Darlene

- very big business. This is not your father's soybean. Read the whole article here:

The Shadow of Soy or,

How I stopped loving and learned to worry about the bean. By Sean Carson

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Welcome "newbies" who really aren't newbies!

Don't be shy-come on down-you're the next contestant to be showered with sunshine.....

It begins with Cat's tea cart full of scrumptious, delicious goodies. I'm sure somebody else will be along with other goodies-in the meantime-enjoy some of this refreshing iced tea I have .

Next, Dar builds elaborate castles in that wonderful Miami sand while Cookie encourages her to build higher and wider.

Ed will probably bring somes tools from the shop to help, Da Boss along, but Dar will insist on doing it all by hand. (So Ed will take a "time out" and enjoy his brew. )

But we have to be careful to not make too much noise, or we will wake Spit up from her much needed nap. If that happens, she will probably come whirling through here, and in all the excitement, she might knock that beautiful sand castle down to the ground.

So you see-ALL newbies are "winners" at MrsS!!!!

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Called Animal Control once we got home-they picked up the carcass. I hope it had some kind of ID on it so they could notify the owners.

Hey lynnie-

Spit is *out cold* , but that cranberry stuff sure smells good-keep on rubbing!!! (It's a good thing it's nowhere near Thanksgiving or "da boss" {Darlene} might mistake her for a roasted turkey with cranberry stuffing)!!!!!!

Lynnie-

This is a brand new server for this site-it has only been here for a few weeks. The information and chat room from the previous site has to be "reconstructed" here-so it going to take time-that is why you see the explanation on the other paages

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Saw a dead dog by the side of the road this morning---poor thing Somebody is going to be very sad today (it had a collar)---but what was it doing on the freeway???

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Ya know Dee- I have the OPPOSITE problem-if I got that successful, I would think it time to relax a little and "reward" myself for being sooooooooooooooooo good and losing sooooooooooooooooo much.

Isn't it amazing how many differen ways we can invent to sabatoge our success???

A great big YAY DK!!!! Congratulations-you go girl!!!

[This message has been edited by Midnightmom (edited July 30, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by Midnightmom (edited July 30, 2002).]

Yay! Cat's here-Let the Par-tyyyyyyyyyy begin!!!

The buffet is well stocked with shrimp, king crab legs, and salads and greens galore.

The main course will be "Surf and Turf." The champagne fountain is flowing freely.

Strawberry cheesecake for dessert.

I love cyber food!!!

Thank you everyone. Now, go back and read about my car! I LOVE my car!!!

I bought a 1992 Honda Accord EX (150,000+ miles) with a spoiler and a moon roof last year.

After I got the car, I had it "overhauled." Changed the timing belt, changed the oil (what a mess-like it had never been changed before!), had the tranny flushed, in the process they found a broken motor mount , so fixed that too.

Got it painted by Maaco-the "deluxe" paint job (it was on special). It went in a dull silvery-gray tired looking vehicle, and came out a shiny gray with a trace of maroon luminesence and they even replaced the pinstripe at no extra charge!!! But, the wheels-the wheels MAKE the car-they are shiny sporty platinum sexy wheels (ie-rims)!!!

Since the initial "overhauling," I have had to replace the water pump, and then the radiator-WAIT-it was the thermostat I think-or the pressure cap. Well, whatever it was, it put too much pressure on the radiator, so that was the next to be replaced.

It's been aligned, has new brakes front and rear, the air conditioning has been serviced (the State of California made that be a very expensive proposition by the way-could they just put in more coolent- noooooooooooooooooooo- not in Calif-had to monitor emissions or something like that, and DOCUMENT all kinds of technical readings-sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!!!)

All in all is it almost a brand new car!!! And I am not sorry about one penny that I had to pay (well-except for the excess fees because I live in California )- cause....

I LOVE MY CAR!!!

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

[This message has been edited by Midnightmom (edited July 30, 2002).]

Ed better *hide* from the rest of the ladies on this site too!!!

