Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Final Words

It's My Birthday

What does it mean to eat without consuming sugar? Eating without sugar is all about making better choices, not necessarily eliminating sugar entirely. I feel that in these three short weeks I have learned quite a bit about the lifestyle and the choices you make trying to eat no sugar entirely. The American lifestyle is not at all conducive to sugar free living. Nearly all prepared foods contain sugar to some degree. The implications are deep. Good luck eating out. All you get to eat are raw foods. How many restaurants serve raw foods? Almost none, unless it's a salad. And if you happen to just want one of those raw foods salads, you can't have any salad dressing. Na ah. Almost all of the commercially available restaurant chosen dressings contain sugar. For taste, right?

So restaurants are out. So are common snack foods. Candy. Energy bars. Drinks. Etc. Sugar. Sugar. And Sugar.

Eating without sugar forces you to eat better. To cook your own food and stay away from the junk and the candy. What a wonderful trade off!

But still...

I don't think I can give up ice cream. And I like eating out now and then. I already make better choices. Not that pie, but the baked chicken. Do you know what I mean?

It is all about our choices. What we choose day to day that makes up our lifestyle and dietary choices. Fad diets don't work, so waiting to eat the cheesecake and candy until next week isn't going to help you. You have to constantly be on top of your cravings. I think it's okay to eat the occasional sugared treat but not every day or throughout the day. Sugar is a metabolism inhibitor.

What I've gotten out of this experience is: Everything in moderation. Medicine is not except from checking the ingredients (inactive ingredients) label. Check everything on that label! Costco has embraced alternative foods and has some great choices for prepared foods made healthier.

After drastically (not that I was eating so much sugar before but there is a difference) reducing my sugar intake I have noticed that other foods can be sweet. Milk is sweet to me. Bread (without sugar) is sweet to me. Fruits can be substituted as a dessert because they are so sweet and delicious.

Happy 24th birthday to me. I'm off to eat a gourmet locally crafted cake from My Cakes in Snoqualmie. I'll let you know how it tastes.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Making Your Own Meals = Control Over What You Eat



My mother has a wonderful recipe for lemon chicken that I adore. For my 19th birthday, I believe, I asked my mom to make the lemon chicken with brown rice and a salad. She makes the absolute best chicken.
 I tried to replicate the recipe with 70% success. It was a bit too lemon-acidic but still delicious. The basic recipe calls for lots of lemons. Got to use the real lemons or it won't taste like real lemon chicken. First you dip all the chicken in egg to coat and then rub the pieces in bread crumbs.
Cook the chicken in oil until it's all the way done and then add in the lemons. Pick out the seeds as much as possible. Add some pepper for seasoning and let it simmer in the sauce and... Done. Lovely. Cook up some rice and you've got a meal!


Sunday, January 19, 2014

Costco Finds: Veggie Patty




Sometimes you can find some wonderful ready-made foods at your local Costco! I found this gem whilst loading up on samples at Costco. So many snacks are sugar-free and delicious. These veggie patties taste fabulous, like condensed Chinese food or solidified soup or a potato patty. Yum. At just over $1 apiece this was a steal! Just look at that ingredients list. Mm Mm good.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Breakfast: Sausage and Eggs to defeat the convenience cravings


Simple foods that can be healthy meals:

Here is a breakfast combo I enjoy that is delicious and sugar free! 

I combine my favorite sugar free Costco sausages with some over-easy eggs sprinkled with pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. It took about 10 minutes to make and made my stomach quite the happy camper. 

The trick to beating the sugar is to keep eating before you get desperate hungry. When you get so hungry you can't wait to eat, then you are in trouble for any self-resistance of nasty foods. You could keep those bad for you foods out of your house or if that's not possible, focus on rounded meals that satisfy cravings for good food while taking <10 minutes to create. This is one of them!

Friday, January 17, 2014

Making my Own Bread

Bread usually contains sugar. Yup, look at the back. Right there. How hard would it be for them to use honey instead? Way hard apparently. Let's look for sugar-free bread, shall we? Whoa, apparently easier than I had thought. There are many choices.

However, I'm still hard-headed about this. I'm making my own bread!



I used the 100% whole wheat recipe in the breadmachine's recipe book but substituted almond milk for dried milk and honey for molasses. I also used a combo of whole wheat flour, spelt, and almond flour, adding in chia seeds, hemp hearts, and flax seeds.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Sugar-Free Cookies



Starting with a base of this recipe from Nestle Tollhouse I made some delicious cookie variations that were not only fabulous but semi-healthy. 

