Lemon Lime Zevia.

Ok, this Zevia tasted a lot better than the Black Cherry flavour. I sculled it down on a hot day, and was tasty. It was much fresher than the BC, and there was no metallic taste. Maybe that I bought it in an organic supermarket, were they would have a greater turn over of stock meant that the drink was fresher. Yay for Lemon Lime Twist Zevia!

Lemon Lime Twist!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peanut Butter Cookies. Of sorts

I love, love, love peanuts. Just a-munchin’ on them, nom nom & nom. I also like very much peanut butter biscuits. And in my lazy-avoiding-study way last year, I happened across a very spesh Donna Hay recipe for them. Months and months later, in a fit of cooking one afternoon, I made them. (I also made some Weetbix berry muffins. N-OM).

However, attempting to live a sugar-free, actually reduced sugar-free is closer to the mark at the moment, I couldn’t use normal brown sugar. So, I added part -Xylitol, part-Brown Rice syrup, for the ‘brown sugar’ flava.

I added in some peanut butter. The cheap, but not-reasonably-nasty-stuff from Aldi.

 

 

 

A-mixin’ the batter…

 

They turned out… okay. Really yummy, delishous & peanutty. Yet, they weren’t super crisp. Not like a biscuit at all. They were more like little cakey like rounds.

Cooooooookies!!!

Such a bad pic, this was taken at night, and the lighting in our house is so bad.

I read later that brown rice syrup doesn’t crisp up in biscuits the way that regular sugar would. So that is my guess what went wrong with them. I will make them again, but will use something else. (Dextrose?) I can’t unfortunately use Xylitol anymore either, because my boyfriend gets bad reactions from it. Alas, these are trials and tribulations one faces when trying to live a (somewhat, fail really badly when it comes to Baileys) shu- gah free life.

 

Recipe for Donna Hay’s Peanut Butter Cookies:

http://tiny.cc/peanutbuttercookies

Green Smoovvie!

Just a quickun. Love green smoothies, they seem to be an excellent way of stuffing your body full of nutrients that everybody except for hardcore wholefoods eaters seem to be severely lacking.

But.

I have a wee baby blender. It’s great, don’t get me wrong. Bought it online for 29 bucks. Yet it can only handle baby sized loads. And it can smoosh things to a pulpy mess, which in the case of green smoothies, is what you want. So my smoothies to date, tasted like grass milkshake. But finally, I got it right! I made a smoothie of spinach, orange and strawberries, spending extra time pulverizing the spinach first, and came out with delwishous smoovie.

Not green Green Smoothie...

Itsy, bitsy (sugar- free) Spider….

Before I tried to live a mainly sugar-free lifestyle, I would devour coke spiders. Every night, a coke with a big dollop of vanilla ice cream, and then suck up the frothy goodness. However, when you decide to give up the old fructose (ala Sweet Poison style) former treats are problematic.

What’s a woman to do?

Firstly, make some sugar free ice cream. (Sweetened using Xylitol. Will do a post about this soon). Then get a can of Kirk’s Sugar Free Lemonade. Yes, it has artificial sweeteners, it’s not perfect, but a step up from consuming fructose. I would love it if an Australian soft drink manufacturer decided to make drinks using Stevia, Xylitol or even Erythritol; Zevia is available in Oz, but it’s in limited places and very expensive. (see my earlier post on Black Cherry Zevia)

Anyway.

It was scorching summer weekend just gone by, and I decided to make a coupla Lemonade spiders for me and the Boyfriend. Sweet without being cloying, and a refreshing tartness from the lemonade (I seem to find the sugar-free drinks are not as sweet as their ‘normal’ counterparts) made it a perfect drink for a summer’s day.

Spider!

We also added a special ingredient, one that we normally wouldn’t add, and the addition of this lifted the drink into the realms of heavenly summery deliciousness.

Secret Ingredient: Vanilla Wodka!

For the love of Baileys ….

I’ve developed a palate for the brown stuff. No, not Guinness. (Mmm, Guinness) No, Baileys. Yeah, Baileys. Super classy drink. *cough* AND now they have coffee flavour, which has become my night-cap of choice.

Spotted these in the local boozer, they were on sale after Christmas, although I suspect with the markups, I still paid too much for them…

Wee bottles of bliss. Note the Mint Baileys has already been cracked open.

Nonetheless, they are delicious. I will do some investigating on what I could cook with using them..

Mmmm

Possibly something with cheesecake. Or ice-cream. Or some cocktails with my homemade coffee vodka.

.

.

.

But not this.

 

J- Candy, Part II.

SAKE!!!!!

J-Candy

So, my boyfriend bought a whole heap of deeelightful Japanese candies.  Among our crazy J-Candy haul was some pork soupy-noodle-type hard candy.  Surprisingly, the pork flavour was not really present in the lollies. Hehe. It tasted of, sugar. Oh my lord, a candy that tastes like sugar?!! What in dickens is happening?!!!