Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Eureka: Stevia Italian sodas
There are many of us PWME's who can't (or shouldn't) drink anything with caffeine, sugar or artificial sweeteners, which basically leaves only water and herbal teas. If you're like me, every so often you get a craving for a sweet drink. A really bad craving.
Sure, you can try to tell yourself that primal humans drank only water. But then again, primal humans didn't know what they were missing! I've spent 35 years drinking whatever I want, whenever I want. One can't simply turn off a life-long habit.
I have to credit Mrs. Calvin for this idea. Walking through Whole Foods Market, she discovered the existence of flavored liquid stevia. Two ounce bottles of this little magical elixir come in flavors like vanilla, lemon, orange, chocolate, raspberry and others. From this discovery (and possibly from reading the side of the bottle) Mrs. Calvin came up with the idea of adding the flavored stevia to sparkling water to make Italian sodas. So we tried it.
I don't want to ruin the surprise, but please sit down before you take your first sip. And make sure your socks are on tight.
The bottles of flavored stevia that we purchased at Whole Foods cost about $13, but can probably be purchased online for less. You only need a few drops to flavor a whole glass, so the bottle should last a very long time.
Happy gulping.
P.S. Did you know there's a commercial brand of stevia sodas called Zevia? If anyone's tried this, I'd like to hear from you.
P.P.S. For more of my stevia product reviews, click here.
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My son's GF is diabetic so I've been on a quest to find some sweetener that won't spike her blood sugar. Myself I can tolerate small amounts of sugar so I use sucanat or honey when I'm cooking but I've tried to cut most of it out of my diet. I made some ice cream using stevia as the sweetener and I had a wicked blood sugar crash afterwards. It is a known reaction in some people. I guess I can't tolerate the stuff. The next one on my list to try is Xylitol. I've had it before in hard candy with no reaction. Making ice cream with it will be the hard core test both for taste and blood sugar reactions. Hopefully this will work because I want to make her a cake for her birthday or at least some ice cream.
ReplyDeleteBaffled, tell me more about this stevia ice cream. do you need an ice cream maker to make your own ice cream? What recipe did you use?
DeleteI'll be interested to hear how your experiments with Xylitol turn out. Hopefully you'll report on your blog. I'll check back...
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ReplyDeleteI haven't tried Zevia but my roommate buys it by the case-load. She also grows her own stevia plants so that's an option to consider if you have a green thumb. -Rambler of many names
ReplyDeleteNow I'm really curious. I'm going to have to track down some of this Zevia and try it.
ReplyDelete