeah, but I’m not you!" So from the time I was young, I was determined to learn from my parent’s mistakes—not to repeat them. That being the case, in 2017 I obtained a book authored by Lyn-Genet Recitas in which she suggested that though there is some truth in the assertion that a slowing of the metabolism can contribute to weight gain as we get older, the main factor is that as we age, our bodies lose digestive enzymes and stomach acid, and even saliva decreases, so that not only might we begin to experience digestive issues, but weight gain as well. Given that I am also interested in doing what I can to maintain a healthy heart, I was also interested in what she had to write about inflammation, which she defined as a physiological process designed to help people heal, but which can also lead to a variety of problems. She believes that chronic inflammation exacerbates and hastens the aging process because it floods tissue with free radicals and promotes the destruction of normal cells; and that it is not only a major contributor to the aging of the cardiovascular and nervous systems, but is now recognized as one of the key risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, and cognitive and neurological disorders. She goes on to state that the immune system’s response to an inflammatory diet diverts the body’s energy from healing and repair and allows whatever is latent in our genetic makeup to kick up whatever is chronic and worsen it, be it high cholesterol, diabetes, or heart disease. While the attack is happening, the body’s instinct to repair takes a backseat and can only restart when the danger is resolved. Finally, chronic, low-grade inflammation can produce a wide range of inflammatory proteins. These cause hormonal signaling to go haywire, permitting free radicals and pro-inflammatory compounds to flow at a low level—continually—which one might feel as joint pain, migraines, sinusitis, fatigue, depression or even disease. So then, the desert recipes that follow, which come from her work titled The Plan Cookbook, are NOT designed to avoid the use of sugar. Rather, they are recipes intended to help older adults cut down on the amount of inflammation that might be attacking their organs and physiological body systems. Therefore, anyone viewing additional posts to this thread should bear this in mind.
I really love fast food, and when I started having health problems, I was prescribed a diet and the so-called healthy diet, I was as far away from this as possible, but I urgently needed to lose weight ..
Having made carrot cake for myself I now realize that what makes it taste so good is the pineapple...
Talia's Gluten-free Cookies 1 cup raw almond butter 1/2 cup agave nectar 1/4 cup avocado 1/4 cup packed brown sugar 4 tbsp cocoa powder 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract 1/4 tsp baking soda 2 tbsp confectioners' sugar, for topping Combine almond butter, agave, avocado, brown sugar, 2 tbsp cocoa, vanilla, and baking soda in a large bowl and mix well with a hand mixer. Refrigerate dough for 20 to 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350°F. Form chilled dough into 16 to 20 (1-inch) balls and arrange on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool. For topping, mix remaining cocoa and confectioners' sugar together in a small bowl. Once cookies are cooled, roll balls in cocoa-sugar mix. Makes 16 to 20 cookies.
Thanksgiving Mini Muffins 1 cup cooked butternut squash or canned pumpkin 1/3 cup (2/3 stick) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing 4 large eggs, well beaten 1/4 cup honey 1/2 cup coconut flour 1 tsp pure vanilla extract 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1/2 tsp cardamom 1/8 tsp ground cloves 1/8 tsp baking soda Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 12-cup mini muffin tin. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend for 1 minute. Scrape sides to integrate all ingredients. Blend for an additional minute, until mixture thickens. Fill muffin cups evenly with batter. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. insert a toothpick to determine if they are done. Serve warm. Makes 12 muffins.