Does anyone else love to look at other people’s bookshelves and do you get really excited when you find that you have books in common with someone else?  I do.  Super excited.  The people who hosted us for dinner had the absolute cutest, sweetest little boy and had great books.  I scored a couple to borrow, which also accounts for my absenteeism.  Right now I’m reading “Marriage to a Difficult Man:  The Uncommon Union between Jonathan & Sarah Edwards” and I borrowed “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ.”  I now have about 22,465 books in my “to-read” stack, most of them borrowed.

Today, I experimented with some energy pudding inspired by Miss Gina’s efforts over at her blog and also going from memory from Brendan Brazier’s Thrive. I lent my copy of Thrive to a kick-ass tri-athlete friend of mine (she’s the one who got me into running and she rocks.  And makes the best chocolate chip cookies ever) and vaguely remembered maca being a good thing for training recovery.  As a practice for my 5k run tomorrow (oh yeah, I’m also running a 5k!  How about that?) I made some pudding for my pre-Zumba snack with chia seeds, hemp nuts and coconut milk.  I also dumped in a scoop of maca for good measure.

NEVER, ever, EVER do that.  It will make you gag.  Possibly barf.  This is the strong taste I sometimes catch in Amazing Grass or Vega products.  I never knew what it was before, but now that I have the taste isolated, I know.

I googled around for it to make sure maca really does taste that awful and I didn’t buy a bad batch.  Kristen over at Kristen’s Raw thinks maca usually taste like feet.  I think that’s an insult to feet — I think it tastes like dirt in a sweaty butt crack.  Sorry to be graphic, but that’s the only way you can understand the horror.  Blended with 32 ounces of smoothie, the pudding was tolerable.

That globby stuff in the middle is the pudding. I would totally make this again WITHOUT maca. It's kinda tapioca like.

I have a lot of catching up to do on the ol’ blog! I mentioned last week about a hip-releasing yoga vid I wanted to review, I took a step that might will change my life, I bought one of those Body Bugg things (I call it my Body Buddy) and I wanted to tell ya’ll about my experience with it this past week (hint:  my boss is about to buy one now!) and there’s more to come!!  Sheesh!

Peace (and thanks for sticking around!)

E.

In any case, last Saturday, the number of cookies wasn’t pretty.  Or vegan.

This week has been an effort to largely get back on track with my eating habits, but I have been HUNGRY.  I’m not sure if it’s the workouts or what.  So I’ve upped the food a bit.  But it was time for me to take a little break from the PB Loco.  I’ve been putting it on the side of bananas and apples.  I’ve been putting it on toast.  I’ve been depositing it directly into ma mouf via spoon.  I’ve been doing this multiple times a day.  I strongly suspect the combo of sugar, salt and oils (all of which are additives in PB Loco) are just too much for my taste buds to resist.

So these bad boys are going to have to be hidden away in my freezer:

In the freezer, sorry guys

I think I’ll try and make some of Tina’s Peanut Buttery Bars with the White Chocolate Peanut Butter just to get it out of the house.  I’ve had enough of it .  I wish I was the type of person who could eat one cookie or one teaspoon of PB and be satisfied.

As soon as I’m done with these, I’ll be switching back to my regular TJ’s raw almond butter and peanut butter — I still eat it quite enthusiastically, but it’s not quite such a compulsion.  I think because it doesn’t have the added sugar/salt/fat.  Has anyone read The End of Overeating?  He makes the point that companies know the proper balance of sweet/salty/fatty that triggers our brain’s reward center and they engineer their junk food so that it is virtually irresistible to mere mortals.  That certainly has been my experience, so I think avoiding engineered foods sounds like a good idea for me.

Moving on to some yummy drinks:

Hemp-a-licious

That’s cooled coffee shaken with some hemp milk, a few drops of Vanilla Stevia, and ice.  I also made some coffee ice cream using coffee, maple syrup, coconut milk, dates and a bit of carageenan.  It was delicious.  Unfortunately, I meant to take a picture but it was gone before I knew it.  My one trouble with making homemade ice cream is that it freezes too hard in the freezer.  Directly out of the ice cream maker it’s wonderful.  But any leftovers turn out rock-y.  I added carageenan hoping that would keep it slippery, but no luck.