*Midnightmom looks around for some spoiling vegetation, but alas, everything has been canned or frozen* ------------------

"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

[This message has been edited by Midnightmom (edited July 28, 2002).]

I have read "A Walk Across America," by Peter Jenkins.....but it was a looooooooooooooooooooooong time ago. I am hoping that my son meets 'the same' America that Peter did when he take his bicycle trip this fall.

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Ooooooooooooooooops! I put the reply about the cranberries in another thread!

They're not exactly low carb, but they are one fruit that I allow myself. I use the slightly sweetened craisin type that I can buy in bulk at Winco. These are still tart, but edible!!! I think the "packaged" ones are higher in sugar.

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Just dropped in to read all about "Lucifer's Hammer." Soooooooooooooooo........WHO's going to write the book review?????

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

westbrook-

maybe you should check the grounding wire to either the radio and/or the antenna.

if that doesn't work, you either have to never drive your daughter anywhere ever again, continuously increase your speed (watch out for the cop cars), or buy a CD player!!!

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Isn't ANYBODY going to paaaaaaaaar-tyyyyyyyy?

How is everyone today? I just posted an awesome article about artificial sweeteners-I hope you all read it. (Can't pat myself on the back too hard, it's NOT my info, I just found it).

Brekkie was bacon!!!!

Lunch was ice cream topped with whipped cream!!!

Dinner will be tuna and salad.

Ginger-the cranberries are not exactly low carb, but I love 'em. They are the "craisin" type that Winco carries in bulk-sweetened, but not tooooooooooooooooo much-they are still rather tart.

Madkat-

Can you give us a clue as to what the Halleluhah diet is about????

This is an article I pulled out of Dana Carpender's "Lowcarbezine" newsletter. She wrote a book titled "How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet -- And Lost Forty Pounds." I haven't read the book yet, but I LOVE her newsletter. This edition is located here:

http://www.holdthetoast.com/archive/020724.html

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Lowcarbezine! 24 July 2002

Perhaps the thing that scares people the most about going low carb is the idea of giving up sugar. In a country where the average sugar intake is now 152 pounds per year - and someone's eating more, folks, since we're all eating less - quitting the National Addiction looms as a very large obstacle - yet few steps have such beneficial results.

I don't eat sugar because it makes me fat and tired and cranky. This does not mean, however, that I never use a sweetener. I'm an enthusiastic cook, and perhaps an even more enthusiastic eater, and some recipes do call for at least a touch of sweetness. This poses no problem, since there is a wider variety of artificial sweeteners and other sweeteners that are easy on the blood sugar available now than at any time in history. Indeed, there are so many sweeteners available that it can get a bit confusing for the uninitiated - and there are new low carb dieters joining our ranks every day. So for those of you who are new to the ranks of the sugar-free - and we have more fun here than you may have imagined - here is a quick rundown of the most common sweeteners available in the US today:

Saccharine - Saccharine is the granddaddy of artificial sweeteners, and still sees a lot of use today. Most commonly known by the trade name Sweet 'n Low, or "the pink packets", saccharine is still a very useful sweetener to keep on hand. It's very cheap, it's widely available, and it holds its sweetness when heated. For many years, saccharine was suspected of being a carcinogen in large doses, but the FDA took it off the list of suspected carcinogens well over a year ago - and even when it was considered a cancer threat, the doses needed to equal those tested were ridiculously high.

The big disadvantage of saccharine is that some folks dislike the taste. There is a genetically linked tendency to taste a bitter aftertaste from saccharine - since it's genetic, some people taste it and some people don't. If you're one of the people who does, however, anything but the smallest amount of saccharin is not going to taste pleasantly sweet to you; it will taste unpleasantly bitter. The higher the concentration of the saccharine, the more likely that it will taste bitter, so it is better used when only a bit of sweetness is needed, like in a glass of iced tea, rather when a lot of sweetener is needed, for example for sweetening a chocolate dessert.