My first foray off the recipe was with the flour. I don't want bleached white flour. Ugh, it may taste delicious but it doesn't do much for me. So instead, I combined some of my healthier substitutes. I used 1 cup regular bleached white flour, 1/3 cup wheat flour, 1/3 cup almond flour, and 1/3 cup spelt.



Further deviating I used my vegan butter, Earth Balance instead of regular butter.

For sweetness I used 1 cup of honey and for good measure 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk (not sure what prompted me to add almond milk but I didn't want to put in too much honey and felt like 1 cup was more appropriate than 1/5 cups).

Then I went even more nuts (get it?)

I made peanut butter cookies with peanut butter and nuts cookies
I made unsweetened raspberry jam cookies (pictured above)
I made jam and nuts cookies(also pictured above)
I made pineapple cookies
I made applesauce cookies
I made bacon cookies
I made chocolate chip cookies
I made plain cookies


The jam and nuts, pineapple, and applesauce cookies did not fare well as they were too liquidized to properly rise so I don't recommend adding liquid to these cookies if you were to follow my harebrained recipe substitutions. Also, for sugar-free cookies you must find sugar free-bacon, chocolate chips, and peanut butter as mine were not and I made them for others

Would I make cookies like this again? YES! But I wouldn't add the almond milk or any other liquid ingredients. 

They were delicious, they there were more like shortbread in consistency than cookies. 

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Dinner: Simple Foods





What have you been eating Rachel?

Answer: Lots of broccoli

Costco FTW and their huge family sized bag of broccolie

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Recipe: Pasta Mac


This was a simply delicious meal! 

Ingredients:
     chicken
     pasta (I used wheat pasta from Costco)
     broccoli
     vinegar
     butter
     grated Parmesan cheese
     regular cheese (grated or grate yourself)
     olive oil
     spices

To make the broccoli I melted some butter and threw in some balsamic vinegar and the Parmesan cheese. Then I dipped the heads of the broccoli in this mixture and placed them on a tinfoil lined pan and broiled them in the oven on high.

To make the pasta I baked the chicken in strips in the oven until they were cooked and set them aside. I did not season them in any way.

Then I boiled the pasta.

In a separate pan I heated up the olive oil and slowly poured in my grated cheese and some fresh ground pepper until I had a nice melted cheese sauce going.

When my pasta was cooked and drained I combined my pasta and cheese sauce, adding more Parmesan and ground pepper to the mix. Finally I mixed in the chicken and voile! A lovely home cooked meal that tastes fabulous.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Vitamix Helps me in my Quest

No need to crave ice cream when I can make a delicious natural smoothie. I just have to watch out for sugar in the yogurt!



This recipe:

Entire pear
apple core
2 tablespoons of yogurt
half can of pineapple and pineapple juice

Thursday, January 9, 2014

To Sauce or Not to Sauce


Sometimes you just can't use the sauce.... Is there any alternative to worcestershire sauce that doesn't contain sugar?

It seems most sauces contain sugar. Why is that? How much sugar? As a society, why have we allowed our products to be drenched in sugar?

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

First-Week Difficulties

where anything that made living sugar-free exceptionally difficult to follow!

The things I already have in my closet! The incidental, ready to grab food that contains sugar! Also, I'm worried about that time of the month because I've been having rather strong cravings for sugar and carbs. What will I do? How will I stop thinking about my love of

milano cookies
kit kats
ice cream
bascially incidental chocolate

The biggest challenge so far has been getting sick. Eating without sugar basically means preparing your own food and when you're sick you eat whatever is convenient/available/mushy therefore I may have failed. I ate sushi (teriyaki sauce has sugar I'm certain). My medicine I'm fairly certain contains some form of sugar (high fructose corn syrup gah!). I'm very disappointed in medicines. Why do they need coloring and fake sugar and all sorts of other chemicals? When I was in the midst of being sick and was picking out robitussin and niquil, I didn't realize they would contain utter crap in their 'inactive ingredients' list. I wish I had turned them over but I didn't and now I need those medicines. Can I return them? Do they sell medicines that only contain what they need to contain? It's medicine for crying out loud! It doesn't need consistency of flavor or color, medicines are known to taste crappy. Come on pharmaceutical industry!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Lunch Meat Good Luck to You

I was at Safeway the other day looking for a nice turkey or pastrami that didn't contain sugar. Every single selection at the fridge ready-packaged area had sugar! Even the "honey turkey" had sugar! What is this? Whatever, I can pay the bigger bucks for the ready-to-slice meats at the deli counter. I walk over and ask if there are any sugar-free meats. The lady picks out a few to look. Even the "natural" one had sugar! What is it, a preservative?

