Thursday, February 4, 2010

Stevia & Club Soda

Okay, before I post what I originally was just going to post about....I just hafta tell about the SNOW here!! Last post I said we got about 8 inches. Well, the other day, we got 5 MORE! So I took this pic out of our window.


Then we hear that tomorrow we will be getting a storm through here that they say will be comparable to the Dec 19th storm that brought 2 ft of snow! As of this morning they are estimating 12-18 inches OR MORE!!!! They said the "more" part is definitely likely. UGH!!! You've GOT to be kidding me!!! We can't GET AWAY FROM THIS STUFF!!!!

It is nice out today, sunny and mid 40s, so I'm getting ready to head to town to stock up because I think we will be snowed in for quite awhile!

Okay, back to the main post.....

So I had this dilemma....two actually...1)I really like drinking pop, but I hate all the ingredients in it! Corn syrup (and high fructose corn syrup) is one of the most harmful ingredients and it's in pretty much everything you can buy that's prepared or boxed (mercola.com is a good place to start if you want to learn more about HFCS) and 2)I know I need to drink more water than I do but I hate plain water.

So here's what I came up with!

For the pop thing....I knew that I liked pop because of the "bubbles" but didn't want to keep buying "natural" pop because even though it doesn't have an HFCS or artifical coloring in it, it still has LOTS of sugar. So how could I get some bubbles without drinking pop?? I bought some of this...

which is like the popular V-8 vegetable juice but it has fruit in it as well...with NO ADDED SUGAR! So it's basically veggie and fruit juice (no artifical colors either, or preservatives, etc). And I mixed it with some club soda which is just carbonated water (which I think is totally disgusting by itself!). And then I had a bubbly drink that has NO SUGAR and NO HFCS and NO artifical colors!!! Yippee!! Drinking a little of that every once in awhile completely took away my 'craving' for pop!

And about dilemma #2...I know adding lemon or cucumber to water makes it taste yummy too but I don't always have those on hand. So what did I do? I bought this....

okay, the pic quality isn't great so I'll tell you... It's a bottle of Liquid Stevia. What is that exactly?? Well, stevia is a NATURAL sweetner derived from the leaf of the stevia plant. That's it. Nothing added. Nothing taken away.

But you wanna hear the AWESOME part of stevia??? It doesn't affect blood sugar levels like sugars or sweetners do, it's ZERO calorie, it doesn't rot your teeth like sugar, and it's POTENT so a tiny goes a LONG way! What more could you ask for in a sweetner?!?

This is a very small bottle, only 2 oz and was about $12 BUT it will last FOREVER! It has a dropper on the top and I only add about 3 drops to a large glass of water to make it sweet and GREAT to drink! I also add it to tea, whipped cream, pretty much anything you want to sweeten! It does come in a solid form too if you want to use it in cooking/baking etc. but you need to read the directions because it uses WAY less than white refined sugar. (ex: I wanted to sweeten a big bowl of whipping cream for some fruit salad and I only used about 6-7 drops!)

So there ya have it! Add a little stevia to your water and you'll be drinking a cool, sweet drink that is oh so good for you and just oh so good in general! And add some club soda to some REAL fruit juice (not the stuff with sugar in it!) to get some FIZZ in your drink!

2 comments:

yodasmith said...

I use SweetLeaf stevia, too! Sometimes I like to use their root beer flavor liquid stevia in sparkling water! I learned to put just use one drop of it in the cup of sparkling water or else the root beer flavor isn't nearly as pronounced a the sweeteness of the stevia, but I think my taste buds are sensitive to the sweetness when it's in water. I use th vanilla creme flavor and their powder in baking!

I love v-8 fusion! Maybe i'll have to try it with some sparkling water myself!...I'm sure it's very yummy!

jlcdavis said...

I LOVE the Stevia too! I'm trying to kill all the excess candida in my body right now so I've tried to limit as much sugar intake as I can...not always perfect, but so much better than I've been in eons! I take the club soda and add root beer stevia!! Nummy! That with my real popcorn made with the whirly pop, coconut oil, sea salt and real butter!!!! Ahhhh!! I also discovered Zevia, natural pop that uses stevia. Expensive, yes, but it sure helps curb the craving for a Coke!