In cooking, saccharine has a couple of drawbacks: First of all, it is very, very sweet - you may remember those teensy little saccharine tablets, about double the size of a pinhead, just one of which replaced a teaspoon of sugar. Because of this intense sweetness, saccharine that has not been bulked with something less sweet can be awkward to use, making it difficult to know just how much to use in place of sugar - and bulking agent usually add at least a little carbohydrate; for instance a packet of Sweet 'n Low has just over a half a gram of carbohydrate in it. Liquid saccharine is available, and contains no carbohydrates at all. The second drawback is that saccharine does not provide any of the bulk or textural effects that sugar provides in baked goods and desserts - it will not hold moisture the way sugar will, nor will it brown, nor crystallize. This limits its usefulness in cooking, and particularly dessert making.

Still, saccharine is handy for adding a touch of sweetness to a cup of tea or coffee, a dish of yogurt, or a batch of salad dressing.

Aspartame - Aspartame debuted under the trade names Equal and Nutrasweet in the early 1980s, and it is still generally known by those names, or as "the blue packets" although its patent expired quite some time ago. At the time, aspartame took the market by storm, partly because it lacked the tendency to taste bitter that saccharine has, and partly because there was far more reason to aggressively market a sweetener that was still under patent than one whose patent had expired decades ago. The advantages and disadvantages of aspartame are, for the most part, similar to those of saccharine - aspartame is cheap and ubiquitous, but will not add moistness, browning, or any other textural effects to the foods in which it is used. As I mentioned, it does lack the drawback of tasting bitter to some folks, but on the other hand, unlike saccharine, aspartame breaks down when exposed to heat for any length of time, and loses its sweetness - indeed, it will even break down without heat over time. The shelf life of diet Coke, for instance, is nowhere near as long as that of regular Coke.

Too, aspartame is wildly controversial. There have been more complaints to the FDA about aspartame than all other food additives combined. The FDA steadfastly claims that all reports of headaches, seizures, MS-like symptoms, and visual disturbances are all in the heads of the folks reporting them, but the reports continue, regardless. Dr. Robert Atkins, who used to recommend the use of aspartame, no longer does; he feels that it interferes with fat burning on a cellular level. He also asserts that professional pilot's magazines have warned pilots not to use aspartame, because of reported visual disturbances. And this girl can tell you that when aspartame-sweetened Diet Coke took over the market from saccharine-sweetened Tab, I quickly found that two cans of pop during the day were enough to give me panic attacks in the evening. Although I do not shun aspartame completely, I prefer the other sweeteners, for this reason.

Still, many people use aspartame freely, with no apparent ill effects. Pay attention to your body is always good advice.

Acesulfame-K - commonly known as Ace-K, and sometimes as Acesulfame potassium. This is a sweetener that has never quite cracked the public consciousness, although it's available pretty widely in grocery stores, right along side the saccharine and the aspartame. The most common trade names are Sunnette and Sweet One. Ace-K stands up to heat, doesn't taste bitter, but once again, doesn't give any of the textural effects of sugar. So far as I can tell, folks don't use ace-K a lot, but it shows up in a growing number of sugar free products - all of which seem to taste pretty good. I haven't been able to find a lot of health info about ace-K; the only report I could find seemed to think that ace-K was bad and dangerous simply because it was, indeed, an artificial sweetener. This does not strike me as a compelling argument.

Sucralose - this is the new kid on the block, mostly being marketed under the trade name Splenda, and it blows the competition clear out of the water. Splenda tastes remarkably good; if you don't tell people that a dessert is sweetened with Splenda instead of sugar, it's unlikely that they'd ever guess. Sucralose, like saccharine and aspartame, is extremely sweet in its raw form. For this reason, Splenda is bulked with malto-dextrin to the same sweetness level as sugar. This is both good and bad - good because it is very easy to convert recipes; you just use the same amount of Splenda as you would of sugar, and bad because it needs so much malto-dextrin to bulk it to that level that the carb count starts to add up. One teaspoon of Splenda has a half a gram of carbohydrate. Granted, that's only 1/8th the carbohydrate of a teaspoon of sugar, and in a cup of coffee, it's no big deal. But when you want to use a cup of the stuff in a dessert, we're talking 24 grams of carbohydrate, or more than some folks' daily limit. Liquid Splenda, which is carb free, is available in some countries, but MacNeil, the company that produces Splenda in the US, says that they currently have no plans to distribute it here. By the way, to give you an idea of how sweet liquid Splenda is - 1/4 teaspoon equals a cup of sugar!

