As some of you may know, Adam and I decided on trying to be flexetarians, meaning we'll go with little to no meat, for the month of September. I have chosen to also eliminate all added sugars from my diet, and only intaking fruit-based sugar. Sugars eliminated include any sugar additives that rhyme with 'gross' (fructose, dextrose, etc.), stevia, sugar itself, honey, agave... Nothing, except for fruit as a sweetener. I was kind of scared, seeing as just about everything has sugar in it. So guess what I'll be doing with my spare time? Cooking and baking. Bread, tortillas, pasta sauce, granola, tortilla chips... just to name a few. BUT, the point is, it's possible.We'll be starting tomorrow, August 28th, and going through the next 4 weeks. This random picking of dates is only because these are the weeks within my monthly menu for September.
To kick off the month, Addi and I went shopping yesterday and came home with tons of vegetables and beans. Today we tried making a parfait with the homemade granola and original plain yogurt WITHOUT sugar! That made me nervous. I've eaten plain yogurt before and thought it was like eating sour cream by the half cup – NOT good. We tried it, and we loved it! Here's how we prepared it:
No Added Sugar Yogurt
– 1 ripe Banana
– 3/4 cup -or- 6oz container of Original Plain Yogurt -or- Plain Greek Yogurt
– A splash of 100% Apple Juice
– 3/4 cup No Added Sugar Granola
1. Mash the banana with a fork in the bowl you'll be putting your yogurt in until the banana forms a paste.
2. Scoop yogurt in the bowl with the mashed banana.
3. Pour a splash of apple juice in the yogurt mixture.
4. Stir until well mixed. Taste, and add more apple juice as needed.
It tasted like banana flavored yogurt, but actually good because it was made with real and fresh bananas, and not the artificial flavoring.
Because I didn't come up with the granola recipe, I'll share that in the link below. I found it on eHow.com. It's not sweet, but it cooked well. I didn't use any dried fruit because I don't like fruit in my granola, and I think I'd add additional nuts, like maybe some pistachios. It turned out great though! Perfect for parfaits.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5401872_make-sugarfree-granola-artificial-sweeteners.html
All in all, if it's this easy to stay away from sugar, and tastes this good, I'm going to continue doing this for sure. Keep following every day for all the recipes I try, and to see how our flexetarian and no added sugar diet is going! We're looking forward to a happier and healthier life style.
Cheers!
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