Tuesday, November 3, 2009

stevia

If you have discovered the massive benefits from kicking the sugar habit, then you're probably grateful to be living with less headaches, less joint aches, greater energy, better sleep, clarity of thought, and fewer illnesses.  But the taste of sweetness is still one of my favorites.  I just taste it in more things than just sugar now.  I taste the natural sweetness of wheat, fruit, rice, and vegetables like I've never tasted it before... now that I'm off the refined-white-sugar addiction.   But I still want a sweetener sometimes, so I try as many natural sweeteners as I can.  Stevia is an amazing green leaf herb which is about 30 times sweeter than sugar.  My kids and I really like "SweetLeaf" liquid stevia (vanilla creme flavor) to sweeten our unsweetened raw whole milk yogurt.  It is highly concentrated in it's sweet flavor, but contains no sugar.  So you only have to use a few drops to sweeten a whole bottle of water, cup of tea, or bowl of yogurt, etc.  Most stevia extract (powder or liquid) has a bitter after-taste, but this particular liquid stevia is really sweet and the bitterness is barely noticeable.  I also use it in homemade icecream.  There are a bunch of other flavors (like lemon drop, peppermint, raspberry, etc.) or there's plain liquid stevia with no flavor added.  This little 2 oz. dropper bottle of vanilla creme liquid stevia cost me $13.53 from Miller's Natural Foods, and it was well worth it.  I think it will last me about a year.  

SweetLeaf Liquid Stevia, Vanilla Crème, 2-Ounce Bottles (Pack of 2)
    

1 comment:

erin said...

I love SweetLeaf stevia too! I've tested their flavors on yogurt before and liked it, so now that I just bought more non-fat plain yogurt, I'll be having more! I also love their English toffee flavored liquid with cinnamon in unsweetened applesause, and both ingredients on cooking apple chunks--smells so good while it is cooking! I plan on trying them on quaker oat meal too--I also think the vanilla creme would be good on the oatmeal. Also, I'm gong to try either the a little of their milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or even raspberry chocolate flavor stevia and a little peppermint flavor in Hershey's unsweetened cocoa with some skim milk and cinnamon. Come to think of it, a little of the vanilla creme flavor might be good in it! I need to be careful not sweeten too much! I am going to try the vanilla creme in chocolate chip cookies to not only take the place of the sugar, but also the vanilla! We'll see how that goes. In fact, I am currently drinking what turned out to be a smoothie with SweetLeaf's powder (packets), which I love! They are so good in smoothies and have added inulin fiber!