Splenda is the sweetener of choice right now for any serious sugar free chef. Still, it has some of the same drawbacks as the other sweeteners - it's easy to measure, and it tastes great, but it still doesn't give the bulk or the textures of sugar. Since it's still under patent, it's also quite expensive - this box of Splenda runs about $4. A good reason to use another, cheaper sweetener where it will work out well.

These four - saccharine, aspartame, acesulfame-K, and Splenda - are all artificial, non-nutritive sweeteners. This is enough to upset some folks; I get email every now and then saying, "How can you recommend artificial sweeteners?! They're artificial!" True enough.

I do not know if artificial sweeteners are completely safe. To me, however, that is an irrelevant question, since I know of nothing that is completely safe. The important question is "Are artificial sweeteners safer than what they are replacing?" And to this question, the answer appears to be a resounding "Yes". For instance, I had a reader write me, wanting to know if it was true that Splenda caused thymus shrinkage and kidney swelling. I read the FDA documents, and learned that it was, indeed, absolutely true that Splenda did just exactly that in the test rats - in doses the equivalent of a 150 pound human being eating well over 12,000 teaspoons a day of Splenda. At doses the equivalent of 8700 teaspoons a day, thymus shrinkage and kidney swelling did not occur. Considering that the average American eats about 45 teaspoons a day of sugar - an amount I consider to be manifestly unsafe - I find it hard to imagine that anyone is going to manage to force down more than, say, 200 teaspoons a day of Splenda. The kidneys and thymus glands of America appear to be safe.

I'd also like to point out that if you work it out, the same quantity of sweetness as 8700 teaspoons of Splenda a day would require that 150 pound human being to eat double their body weight in sugar, which might well kill them outright.

At any rate, sugar has been implicated in heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, poly cystic ovarian syndrome, and of course the ever popular tooth decay. If artificial sweeteners are only half as dangerous - and I don't believe they're anything like that dangerous - they're a better idea.

Now, for some not-so-artificial sweeteners:

Stevia - I did a whole speech on stevia a few years back. Stevia is an herbal sweetener, derived from the stevia rebaudiana shrub, known to the natives of South America as the sweet leaf shrub. An intensely sweet powder is extracted from the stevia leaf, and is growing in popularity as a sweetener. Technically, it is not allowed to be used as a sweetener in processed foods, but it is being used anyway, under the title "supplement."

Stevia has no known dangers. However, it shares many of the drawbacks of saccharine - it is so intensely sweet it can be difficult to use, and in quantity is it often unpleasantly bitter. It takes some experimenting with.

Easier to use is a blend of stevia and fructooligosaccharides, aka FOS. FOS is a naturally occurring sugar that is too big for the body to digest or absorb. As a result, FOS doesn't raise blood sugar levels or cause an insulin release. It does, however, encourage the healthy intestinal bacteria and improve bowel health. Since FOS is only half as sweet as table sugar (and wildly expensive!), it makes a good match for the too-sweet stevia extract. I use a stevia/FOS sweetener in my yogurt, and sometimes in beverages, and it works nicely in both.

Stevia, like the artificial sweeteners, does not give the bulk or textural effects of sugar. While FOS, in quantity, would give some of these effects, when paired with stevia the resulting sweetener is still too concentrated to use in amounts that would give these effects. Stevia and stevia/FOS blends also share a drawback of Splenda, in that they can be fairly expensive. Still, they're a good choice for anyone who is unhappy about using anything artificial in their diet.