Oh well, it’s probably a good idea to learn patience and let it defrost.  :-)

I made this GM (I think it was this one, it’s the only pic I have left on my camera of a GM) with a frozen banana.  All other things were equal (strawberries, almond milk, etc).  The frozen banana really made it extra delicious — creamier and sweeter.  I recommend freezing your bananas before blending them.  Oh, and you have to peel them first.  I learned this the hard way.  Same goes for avocados.  Peel them and take the pits out.  That may be obvious to everyone, but it wasn’t to me.

Have a great weekend!  Happy Independence Day to my US readers.  And I hope my non-US readers enjoy their July 4th.

Peace!

E.

Nalgene of green monster, Cranberry Lime Polar Seltzer water, Split Pea soup from TJ's, and a slice of zeke bread with PB Loco Sumatra Cinnamon and Raisin Peanut Butter

Notice anything missing?  Like… a canopener?  I was so proud of myself for planning ahead and saving myself spending NINE DOLLARS on, like, a cup of vegetables over in Burlington.  I assumed there would be a can opener in the office kitchen, but it is evidently true what they say about assuming things.  Except I didn’t make an ass out of you or me, I just was hungry and couldn’t eat all my lunch.  So I googled around for about 45 minutes (yeah, I know, I’m productive) trying to find a vegetarian joint nearby.  I gave up, waded through traffic to Whole Foods (seriously, can we put some left turn lights on Cambridge Street through Burlington into Woburn?  That area is a mess) and bought THEIR vegan split pea soup from their hot bar.  When I wants the peas, I wants the peas.  It was a little over $5, which would have bought my 2.5 cans of my stuff from Trader’s.  Oh well.

About PB Loco’s Raisin and Cinnamon PB:

Hello Peanut Butter Addiction!

When I opened this jar, I grabbed myself a spoon and sampled a nice big gob.  Immediately, I was disappointed because there was a weird, chemical-y aftertaste.  Almost like a pesticide.  I couldn’t quite place the aftertaste, but Husband tried it and agreed that he could taste something.  He wondered if it was the alcohol-free vanilla they use.  Maybe.  I was super bummed because I had high hopes for this PB — cinnamon and raisins are things I add in anyway, so all in one jar saved me a lot of steps!

I thought this would just languish in my fridge, but I find myself drawn to it more and more and the pesticide taste is less and less noticeable to me.  Maybe I’m used to it?  Maybe I needed to stir it better?  It did arrive on a hot day and was liquid, so maybe one of the flavors was just very concentrated at the top?

Anyway, I still can’t say I LOVE this PB and will buy it always.  The highest review I can give it is “It grows on you,” and honestly?  For $7 PB (not including shipping)?  It darn well better rock my socks off.

Peace (and peanut butter!)

-E.

Another empty wrapper

Once again, I ate it before taking the picture of the package.  One day I’ll learn restraint.  At least I didn’t actually eat it in the store, unlike some Honest Foods Bars that I bought…

The texture of this cookie was interesting.  I wouldn’t have marketed it as a cookie.  It was more like a cake or a very dry, cake-y brownie.  I actually don’t care for dry chocolate cake or brownies, so, you see, this cookie and I were doomed from the start.  

It was sweet — SUPER sweet with a bit of a sandy texture to it.  All in all, I was not a fan of this cookie even though I really wanted to be:  vegan, chocolate, gluten-free… how could I go wrong?  It just reminded me of those old Snackwell’s cookies from back in the day.

Another factor in my dislike:

Savaged wrapper

It’s kinda hard to tell since I basically ripped the entire wrapper to shreds (am I part werewolf?), but one cookie has 360 calories.If you are self-controlled enough to cut the cookie in half and save the rest for a later treat, you will only get 180 cals, but I am not that kind of girl.  I am not the kind of girl who leaves a half-eaten cookie in a single serving package sitting in her cupboard.  Just for reference, for 360 calories, I could eat a whole Ezekiel sprouted grain muffin with 2 tablespoons of Satan’s PB.

I’m tempted to try the lemon flavored cookie because I do like lemon cake and the texture might be less of an issue to me, but I think it’s not worth it.  I think there are better treats to enjoy so I regretfully have to award the Granite Gourmet’s first “No me Likey” label to Nana’s cookies.    

Don’t forget to check out the second part to my [me] and gogi vs. MixMyGranola review tomorrow!

Peace,

Elizabeth