two dark chocolates go head-to-head

I’m going to be honest with you. I have a sweet tooth. BAD. I LOVE sweets and as I’ve been trying very hard to eat a more healthy traditional diet I’ve had to find ways to satisfy this ever present sweet tooth without submitting to gorging on refined sugary goodness. So, here are two dark chocolates I’d like to introduce and review for your eating pleasure.

The first contender is! *drum roll* Taza 60% Stone Ground Dark Chocolate!

Okay. So. I was sitting in a coffee shop doing a little work, sipping on a traditional cappuccino (I know, I’m such a snob! GOSH) when the smell of freshly baked muffins started wafting out of the kitchen. I began to drool and day dream about crispy muffin edges. Sweet tooth attack! When I get these kinds of cravings I usually eat a few chunks of dark chocolate. Not DARK chocolate, read 80%+, but semi-dark about 50-60% is perrrfect for me. This method almost always takes care of my sweet tooth.

I got up from my chair, walked up to the counter and bought the Taza 60% Dark chocolate. I ate about two small squares and my sweet tooth went away. I was able to breathe deeply and not be distracted nor temped by the yummy muffins being baked in the kitchen. Thank goodness for chocolate!

The Review: although the Taza chocolate satisfied my sweet tooth I won’t be buying this chocolate again. It was very grainy and a bit on the bitter side. I’m sure the graininess is due to the way they process the cacoa beans, which are stone ground, but I just couldn’t get past the feeling that I was eating sand. Yuck! I like smooth chocolate.

Contender number two is Dagoba Organic Dark Chocolate bar (59%)!

The Review: this is my FAVORITE chocolate of all time. Smooth/silky feel on the tongue with just enough bitter and sweet (although it contains less sugar than the Taza dark chocolate). If you haven’t already tried this chocolate…go, find a place that sells it, buy it, and eat it!

What’s your favorite chocolate?

What do you do when your sweet tooth strikes?

Green Graffiti

I snapped this while I was pumping gas in Davis, CA. It was one of those ads you see on the top of the gas pump, usually selling soda or hotdogs, this ad was selling fresh dairy! I thought it was pretty humorous as I use to live in Lansing Michigan and I know for a fact I would never see green graffiti in Lansing, but in Davis, this is very fitting. Davis is the home of some of the most food conscious people I’ve ever seen. I like it.

The notes on the ad say, “never seen green grass” with an arrow pointing at the cow and then “GMO Alfalfa” pointing at the over saturated (aka photoshopped) green field the cow is standing in.

What do you think about this ad with its graffiti?

Do you see much green graffiti where you live?

breakfast of champions!

My favorite hot cereal from Bob’s Red Mills add to that, organic heavy whipping cream, organic butter and a drizzle of pure maple syrup and you have the breakfast of champions!!!

I only eat this many carbs by themselves if I’m going to be doing something crazy active (thus this being the breakfast of champions, only eat this when you’re going to be doing something active!)….which I will be doing in oh, less than a half hour. An hour of hard swimming should eat all those yummy carbs up! Plus I made sure to eat enough fat (hence the heavy cream and butter) to slow all those carbs down in my system).

Cold pool on a cloudy day, here I come!

on eating fat

Fat. Yes, fat. I love fat and fat is good for you. A whole host of reasons exist for why fat is so good for you and  I can’t cram it all into one post. SO, I’m going to do it as a series of posts. I’ll address the reasons and kinds of fats that are good for your health. As you read, you will quickly realize I don’t subscribe to conventional wisdom when it comes to the kinds of fats we should be eating. But as Michael Pollan has started showing us, conventional “wisdom” of what we should eat, is fraught with bad and misleading science. I instead turn to Weston Price as a source of wisdom founded in historical case studies of traditional diets.

Look for the next post on fat and its importance in hydration (believe me, its cool)!

detective Jenny

I got myself a book on anatomy and physiology today. I’m on a mission people. I feel like a detective searching for all the clues. What am I looking for? Well you’ll find out in my next post!

kicking the soda habit

For anyone trying to kick the soda habit I highly recommend trying kombucha tea (GT’s Organic Raw Kombucha is a good one and is sold in most health food stores).

In my humble opinion, the reason we like soda so much isn’t just because it’s chucked full of sugary goodness and eye popping caffeine, but also because our bodies are craving fermented foods. That’s right! Fermented! Think sauerkraut, pickles, yogurt, you got it!

For thousands of years we little humans used bacteria to help preserve food and make nutrients accessible to our bodies. Of course the bacterias themselves also have many health benefits, including improved intestinal track health and enhanced immunity, to name but a few. Modern food processing changed the face of how we do food. It’s now hard to find unpasteurized sauerkraut (think DEAD sauerkraut). The only fermented food I know of that can still be found at your local grocery is yogurt. My point is, we use to eat a lot of this stuff and now we don’t. Now we eat a lot of crap. Eating more fermented foods would probably be good for us, especially seeing the rising rate of gastrointestinal disorders in the U.S.

Okay, okay, back to the soda issue. You see, I’m convinced the other reason I loved a cold dewy coke was because of the carbonation. Come on! There’s nothing better than that first sip and snap, crackle, pop on the tongue. Kombucha tea has the same carbonated “experience” (kinda like beer) that soda has but gets its bubbles from health promoting probiotics and not carbon dioxide.

Try it. I love it. And so will you.