Polyols - Polyols are also known as sugar alcohols. There are several - xylitol, maltitol, sorbitol, mannitol, and lactitol are the most widely used. The sugar alcohols are very different from the other sweeteners we've been talking about. They actually are carbohydrates, like sugar is, with one big difference - they are made of molecules so big that you can't digest or absorb most of them.

This means that polyols don't raise blood sugar much, don't contribute many absorbable calories, and don't cause much of an insulin release - yet they can provide virtually any texture that can be achieved with sugar. There are polyol-based marshmallows, gummy worms, jelly beans, caramels, meringues, ice cream, you name it, and they all are virtually indistinguishable from their sugary counterparts. Here we have polyol based taffies, hard candies, and chocolate; I think you'll be very impressed by both the taste and the texture of these candies.

There is one important thing to remember about the polyols, and you may consider it a drawback - although I consider it a benefit (hey, it's not a bug, it's a feature!) I mentioned that polyols are large-molecule carbohydrates that are very incompletely digested or absorbed. The same could be said of fiber. You know what happens if you eat a lot of fiber? Same thing happens with polyols. I find that just a candy or two, or a half a chocolate bar, is enough to make me, er, socially offensive a few hours later. Eat more, and you will regret it. I know someone who made the mistake of eating about a dozen sugar free taffies right before bed, and paid for it with 45 gut-cramping minutes in the bathroom at 4 am.

What this means, then, is that with the polyols we have high quality sweets that enforce moderation. Personally, I think this is a beautiful thing.

I have been asked, "Why use sweeteners at all? Why not just learn to do without sweet foods?" This is a question worth answering.

We are hard-wired to enjoy sweet flavors; this much has been well established. Apparently this is because for most of the millennia humankind has existed on planet Earth, sweet foods were rare, and served a strong nutritional purpose. Breast milk is sweet; I trust we're all clear on the value of babies enjoying their mothers' milk. Other than that, there was fruit - which originally had a far lower sugar content than our modern hybrid versions - a good source of vitamins and minerals. The one exception, and the only really concentrated sweet available in nature, was honey, and it seems unlikely that our primitive ancestors found enough honey to do themselves much damage, especially considering how much exercise they got. It seems clear that for most of the history of humankind, a preference for sweet flavors served us well. Only in our modern sedentary society, flooded with cheap and valueless sweets, has this preference been turned against us.

Although it seems unlikely that we will ever stop enjoying the flavor of sweet things, I do think we can, and should, unlearn our preference for vast quantities of heavily sweetened foods and beverages. That this could happen may seem unlikely to new low carbers; let me assure you that it is not. I have, in my life, quite literally stolen to get vast quantities of sugary food, yet most commercially sweetened products, both sugary and artificially sweetened, are far, far too sweet for my tastes now. As you wean yourself from sugar, you'll find your taste for the stuff diminishing, until someday you'll indulge in one of your old favorites, only to find it tastes so sickly sweet you can't bear to finish it. This is a far, far more common experience than you may believe!

Yet this lessening of our taste for sweets happens gradually, and in the meanwhile artificially sweetened desserts and such can keep the sugar monster from the door. This, to me, is a trade-off so valuable that I'm hard-pressed to find an argument against it - better, far better, to eat something artificially sweetened every day, and lose the physical addiction to sugar, and then let our taste for sweets gradually diminish on its own, than to say, "No! Nothing sweet, ever! No sugar, no artificial sweeteners, nothing!" and then get sucked back into sugar-hell. Every fight, every change, every goal has its appropriate time, and dealing with the very real addictive properties of carbohydrates, especially sugar, must happen before we start to teach ourselves not to need something sweet on a regular basis.

Further, I think it's likely that most of us will still find that at least a little sweetness among our variety of flavors is still desirable. I don't pick up the box of Splenda every day, but I don't hesitate to use a teaspoon or two in my cole slaw dressing, or to make a batch of sugar free ketchup - which I then eat a tablespoonful at a time. This sort of use of artificial sweeteners leads to truly minimal consumption, while keeping as broad a spectrum as possible of tastes available to us. If this makes our diets more interesting, and therefore more livable in the long run - and I have no doubt that for most of us it does - then this is a Very Good Thing.