I felt like giving up. What was I going to eat on my delicious home-made sugar-free bread? Nothing apparently.

Then I walked into Trader Joe's. Whole different story. I was able to find both a turkey and a pastrami that had no sugar! They used honey. Thank you Trader Joe's! Also, I found this lovely (although too much meat-tasting in my opinion, sausage to top off my pizza with:




Monday, January 6, 2014

Sweet Sweet Vinegar

I love vinegar. I could have a lifetime supply of it and know that I would never get tired of it. I use it in salads, in sauces, to sautee, to bake. It's so versatile and delicious. And you can get a large vat (ok only a large glass container) at Costco for around $10. You can also get a sub $10 jar from Trader Joe's that looks like a Sangria variety. Does anyone know what grape must is?




Sunday, January 5, 2014

Home-Made Pizza




Super delicious home made pizza, the dough is controlled for sugar and the sauces are also chosen specifically without sugar. Safeway had a $2 red sauce with all natural ingredients and no sugar and I found a not-so-healthy white sauce that didn't have sugar. 

Friday, January 3, 2014

Sugar-Free Substitutes I Already Love

1. Honey
2. Fruits and Veggies
3. Vinegar

So many natural foods are sugar free and so many processed foods in boxes, cans, and bagged contain unnatural sugars as well as other unnatural ingredients.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

The Challenge

I figured I should start my journey by describing the challenges I will face. Mostly A: How picky I am with foods and B: The foods I will be giving up that I might really miss.

A: Foods I will not eat -that are sugar free -:

1. Any foods sweetened using artificial sweeteners (I'm looking at you entire sugar-free selection at Fred Meyer and probably most frozen yogurt/ice cream sugar free selections). I do not find Splenda to be an acceptable alternative to sugar.

A: Foods I'm unsure how I feel about:

1. Agave (This is a plant based sweetener, right?)
2. Any other various forms of artificial sweeteners that some hail as great/healthy/useful (such as xylitol and stevia)
3. What is the best type of honey? Where can I get it raw? Is organic much better? Is local much better?

and

B: Foods I want to eat but will not for three weeks:
1. kit kats
2. chocolate
3. Milano cookies
4. Piroulines
5. the candy currently in my fridge
6. chocolate chip rice cakes

This list makes me look quite unhealthy as far as sugar is concerned.... I need to break my incidental chocolate/candy habit. I no longer quite like regular kit kats and most cheap candies anyways, so why do I still eat them?

*These lists are in no way complete and will be added to as time goes by*

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Start Without the Sugar

What’s up: I like to cook and I love to eat. From now until my birthday I will consume no processed sugars and learn about what it means to conform to a sugar-free lifestyle. What does it take to consume no sugar? What will I have to give up? Can I pull through?

The purpose of the blog: Document the project and my feelings. Share pictures and create solidarity and accountability. Like anonymous motivation.

Why no sugar? My mom can do it. I've been trying to reduce my sugar intake for months and as I've stated, it's 'easy' to reduce your sugar intake but it seems impossible to give it up entirely. From low to none, is it even doable? It must be, because people do it all the time. Sugar can be detrimental to staying healthy. It slows down metabolism. It makes my stomach feel unsettled if I eat foods with a large amount of sugar (that and I have a hard time stopping at just one cookie if they are good). Sometimes it's easier to have no cookies, then just one cookie. So, I'm attempting to eat no cookies. That and no processed foods with sugar. Most packaged foods contain sugar (glucose/sucralose/etc) so by eliminating the sugar, I am eliminating chemicaled foods that are not necessarily a great part of any diet.

How sugarless? As completely as possible. Honey, as far as I understand, is alright. Natural sugars are alright. Basically, if there is sugar/cane sugar/cane syrup/any other sugar derivative then I can't/won't eat it but if there is sugar on the calorie counter then it's ok to eat.

Here is my plan:

1. Materials
 The internet is loaded with information. It’s like the work has been done for me! What is sugar and how does it affect the body? What foods are great for natural sweeteners or what foods naturally always contain sugar? I will find all this out and more!

2. The food
 Time to hit the grocery store! I need to replace foods I normally eat or that I use in cooking with their sugar-free substitutes but I will not compromise on quality.

3. Eat