We need to do this for the rest of our lives. Low carb sweeteners make this commitment far easier. I, for one, am grateful we have them.

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[This message has been edited by Midnightmom (edited July 25, 2002).]

Thought we might want to start a daily thread...

Tuna salad with bed of Romaine lettuce and the everpresent cranberries-yummmm!

Two hamburgers sans bun from Jack in the Box.

(I like to get the Jumbo Jack-cause it has lettuce & tomato- and the big cheeseburger-cause it has cheese - and combine them into one BIG burger- cause they're only 99c each, and it's a real cheap way to get a "specialty" burger. I throw away half the bun from each burger before I smush them together, then peel away the burger bun as I munch it down!!!

Dinner???? Don't know yet.

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

Found another interesting post from another forum that I frequent:

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Depends on how the chlorine is in the food. In sucralose, it's part of the molecule, held by covalent bonds, and therefore it don't break up. It's very stable.

In your water supply, you've got chlorine gas introduced in very very small quantities (this forms a solution in greater concentrations is otherwise known as "bleach"). This isn't enough to hurt you, but is really bad for the critters that try to live in your water pipes.

In salt, it's held by an ionic bond which breaks up so it can react with other things in your system, and you'd die without it.

Fun with chemistry.

http://www.pfangserver.com/bbs/showthread....ighlight=stevia

Cottage cheese with a splash of real cream, mandarin orange slices, dried cranberries, and slivered almonds for brekkie.

A hamburger pattie and melted pizza cheese with a touch of spag. sauce for lunch.

Not sure what dinner will be yet.

Biggest downfall is the water! I should take up residence under a waterfall so I will get what I need by "osmosis."

It's hard for me to believe that the people who published this report don't have their own vested interest in the sales of stevia-HOLISTIC Medicine?!?!?!?!?

I'm NOT slammming alternative medicine as a whole, just asking you to consider the source of the "bad" news.

Suzanne Sommers also has her own sweetner-Sommersweet-which is supposed to act like sugar in baking, etc-BUT-it is very EXPENSIVE.

There is one brand of stevia which is supposed to taste better than the others-I will try to find that info again and post it here. In the meantime, I will continue to use my Splenda.

edited to add the following:

Got this from Hold the Toast newsletter archives

http://www.holdthetoast.com/archive/991208.html

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Product Review

Two weeks ago, I told you all about Splenda, the new artificial sweetener that was approved this spring by the FDA. However, I get a fair number of posts from people who don't want to use artificial sweeteners at

all. They want to know if there's a natural alternative. There is!

Many of you have heard of stevia, the South American shrub whose leaves are 30 times sweeter than sugar. And many of you have tried the white, powdered stevia extract. No doubt, you've had the same experience I

have -- that stevia works pretty well in some things, and not at all well in some others. For instance, I like stevia just fine in protein shakes, but when I tried using it to make a chocolate cheesecake, the

results were nothing short of *vile*. Nasty. Bitter. Icky beyond belief.

Along with bitterness, stevia shares another drawback with artificial sweeteners: While it can replace the sweetness of sugar, it cannot replace sugar for volume, and it lacks the dramatic textural effects that

sugar brings to many recipes -- moistness, browning, etc. Even Splenda can't give you these effects.

What if I told you there was a sugar that was effectively no calorie, and no carb? You'd either think I was nuts (nice, low carb nuts!), or that you'd died and gone to heaven. Well, there is! But don't get too

excited yet -- even this has its problems. Welcome to the real world.

The sugar I'm talking about is called fructooligosaccharide. Don't even *try* to pronounce it, just call it FOS. FOS is a naturally occurring sugar that occurs in small quantities in many foods, ranging from

bananas to onions to tomatoes. You can think of FOS as being sort of the fiber of the sugar world -- just as fiber is starch that's too big for your body to digest and absorb, FOS is a sugar molecule that is too

large for your body to digest and absorb! Result? No blood sugar rise, no insulin release. Pretty cool!

Better yet, FOS *can* be digested and absorbed by the good bacteria in your intestine. This means that eating FOS will actually *improve* your health by increasing the number of those good bacteria. So what

could be bad?

Well, first of all, FOS is about half as sweet as sucrose (table sugar), so it doesn't make things as sweet. Well, you're thinking, just use twice as much! Tiny little problem there. You know what would

happen if you doubled your fiber intake? Same thing happens if you eat too much FOS -- it acts as a laxative. Also, FOS is *very* expensive. When it first hit the market, I paid $12 for *two ounces*. Could make for some mighty expensive low carb treats!

So NOW for the product review! (You've been wondering when I'd get around to that, haven't you?)

My beloved health food store, Bloomingfoods, is now carrying a product called SteviaPlus, which is a blend of the white stevia extract powder and FOS. It is made by a company called SweetLeaf. SteviaPlus comes in

little packets, like artificial sweeteners do, and is also apparently available in a shaker jar. The benefit of this combination is obvious: FOS mellows out the somewhat edgy taste of stevia, and has some of

the textural effects of sugar; stevia adds the sweetness that FOS lacks.

I've been using SteviaPlus recently in my attempts to come up with sugar free chocolate recipes that A) taste good and have a good texture. I've found that SteviaPlus helps to get me the texture I want, no doubt because the FOS acts as sugar would to help combine the chocolate with liquids. I tried using just Splenda, and found getting a nice texture was difficult. A combination of SteviaPlus and Splenda so far is the front runner in the sugar-free chocolate recipe race. I'm sure I'll come up with more uses for this product as I develop more recipes for you!

SteviaPlus is all natural, won't mess up your blood sugar, is good for your health, and I think it tastes better than plain stevia powder. It isn't cheap -- I paid $5.59 for 50 packets, each of which has the

sweetening power of approximately 2 teaspoons of sugar. But if you've been hoping for a really viable, natural sweetening option, here it is.

If you look for SteviaPlus online, beware! I found a brand that calls itself "Stevia Plus" (notice the space between the words), which included fructose along with the stevia and FOS. Fructose is a carb, so

that's not what you want. I repeat that the stuff I got is made by a company called SweetLeaf. I have found an online source, at http://www.wisdomherbs.com/price.htm , and called them to make sure it was the

right stuff. It's a bit more expensive through their website than it was at my health food store, but if you don't live near a health food store, it would be a good resource for you!

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And, from another source:

splenda+steviaplus

You can order SteviaPlus (the white powder) online or get it at Whole Foods Markets.

I find the best sweet taste comes from combining splenda plus steviaplus. I got this idea from Sharron Long who has a cookbook, and I have found it to be so true. To me plain Splenda still tastes artificial but the combination of the two tastes real. The reason is that one has the up front sweet taste and the other has the follow through sweet taste.

If you are going to *replace* all the Splenda with Steviaplus the equivalent is that 1 teaspoon Splenda = 1/4 teaspoon SteviaPlus.

However, to combine, you need MUCH less SteviaPlus.

For 1 cup Splenda pourable, use 1/3 cup Splenda pourable + 1 teaspoon SteviaPlus

The math is pretty complicated. For 1 unit of Splenda use 1/3 unit of Splenda + SteviaPlus equal to the remaining 2/3 unit divided by 25 or 30.

So a cup is 16 Tablespoons and thus is 48 teaspoons. 2/3 of a cup is 32 teaspoons. So 1/30 of 2/3 of a cup is about 1 teaspoon. That is how you get the 1/3 cup Splenda+1 tsp SteviaPlus.

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Hope this helps!

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."

[This message has been edited by Midnightmom (edited July 23, 2002).]

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"Sooner or later everyone quotes their mother."